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Lenders spook easily. And for good reason.

Their job is to protect capital, so a solar project can have solid economics, proven technology, and an EPC that knows how to build it, yet still hit a financing wall if the lender isn’t convinced the project will reach commercial operation when something goes wrong.

That’s the nightmare Gage Kellogg, Managing Director of Renewable Energy at Partner Engineering & Science, helps us unpack in this Halloween-special Tactical Tuesday.

What happens if the EPC fails halfway through construction? Who keeps the subcontractors on site? Who funds the remaining work? And does having a performance bond actually mean someone is ready to finish the project?

Gage has spent more than two decades across development, project finance, construction, surety, and independent engineering. He explains the warning signs that show up before contractor failure, why a stalled project can become more expensive by the day, and how Partner’s Completion Commitment and SureBuild address different layers of completion risk.

Expect to learn:

🔹 Why a technically capable EPC can still create a bankability problem

🔹 What a performance bond does, and what it may not solve

🔹 What needs to happen immediately when an EPC fails

🔹 How contractor default and borrower default create two different risks

If you’re developing, financing, or building solar and storage projects, this is one scary scenario worth solving before financial close.

RESOURCES:

Connect with Gage Kellogg:

Check out Partner Engineering & Science:

‍

(00:00) The Solar Construction Risk Dilemma

(03:16) How Construction Completion Agreements Work

(04:35) Navigating Market Volatility on the Solar Coaster

(06:06) Limitations of Traditional EPC De-Risking Tools

(07:49) The Hidden Traps of Surety Bond Indemnification

(09:31) Why Performance Bonds Do Not Guarantee Completion

(10:50) Early Warning Signs of Solar Contractor Distress

(14:35) The First 24 Hours After an EPC Walkoff

(16:25) Compounding Risks of Stalled Solar Construction

(17:18) Contractor Default, Borrower Default, and SureBuild

(19:37) Case Study: Covering a $4M Project Cost Overrun

(22:04) Lessons from Large-Scale Developer Bankruptcies

(23:35) Unifying Technical Diligence and Completion Protection

(24:31) Solving Surety Barriers for Vertically Integrated Developers

(26:27) Solving Completion Risk Before Financial Close

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Noteworthy Quotes:

Gage Kellogg  0:00  

The banks are forced to ask themselves a question and to present to their boards like we're lending into this renewable energy space. Sure, are we just going to continue to do the same thing and hope for the best, or do we have a better plan to to address this? So we think that we're a better plan.

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Nico Johnson  0:14  

Hey, Solar Warrior, welcome to another Tactical Tuesday. Here's a scenario I've contemplated. You've got a good project. The lender likes it. You've got an EPC that you believe can actually build the project, but that EPC doesn't necessarily have the balance sheet behind it, or can't meet the surety requirements. Now, construction risk is the one thing standing between you and financing, and underneath this whole thing is the question nobody really wants to ask. What if that EPC actually fails? Who actually gets your project from a stranded job site to an operating asset? My guest today has an answer. His Gage Kellogg is Gage Kellogg, Managing Director of Renewable Energy at Partner Engineering and Science. Gage has spent two decades in this industry, and he's seen a number of projects from just about every side of the table: development, project finance, construction, surety, and even independent engineering. This is just one slice of a much longer conversation that Gage and I recorded, and the full interview is coming out soon, so make sure you're subscribed. Keep an ear out to the feed for that interview. But for today, we're gonna zero in on one problem that Gage brought to light: why the usual fixes like a bigger EPC or a surety bond don't always solve it. What a performance bond actually guarantees, and to whom, the warning signs that a contractor is in trouble before they default. What happens in the first 24 hours after an EPC walks off of a job, and how partners' completion commitment and their sure build policy fit together. I even have a $10 million project example to show you. Let's get into it. So let's say I'm a solar storage developer trying to get a project through construction financing, and I'm in an area where I just don't have the level of or the volume of options for let's say for EPC. I've got the project works, the lender likes the project, and I've got an EPC that I believe can build it, but the construction risk is basically preventing the lender from getting comfortable, the EPC that we vetted maybe doesn't measure up or can't he can't meet the surety requirements. How do you make a good solar storage project bankable then, when that construction risk exists and and it's holding up the project?

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Gage Kellogg  2:36  

A technically capable contractor who knows how to put it together, but and has picked good subcontractors and has got good staff, just doesn't have the true balance sheet to transfer the risk to. So if there is a big problem, there's nothing there behind it. Yeah. So the ability to you know fix the problem, whatever it is, with a team of engineers and construction managers and experts in all the different areas that we have, we're not scared of any of those types of problems. We can dive in right away, know what to do, and then if it becomes a financial issue, then you've covered that. You know, as us as us coming in as a construction manager to finish that that project or to help with the sure build and cover cost overruns.

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Nico Johnson  3:16  

So, talk to me about the insuring against completion failure. If the EPC fails halfway through construction, who's actually responsible for getting my project from a stranded construction site to commercially operating asset? Let's unpack that.

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Gage Kellogg  3:29  

So, if a contractor fails, we've entered into a construction completion agreement with a lender. Then the lender triggers our completion agreement, and we step in and finish that job. Now, there's all sorts of different variations on that. So some owners are like, "Okay, partner, you signed up for this, go finish it. Others are are like, want to be very much involved and hands on, and we work side by side, and or they have their own plan, and we kind of monitor them and and and report back to the lender. Yes, we agree with this path forward, and this makes sense. It's it's it's our program. Whatever we think is the best and fastest way to get through this. There's no constraints on us about how we would do that. Hire another contractor, manage it ourselves, work with an owner who's already been working on this and trying to come up with Plan B there, so we can be flexible and use all our resources and creativity to deal with whatever situation we're presented.

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Nico Johnson  4:20  

Do you have a sense, like what percentage of these kinds of contracts out there are run into this problem, or maybe what percentage you all expect of what you are underwriting to go through some sort of a claim?

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Gage Kellogg  4:35  

Well, it's definitely not an even line in that case. So you have hard and soft markets, and right now with volatility and changes in tax credits and and and and whatnot, it's it's we're we're an upward risk trend right now. So if if you have small contractors that you're doing CNI and maybe community solar with, and maybe 3040, 50% of their work was maybe residential, you know that business has come way off.

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Nico Johnson  5:00  

Percentage of the business

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Gage Kellogg  5:01  

those

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Nico Johnson  5:01  

is is in is in risk can can trigger whether or not those EPCs become themselves a risk

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Gage Kellogg  5:09  

heavily exposed to like that when them 3.0 came out and things changed there you know so we're also trying to support contractors as they grow from you know CNI to maybe small utility scale or distributed generation, like community solar, seven megawatt type projects. You know the projects that were counted on that were sort of now out of the money. That you know we had a long runway with the Inflation Reduction Act, and a lot of money went out the door based on that. And there's been a lot of safe harboring, but there's a lot of questions around how that goes. So it can be a lumpy business, and for contractors to kind of run through those those that those times, you know, I guess people call it the solar coaster. Yeah, how do you survive through that? There's there's opportunities where it's it's pretty risky, and so we're here to be a stable stabilize that and allow projects to continue without banks taking big risks is that if they start to have losses, then we start to have constrained capital on the projects, and we don't want that. I'd

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Nico Johnson  6:06  

like to talk about the tools that are available for developers, maybe the sort of the stack of options that one could choose from. You've been doing this since 2005, 21 years. Your very first phone call into the solar industry was like, "Hey, go check out Nevada Solar One. We got to know if we can underwrite this thing. So, what tools have developers traditionally had available to solve that problem of a lender saying, "I'm not really comfortable with the construction risk on this project"

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Gage Kellogg  6:33  

So, one of the first things people do is they go out and look for a larger EPC contractor to do some of these projects, and that sometimes is the solution. But a lot of times, the money, the the price they'll give you is different, right? So you're trying to get the right size contractor for the right size project. So a large bondable EPC contractor, he's got limited resources. He's going to go look for his highest return. And so the developers forced with, all right, if I go with this CPC contractor, the big one, it's a lot more money. It doesn't my my deal doesn't pencil. It just doesn't quite make sense, you know, to have this huge company deal with this small project.

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Nico Johnson  7:05  

Right.

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Gage Kellogg  7:05  

So you're paying more for it. The right size contractor could be smaller, but not have the balance sheet for the risk transfer. You could look for surety bonds. Surety bonds, like I went through before, is a reactive tool. It's a financial tool. So most of the time, when a claim happens, you're kind of on your own to figure this out. If you're, especially if you're under time, if time is the main issue, you know it's go back and fight with the surety later to to see what you can get paid. The other thing about the surety bonds, parental guarantees, anything as far as the contract is concerned, is our completion commitment has no indemnification requirements. What does that mean? Contractors, it's like I said, insured is not really insurance. It's it's a financial product issued by insurance companies and regulated by the insurance industry.

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Nico Johnson  7:49  

It's like an IOU.

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Gage Kellogg  7:50  

It's an IOU in the sense that right. If if the if the insurance company makes a payment on your behalf, you've indemnified them. So the owner of the company most times has to pay them back, and so he's liable for this personally. Which interest are they effectively

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Nico Johnson  8:03  

taking a loan from the?

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Gage Kellogg  8:05  

Well, you know, I don't know about the interest piece of it, but the most unpleasant part of it is usually this thing called a cross basal indemnification letter that you have to take over to your wife and explain to her that if this goes bad, you know, we own this house together, cross spousal inspectors. Oh, cross

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Nico Johnson  8:20  

spousal! I kept, I did keep hearing Basil cross spousal,

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Gage Kellogg  8:24  

right? So your personal assets, even if they're earned by you and your wife, are you know the the surety wants access to that. So if they're making a payment on your behalf, they they've got you, right? So it's really

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Nico Johnson  8:33  

that diamond that diamond wedding ring,

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Gage Kellogg  8:36  

really bad. So you know we don't have that. So we we have non identification. If you're terminated for cause, we step in and complete. You know, again, we work for the bank, making sure that they get. It's

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Nico Johnson  8:46  

another question I had: is who do you work for? Yeah.

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Gage Kellogg  8:48  

So a developer, if they what if they need additional capital to to you know satisfy the chief credit officer for the the size of the portfolio or the project they're working on? So what can they do? They can go out and raise equity and give away their deal and pay double digit returns to somebody, or they can buy an inexpensive, easy to call on insurance policy that does the same thing as far as the credit, the chief credit officer is concerned,

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Nico Johnson  9:11  

right?

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Gage Kellogg  9:11  

And it costs a half a point.

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Nico Johnson  9:13  

Wow, you know,

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Gage Kellogg  9:13  

in that range.

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Nico Johnson  9:14  

Yep.

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Gage Kellogg  9:14  

So we think much easier. It's a win for you know the the EPC contractor, especially the owner, to win for the developer, maintaining their ownership and control of their projects, and not deluding themselves. And it's a win for the bank who wants to get these deals done and feel safe.

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Nico Johnson  9:31  

Can you explain a traditional performance bond in plain English for those who don't understand it? What what is it guaranteeing into whom? A

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Gage Kellogg  9:37  

performance bond is basically a financial instrument, and the parties are the contractor, who's referred to as the principal, and the owner of the project, which is called the oblagee, and it is a contract surety bond. Just to make it clear, this is not some other type of bond instrument, and so it points to the to the construction contract itself for what it's guaranteeing. And performance aspects of that contract are what that bond points to.

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Nico Johnson  10:04  

If I have a performance bond, have I actually solved the problem of getting project across the finish line if there is some sort of a failure on the project?

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Gage Kellogg  10:14  

Well, with the bond and with that contract comes the contractor's rights. So the first thing in that discovery process, the insurance company is going to do is determine whether or not they believe that their contractor was properly terminated. If they feel the contractor was improperly terminated, the contractor is telling them their side of the story and saying I shouldn't have been fired on this project for these reasons. Then the surety could deny the claim. They could also bring back the same exact contractor that you just fired off that project as a possible way for them to be responsive to that claim and say we're going to finish the job with the guys again on this project. One

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Nico Johnson  10:50  

of the things that I started to recognize in my career is that the more frequency you have of seeing things, the better you get good at picking out the things that are good and the things that are not so good, and that is one of the reasons that people hire a owner's engineer, right? Because you've, as I mentioned before, you've got this breadth of experience across a whole lot of different scenarios. And the reality is that contractors don't go from healthy to broke from Monday to Tuesday. They can if you're not watching. But I'm curious, what are some of the warning signs that you've noticed of contractors that might actually be signaling a pending problem or default?

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Gage Kellogg  11:33  

You know, we know that cash flow drives projects, so and that part of this program is funds control, and so I'm between them and their money, and so that can be an anxiety-inducing place to be. So we want to make sure that they're perfectly clear and comfortable that we're going to expedite funds. And once we get them comfortable with that process, it should be a normal experience. Now, if we're getting something other than that, calls in the middle of the month, we got to make this payment. Everything's a fire drill, and you can pick up on just you know, out on the walk around the site and start to hear about what how's it going out here, you know, and you start to learn stuff that way that you would never learn any other way.

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Nico Johnson  12:08  

Right.

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Gage Kellogg  12:09  

So having boots on the ground, you know, in regular intervals, you know, seeing how things are going and attitudes. What are things that you would see on a

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Nico Johnson  12:18  

site? Like, what are some of the things you'd pick up on a site?

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Gage Kellogg  12:20  

You know, you expect to see 50 people on site, and you see five.

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Nico Johnson  12:23  

Oh, yeah.

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Gage Kellogg  12:24  

You know, why are they not there? Well, you know, this sub's pissed off because he hasn't been paid. He'll show up, you know, next week after his check comes, right, right, or you know, stuff like that, or you know, workmanship that has to be redone. You know, that lots of change order requests that came through that were not approved. They weren't really the owner's fault, and so they have to absorb those types of costs, and so that's really the beauty of the cost accounting exercise that we do. So we see when we when I say we we monitor the procurement and then we monitor the payments. When we start to see that change orders are happening at the subcontractor level, because we send them a lien release, we say, "What's your total contract amount? You know, original change orders to date and any disputed amounts, and so we know what's out there exposure wise. And then we see the line items not changing on the EPC's contractor amount. Where's that money going to come from? So if this line item goes up by $100,000 and there's not an allowance or contingency remaining for it, unfortunately, it's got to come out of their fee. And enough of that starts to come out of their fee; they have nothing left in there. And then, if they're starting to come out of their pocket, well, these are indicators of more and more and more and more and more risk.

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Nico Johnson  13:28  

Yeah,

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Gage Kellogg  13:28  

you know, is this guy just going to walk away? Now, if that contractor did a lump sum contract in milestones, it's more art than science. His job was to cash flow his project, so he lump front end loaded that schedule as much as he could, so he'd be using the owner's money, not his, to finance that project. But that could also mean that he's collected all his fee and margin. And if he goes one day further than this, it's only bad news for him. So he may just be like, "It's better for me at this point time to walk.

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Nico Johnson  13:55  

Yeah,

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Gage Kellogg  13:56  

and so that's a bad position to be in.

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Nico Johnson  13:58  

And are there things that you can do to mitigate that situation ahead of time if you become aware of this sort of pending disaster?

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Gage Kellogg  14:07  

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, sit down, have open dialog about it.

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Nico Johnson  14:10  

Yeah,

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Gage Kellogg  14:11  

that funds control process, making sure the subs are getting paid, talking to the project creditors, those subs make sure they're assured that they're going to get paid, and having that somewhat difficult conversation about, hey, you know, there's only one place left for this to come, and you gave us a guaranteed maximum price or stipulated sum. It's gonna, we're gonna have to reduce the total amount of your fee to cover this cost and disperse a lower amount on that. But it's better to do it ahead of time.

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Nico Johnson  14:35  

So you run into this wall, and the EPC fails halfway through construction, or at what point they are kicked off the job, or they don't show up on the job? What happens in the first 24 hours, the first week? How does the project recover, and how do you ensure that that we don't have demobilization?

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Gage Kellogg  14:54  

Yeah, we need to show up immediately on on site, and we need to have a all hands kind of meeting. And the assurance has to be there that you know you can't demobilize from this project. Your contract is going to be assigned probably to the SPE entity on this project, and that you're going to continue to get paid by partner just like you've been paid by partner through this funds control process at the beginning of this project. The bank's still there, the the developer's still there. You know this this loan's still in place. We're going to manage this thing through completion. Do not demobilize.

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Nico Johnson  15:23  

Who is it that you're telling not to demobilize, though? Because it was the EPC that that failed. They're

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Gage Kellogg  15:27  

subcontractors.

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Nico Johnson  15:28  

The subs.

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Gage Kellogg  15:29  

Yeah.

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Nico Johnson  15:29  

So in general, the EPC has hired someone that's on site as a construction manager, and so like

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Gage Kellogg  15:36  

they are the construction managers. Yeah. Most of them are. So what part is not being demobilized then? So the the ones that are actually doing the trades usually have like a site contractor. You've got a mechanical contract. You've got an electrician out there. You can't let those guys leave.

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Nico Johnson  15:48  

Yeah.

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Gage Kellogg  15:49  

The construction manager role we will take on. Now you have some self performing contractors out there, so we may have to hire another contractor to take that self performance aspect on. We don't self perform work so we we have to hire another contractor to do that part of the project

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Nico Johnson  16:06  

the the CM part yeah

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Gage Kellogg  16:08  

no the turning the wrench part

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Nico Johnson  16:09  

oh the turn yeah we're the

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Gage Kellogg  16:10  

CM but we don't have laborers out in the field to excavate

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Nico Johnson  16:16  

yes

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Gage Kellogg  16:16  

to be electricians do any of that stuff nor are we set up under prevailing wage and apprenticeships type stuff, so you have to really make sure that you get that right, especially in today's environment.

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Nico Johnson  16:25  

What starts compounding once the project stops while everybody's waiting on us?

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Gage Kellogg  16:30  

Yeah, immediately. You know, so you start to have issues with your local HJ, your stormwater permits. You know, controls will wash out, material gets stolen, copper disappears quickly.

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Nico Johnson  16:42  

Oh yeah,

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Gage Kellogg  16:42  

you have materials stored out on the site improperly, you know, and then those suppliers that you're going to call later on to help you out with that problem haven't been paid. They don't want to help you out. You're voiding warranties. There's all those issues of just letting a project sit there that are all bad news, you know. Continuous construction is a is an important aspect of making sure that you don't lose your tax credit. So you know you can't have it go into a long term stop without you know exposing yourself to some risk there. So you want a continuous construction process. That's another aspect to it.

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Nico Johnson  17:18  

I want to distinguish between two failures. They're similar, but but they they sound similar, but they're different. Contractor default and borrower default. What's the difference there?

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Gage Kellogg  17:27  

So the EPC contractor is terminated for cause or goes bankrupt. You still keep the subcontractors on, and you tell them not to demobilize because you're going to be there to continue to pay them until there's no more debt or equity left. Right now, what if you don't pay them? They're gone again. So coming up with a solution like providing a SureBuild insurance policy that would cover cost overruns will make sure that they're going to continue to get paid and finish the job.

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Nico Johnson  17:50  

What is SureBuild?

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Gage Kellogg  17:51  

So SureBuild is a an idea that we came up with at Partner. It is an insurance policy. It's a monoline insurance policy written through our subsidiary called Saint Vincent, and we went to Lloyd's of London, and we syndicated this policy with three insurance insurance companies. Some are the amongst the largest property and casualty insurers in the world, and best rated A plus superior largest size ratings you have, and they underwrite these policies for us. It's their paper, and it's a surplus and liability policy, and we issue it to lenders on projects, and they can call on it in the event of a basically another trigger, which would be borrower default. So, in most cases, it doesn't have to work this way, but in most cases, the EPC is terminated for cause. That risk transfer of the guaranteed maximum price to them is gone, and then the borrower has a major cost overrun that they can't or won't meet, and it could be on a whole portfolio project. All one waterfall, all. So at that point, the lender will say, "You got to come up with more equity or try to work it out. If they can't work it out, then they put the borrower in default of the loan, and then they have the right to make a claim on the sure bill policy, so that we can continue to pay the subs and get the job done because that's the goal, which is to come up with a way for the bank to know one way or another, whether it's contractor or borrower default, that their construction collateral is going to be converted into a commercial liquid asset and get off their books.

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Nico Johnson  19:14  

So, what SureBuild is solving that the completion commitment doesn't is the issue of cost overruns,

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Gage Kellogg  19:22  

correct?

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Nico Johnson  19:22  

Okay, specifically, I see, fascinating. So let's make this like super concrete. I've got a $10 million project. I've spent 7 million on it. I'm only 50% complete on that project. The revised budget says it'll now take 14 million to finish. The sure build policy covers the delta. Is that 4 million?

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Gage Kellogg  19:42  

So if it's a $10 million project,

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Nico Johnson  19:44  

7 million has been spent.

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Gage Kellogg  19:45  

It's been spent.

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Nico Johnson  19:47  

Yeah.

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Gage Kellogg  19:47  

You still have 3 million coming from probably debt because equities usually the first to be disbursed. So the debt's got to be completely deployed.

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Nico Johnson  19:54  

Yeah.

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Gage Kellogg  19:55  

Now we're at 10 million, and and it's going to take four more to complete it.

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Nico Johnson  19:59  

Yeah.

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Gage Kellogg  20:00  

And the borrower can't or won't put up that 4 million or work out something where there's a different debt and equity ratio. At that point, the bank's got no choice but to put them in default alone. They've got to do something with this thing. As soon as that happens, they're eligible to make a claim on the insurance policy. So at that point, SureBuild would pay that extra $4 million. Actually, there is a 10% copay on behalf of the lender, so we would pay 90 cents. They pay 10 cents of every dollar of cost, and so it would be each payment application that would come in after the 10 million would come in. We do our standard process the way partners been managing the project and dispersing funds, and the sources would now be 90% sure bill 10% debt from the debt provider,

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Nico Johnson  20:42  

and is the lender looking for repayment immediately on the loan, a completed commercial asset? Like, what are you navigating in terms of like responsibilities on on project completion?

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Gage Kellogg  20:56  

You know, so if it's a commercial construction building, it's like certificate of occupancy where this thing has commercial value, if it's a if it's a solar project, it's permission to operate. Yeah, at that point, it can be sold off.

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Nico Johnson  21:06  

Right

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Gage Kellogg  21:07  

now, the bank's not supposed to be making money by foreclosing on projects, so they get themselves paid back and they're done. If everybody gets paid back and there's an additional funding that's remaining, then the insurance company will get reimbursed for some of their costs. If there would be more money after that, then it would be, I think, paid back to the developer. But the chances of that are pretty remote.

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Nico Johnson  21:30  

Bring us back to the original question. Then, how does solving the completion risk problem in advance make an otherwise good project more bankable?

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Gage Kellogg  21:38  

So right now, we're seeing volatility in the marketplace with EPC failures and developer failures, ERP failures, and so the banks are forced to ask themselves a question and to present to their boards like we're lending into this renewable energy space. Sure, are we just going to continue to do the same thing and hope for the best, or do we have a plan, a better plan to to address this? So we think that we're a better plan and answer that question.

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Nico Johnson  22:04  

So there's a general question: the market is, it's kind of like, is this another Pine Gate, right? Like one of those where few, if any, lenders saw that coming, right? Like, and that being the bankruptcy of a major market player, where numerous assets had already been approved, deemed bankable, and under construction, in process of construction at the time of bankruptcy. What happens in a scenario like that without a completion commitment or or some sort of sure build type product?

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Gage Kellogg  22:39  

Because in the receivership, they try to sell off assets. A lot of these things are sitting there, and in that condition I described, which is you know not a good scenario. Yeah, available for

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Nico Johnson  22:50  

theft,

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Gage Kellogg  22:51  

and the you know that, and then just the the change of time. You know how how things are changing over time. The time is the biggest risk on these projects, as you know. Policy changes and everything changes. So if this project can't be safe harbored and stay with what it had originally planned, the numbers are definitely not going to be the same.

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Nico Johnson  23:09  

Yeah.

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Gage Kellogg  23:10  

So keeping that going, and then it's it's quite a large portfolio of projects and participants that are in that. So there was a lot of scenarios that played out there, you know. I think that a lot of them involved. Well, projects that weren't complete are still pretty much not complete. It's going to be a while to figure all that stuff out. And I'm not. I'm just speaking in generalities, not about anything specific. One

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Nico Johnson  23:35  

of the arguments you're making from perspective of being the managing director of the renewables practice partner is technical diligence, the the kind of work that non-engine engineer does. Construction oversight and completion protection work better in one ecosystem. Why is that the Why is that the prevailing?

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Gage Kellogg  23:54  

I mean, too many cooks in the kitchen, all these different people participating on projects. We have it all under one umbrella. So, and we've worked out this process so that it's an efficient, well-oiled machine with all the right experts in the right places that are ready for these triggering events and and have a process in place. So we're not trying to figure it out as we go. We've gone through this many times. Many people on my team and across our much larger construction services practice are industry experts in the surety and in construction and in specifically takeover and completion work. So none of this is new to to our team.

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Nico Johnson  24:31  

If I'm a developer or chief investment officer with projects approaching financing right now, what questions should I be asking my EPC or my lender before before they have to tell me that I've got a completion risk problem.

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Gage Kellogg  24:44  

Well, certain banks will have you know policies in place. They want to see a surety bond, so that manages construction risk. They're just going to require it. That's why we came up with this program because 90% and that's an estimate. I'm not 100% sure on that. Number of the requirements for surety bonds on distributed generation type projects comes from the lender. Yeah. So surety bonds themselves were created under the Miller Act in the 20s to protect public project dollars. They were the only tools available to lenders. They just didn't have another tool. You know, outside of the U.S. they don't use surety bonds. They use like a letter of credit, and they get like a 30% letter of credit to cover construction risk, so we thought we could come up with a better, more proactive, and ultimately lower cost because it's lower risk because of the proactive nature of it and because of the secondary default trigger of a borrower that we could come up with something that's priced right for the amount of times it actually happens and actually solves the direct problem that the contractor is having. I mean, the lenders having, and eliminate some of the situations where it wouldn't be a bondable situation. So in most cases, good surety bond underwriting practices prohibit you from writing bonds to related parties. You can't have the surety and the the principal and the obligy be related party. So vertically integrated contractors and developers in this industry should not have been able to get bonds and should not get bonds. But we don't have that problem because we're not sitting in that position. Our guarantee is going to the lender. So you can be a vertically integrated contractor and developer, and have us step in with a completion commitment and sure build policy because it all goes to the lender. I'm not standing in between two related parties.

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Nico Johnson  26:21  

Interesting.

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Gage Kellogg  26:21  

So that's a good solution for projects in this space where there's a lot of those types of companies.

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Nico Johnson  26:27  

Well, that's a wrap on this Tactical Tuesday with Gage Kellogg of Partner Engineering and Science. You know, the thing I keep coming back to is the reality that contractors don't go from healthy to broke overnight. The signs are there if you're paying close attention. Payments start turning into fire drills. You expect 50 people on site, and you only see five. Change orders start eating into the fee, and once a project stalls, the damage only compounds and fast. Permits, stormwater, stolen copper, voided warranties, even your tax credits if construction stops being a continuous activity are all on the line. The time to solve completion risk is before you close your financing, not the week that your subs stop showing up on the site. As I said, this is one thread of a much longer conversation that Gage and I had. I'm going to be publishing that episode all about Gage's path through project development, finance, surety, and engineering, and what he's learned from sitting on every side of these deals. That full interview is coming soon, so make sure that you're subscribed so you won't miss it. I'm Nico Johnson. This has been Tactical Tuesday. Remember, you are what you listen to. Thanks again for showing up, Solar Warrior, it's half the battle.

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Nico Johnson

Entrepreneur & Podcaster

In my 20 year career, I've worked with dozens of entrepreneurs, intrapreneurs and professionals in transition to clarify their mission, set or stretch their goals, and work through the barriers to their growth.

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