About Willdan Group

Willdan Group, Inc. (Willdan) is a provider of professional, technical and consulting services to utilities, private industry, and public agencies at all levels of government. As resource and infrastructure needs undergo continuous change, the company helps organizations and their communities evolve and thrive by providing a wide range of technical services for energy solutions, greenhouse gas reduction, and government infrastructure. Through engineering, program management, policy advisory, and software and data management, the company plans, designs and delivers trusted, comprehensive, innovative, and proven solutions to improve efficiency, resiliency, and sustainability in energy and infrastructure to its clients. The company’s overall growth strategy revolves around a combination of strong organic expansion and strategic acquisitions, which provides it the ability to expand the breadth and depth of the services it provides to new and existing clients. The company operates its business through a nationwide network of offices spread across 22 states, the District of Columbia, and the Canadian province of Alberta. The company serves a majority of the largest investor-owned electric utilities and over half of the largest municipal utilities in the United States (U.S.). The company’s business with public and private utilities has concentrations in California and New York, but includes numerous other utilities in the Midwest, Southeast and Mountain states and additional acquisitions may continue to expand its geographic footprint. The company’s business with public agencies is concentrated in California, New York, and Arizona. The company also serves special districts, school districts, and a large range of public agencies and private industry throughout the U.S. Markets The company operates in the energy services market and the engineering and consulting market. The company provides a wide variety of services related to energy planning and analysis, energy efficiency and sustainability, engineering, construction management, and economic and financial consulting services primarily to public agencies, utilities, and commercial/industrial firms. For example, the company serves as municipal engineers and building and safety departments for local governments. The company also designs and provides construction oversight of various infrastructure projects for state and local governments to address environmental goals and mandates, population shifts, changes in local and state funding and aging infrastructure. The company also provides consulting services to public agencies as they raise the necessary funds to develop such infrastructure projects and provides other services. Relatedly, the company provides local government staffing, traffic and transportation engineering, studies, plan reviews, grant support, and inspections. The company is a professional services firm focused on transformational growth and value creation for its clients, employees and shareholders. The company seeks to establish long-term close working relationships with its clients and expand the breadth and depth of the services it provides to them over time. The market for these services is, and will be, driven by a number of factors, including demand for services and solutions that provide energy efficiency, greenhouse gas reduction, sustainability, electrification, water conservation, infrastructure development and renewable energy in the public and private sectors; changes in technology that affect the generation, distribution and consumption of energy; ongoing efforts to upgrade aging energy infrastructure to meet power, transmission, and environmental goals and requirements; the increasing challenge to balance energy demand from electrification and trends toward electric vehicles with the changing sources of energy from wind, solar, and distributed energy resources; the need for small and medium sized communities to obtain highly specialized services without incurring the costs of hiring permanent staffing and the associated support structure; financial assistance from utilities, government-funded programs and state legislation for local communities to provide services to constituents; and changes in government policy. Services The company offers services in two financial reporting segments, Energy and Engineering and Consulting. Energy Services Energy segment provides specialized, innovative, comprehensive energy solutions to businesses, utilities, state agencies, municipalities, and non-profit organizations. The company’s experienced engineers, consultants, and staff help its clients realize cost and energy savings by tailoring solutions to assist in optimizing energy spend. The company’s energy services include comprehensive audit and surveys, program design, master planning, demand reduction, grid optimization, benchmarking analyses, design engineering, construction management, performance contracting, installation, alternative financing, measurement and verification services, and advances in software and data analytics for long term planning. The company’s energy services include the following: Energy Efficiency: The company provides complete energy efficiency consulting and engineering services, including program design, management and administration; marketing, customer outreach and project origination; energy audits and feasibility analyses; implementation; training; management; retro-commissioning; data management and reporting; measurement and verification services; and construction management. Program Design and Implementation: The company assists utilities and governmental clients with the design, development and implementation of energy efficiency plans and programs. These plans include the design, outreach, and implementation of strategies to reduce peak energy demand and greenhouse gas emissions through energy efficiency, water conservation, and renewable energy planning. Direct Customer Support: The company assists clients (including hospitals, hotels, government offices, schools, and private industry) in developing and managing facilities and related infrastructures through a holistic, practical approach to facility management. The company’s services cover audits, local compliance, operations and maintenance review, renewable energy planning, master plan development, infrastructure analyses, Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification for buildings, and strategies for energy spend and greenhouse gas reduction. Turnkey Facility and Infrastructure Projects: The company provides turnkey/design-build facility and infrastructure improvement projects to a wide array of private and public clients, including municipalities, county governments, public and private K-12 schools, and higher education institutions. The company’s services cover preliminary planning, project design, construction management, commissioning, post-project support and measurement and verification. Project Examples: The following are examples of typical projects in the Energy segment: Consolidated Edison, New York: The company serves as Consolidated Edison’s program manager and implementer for its Small Business Direct Install (SMB) program across the utility’s New York City and Westchester County service areas. The SMB program, Consolidated Edison’s largest energy efficiency program, helps customers save energy, lower their bills, and protect the environment by providing financial incentives to identify and install certain energy efficiency measures. To support this effort, the company provides full-service program implementation, including outreach and direct sales to potential commercial customers, on-site energy efficiency assessments, direct implementation of energy-savings measures, and subcontractor and trade-ally management. Dormitory Authority-State New York (DASNY), New York: In connection with its acquisition of substantially all of the assets of Genesys Engineering, P.C. (Genesys) in March 2016, the company entered into an administrative services agreement with Genesys pursuant to which it, through its subsidiary Willdan Energy Solutions (WES), provide Genesys with ongoing administrative, operational and other non-professional support services in its performance of rehabilitation, construction management, architectural, and engineering services at various college and university sites within New York State. Services for DASNY under these contracts also include energy efficient design, utility cost evaluation, and various regulatory compliance services. Specific project descriptions are set out by DASNY in work authorizations, which are issued under the terms of the master contracts. Marshak Science Building Rehabilitation, The City University of New York: Performed under the DASNY master contract, the Marshak Science Building is a mid-rise, 750,000 square-foot science building, which consists of a 350,000 square-foot, 13-story tower and a 300,000 square-foot plaza level and underground. The science building houses research and teaching labs, a vivarium, a morgue, office areas, a library, an auditorium, a gymnasium and a pool. The company is responsible for the study, design, and construction management that included the retrofit of 200 standard-flow fume hoods to low-flow, high-efficiency hoods and the installation of high-entrainment fume hood exhaust systems, new lab make-up air units with heat recovery, liquid desiccant dehumidification systems, new supply air risers and general exhaust risers throughout the tower, new hot water and chilled water risers, new central station air handling equipment, new high-temperature hot water to low-temperature hot water heat exchangers, and a lab fit-out with chilled beam secondary heating and cooling. San Diego Gas and Electric (SDG&E), California: The company provides peak-load reduction and energy capacity to SDG&E by coordinating the installation of proven energy efficiency measures, including chiller retrofits, chiller variable-frequency drives (VFDs), HVAC VFDs, evaporative cooling, demand control ventilation, two-way valves, and chilled water pump VFDs. These measures produce both peak-load reductions and energy savings. Baldwin High School, Kansas: The company provided a central plant HVAC replacement and building wide HVAC controls installation. The company installed a new chilled water and boiler plant and refurbished two large air handling units. The company also installed new heating hot water control valves on all variable air volume boxes and new HVAC controls to ensure the achievement of specified energy cost savings for the school. Entergy Corporation, Louisiana: The company supported Entergy’s investments in grid data and analytics capabilities across its electric distribution footprint through a software license for LoadSEER. LoadSEER was developed to provide unique insights and modeling capability for distributed energy resources and the evolving distribution grid. The application is used in short- and long-term circuit-level planning and to proactively integrate renewables, energy storage, and efficiency investments. LoadSEER combines multi-layer risk, geospatial, and scenario modeling; utilities’ existing tools; engineering efforts; and multiple data sources in order to deliver dynamic, granular load profiles and perform valuation analyses. Commercial Energy Efficiency Programs: Southern California Edison has contracted with the company to develop, implement, and offer these programs to SCE customers. The company is the implementer of the Commercial Program, which is targeted to help SCE customers lower their energy bills and reduce demand and energy usage by providing technical services, connection to financing, and financial incentives to identify and install energy efficiency measures. To support this effort, the company provides full-service program implementation, including customer outreach, performing energy audits, and facilitating installation and verifying savings of approved energy efficiency measures. City of New York – LL97 Implementation Action Plan: The company developed a plan for New York City that identifies the most feasible route to achieving the City’s deep decarbonization, energy efficiency, and clean and renewable electricity goals. Each City agency has actionable targets and an initial pathway to meeting them under the plan. The effort included the virtual survey of more than 4,000 publicly owned facilities in the city, detailed building energy modeling of prototypical city facilities, and transformation of these analyses into a comprehensive plan for the implementation of new renewable electricity sources, a heat electrification initiative, improved building energy efficiency and changes in wastewater, transportation, and other processes to meet the established goals. Engineering and Consulting Services The company’s Engineering and Consulting segment provides civil engineering-related construction management, building and safety, city engineering office management, city planning, civil design, geotechnical, material testing and other engineering consulting services to its clients. The company’s engineering services include traffic, bridges, rail, port, water, mining and other civil engineering projects. The company also provides economic and financial consulting to public agencies. Lastly, the company supplements the engineering services that it offers its clients by offering expertise and support for the various financing techniques public agencies utilize to finance their operations and infrastructure. The company also supports the mandated reporting and other requirements associated with these financings. The company provides financial advisory services for municipal securities but do not provide underwriting services. The company’s Engineering and Consulting services include the following: Building and Safety: The company’s building and safety services range from managing and staffing an entire municipal building department to providing specific outsourced services, such as plan review and field inspections for code compliance. Other related services under this umbrella include performing accessibility compliance and providing disaster recovery teams, energy compliance evaluations, permit processing and issuance, seismic retrofitting programs, and structural plan review. Many of the company’s building and safety services contracts are with municipalities and counties where it supplements the capacity of in-house staff. City Engineering and Code Enforcement: The company provides municipalities with city engineering services related to the public works department needs and assist with the development, implementation and enforcement of building and development codes. These services are tailored to the unique needs of each municipality, ranging from staffing an entire engineering department to carrying out specific projects within a municipality. Development Review: The company offers development plan review and inspection services, including Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) compliance, preliminary and final plats (maps), grading and drainage, complete infrastructure improvements for residential site plans, commercial site plans, industrial development and subdivision, and major master plan development services. The company has reviewed grading plans, street lighting and traffic signal plans, erosion control plans, storm drain plans, street improvement plans, and sewer water and utility plans. Disaster Recovery: The company provides disaster recovery services to cities, counties and local government. The company’s experience in disaster recovery includes assisting communities in the disaster recovery process following earthquakes, firestorms, mudslides and other natural disasters. The company typically organizes and staffs several local disaster recovery centers which function as one-stop permit centers that guarantee turn-around performance for fast-track plan checking and inspection services. Additionally, the company has performed street and storm drain clean-up, replacement or repair of damaged storm drains, streets, and bridges, debris management and preparation and implementation of a near-term erosion and sediment control program. Geotechnical: The company’s geotechnical and earthquake engineering services include soil engineering, earthquake and seismic hazard studies, geology and hydrogeology engineering, and construction inspection. The company operates a licensed, full-service geotechnical laboratory at its headquarters in Anaheim, California, which offers an array of testing services, including construction materials testing and inspection. Planning and Surveying: The company assists communities with a full range of planning services, from the preparation of long-range policy plans to assistance with the day-to-day operations of a planning department. For several cities, the company provides contract staff support, which ranges from staffing entire departments to providing interim or long-term services to entities that have determined that it is not cost-effective to have a full-time engineer on staff, to relieve peak workload situations or to fill vacant positions during a job search. Typical assignments include land use studies, development of specific plans or general plan elements, design guidelines, and zoning ordinances. The company also provides surveying and mapping services, including major construction layout, design survey, topographic survey, aerial mapping, Geographic Information Systems, and right-of-way engineering. Program and Construction Management: The company provides comprehensive program and construction management services to its public sector clients. These services include construction administration, inspection, observation, labor compliance, and community relations, depending on the client’s needs and the scope of the specific project. The company’s construction management experience encompasses projects, such as streets, bridges, sewers and storm drains, water systems, parks, pools, public buildings, and utilities. Structures: The company’s structural engineering services include bridge design, bridge evaluation and inspection, highway and railroad bridge planning and design, highway interchange design, railroad grade separation design, bridge seismic retrofitting, building design and retrofit, sound wall and retaining wall design, and planning and design for bridge rehabilitation and replacement. Transportation and Traffic: The company provides a wide range of services relating to transportation, traffic and other infrastructure projects. For example, its transportation engineering services cover a full spectrum of support functions, including right of way, utility relocation, landscape, survey and mapping, geographic information systems, public outreach, and interagency coordination. The company’s traffic engineering services include serving as the contract city traffic engineer in communities, as well as performing design and traffic planning projects for its clients. Water Resources: The company assists clients in addressing the many facets of water development, treatment, distribution and conservation, including energy savings, technical, financial, legal, political, and regulatory requirements. The company’s core competencies include hydraulic modeling, master planning, rate studies and design and construction services. The company’s design experience includes reservoirs, pressure reducing stations, pump and lift stations, and pipeline alignment studies, as well as water/wastewater collection, distribution, and treatment facilities. The company also provides a complete analysis and projection of storm flows for use in drainage master plans and for individual storm drain systems to reduce flooding in streets and adjacent properties. The company designs open and closed storm drain systems and detention basin facilities, for cities, counties and the Army Corp of Engineers. District Administration: The company administers special districts on behalf of public agencies. The types of special districts administered include community facilities districts (in California, Mello-Roos districts), assessment districts, landscape and lighting districts, school facilities improvement districts, benefit assessment districts, fire suppression districts, and business improvement districts. The company’s district administration services include calculating the annual levy for each parcel in the district; billing charges directly or through a county tax roll; preparing the annual Engineer’s Report, budget and resolutions; reporting on collections and payment status; calculating prepayment quotes; and providing financial analyses, modeling and budget forecasting. Financial Consulting: The company performs economic analyses and financial projects for public agencies, including fee and rate studies; utility rate analysis; utility system appraisals and asset acquisitions; economic development and redevelopment planning; Community Choice Aggregation feasibility studies, in which local entities contemplate aggregating buying power in order to secure alternative energy supply contracts; real estate and market analysis associated with planning efforts, and development fee studies; special district formation and other special projects. Federal Compliance: The company offers several services that support bonded debt compliance reporting for cities, counties, states, school districts, water districts, housing authorities, 501(c)(3) and other municipal entities. The company provides federal compliance services to approximately 760 issuers in 43 states and the District of Columbia managing approximately $68 billion in municipal debt. The following are examples of typical projects the company has performed in the Engineering and Consulting segment: City of Elk Grove, California, City Engineering, Capital Improvement, and Infrastructure Services: The company provided comprehensive technical support to the Public Works and Development Services Departments for the over 170,000-resident community of Elk Grove, California. The company’s services have included public counter service, drainage/stormwater/NPDES, traffic engineering, permitting, land development review and inspection, CIP design and construction support. Serving the two City departments was a team of full-time engineers, scientists, managers, observers/inspectors, project managers, administrative support staff, and a team of subconsultants. All work was accomplished through a task order process that defined the scope of work, time of performance, and cost of services. City of Palm Springs, California, Engineering and Construction Management Services: The company provided construction management and public works inspection services related to the City’s Police Department Remodel Project. The project involved the remodeling of the training center, lobby, records area, detective bureau, and men’s and women’s locker rooms. The company acted as Owner’s Representative and Construction Manager responsible for coordinating all aspects of the construction, including coordination with the City’s Building Inspection Staff. Contra Costa County, California, City Engineering Services: The company provided finance review, financial analysis, and contract administration services for the Contra Costa County Public Works Department. Willdan provided municipal services in a variety of professional and technical administrative and finance measures. County of Los Angeles, California, Traffic Engineering Services: The company provides professional traffic engineering services for the Lower Azusa Road/Los Angeles Street Traffic Signal Synchronization Project. The services include meetings and project coordination with Los Angeles County and various municipalities, as well as field review, equipment inventory, reporting for recommended improvements, traffic signal base plans, traffic signal improvement plans and traffic signal utility plans for 29 signalized intersections along the Lower Azusa/Los Angeles Street corridor. County of Orange, California, Code Enforcement Services: The company’s code enforcement team is responsible for responding to citizen concerns and investigations of a variety of code violations throughout the unincorporated areas of Orange County in support of its Neighborhood Preservation Program, including the reviewing, processing, and closing of code enforcement cases related to land use, zoning, building, grading, nuisance, and property maintenance violations. The company’s staff performs review of all case files, inspection of properties, filing notices and complaints against violators, documenting, and preparing violation cases for the district attorney’s office and/or County counsel and testifying in court. The company assists in the entitlement/development process consisting of general land use, zoning and building violations. State of Nevada, Building and Safety Services: The company provided building safety/plan check services for the state of Nevada Public Works Department since 2007. Projects for the state of Nevada included several for the University of Nevada, Las Vegas and Reno campuses. The projects consisted of installation of photo voltaic and parking lot lighting upgrades, a new baseball clubhouse, and the complete structural upgrade and remodel of several historic buildings at the Reno campus. Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE): PACE is a financing mechanism that enables low-cost, long-term funding for energy efficiency, renewable energy and water conservation projects. PACE financing is repaid as an assessment on the property owner’s regular tax bill, and is processed the same way as other local public benefit assessments that have been utilized for decades. Depending on local legislation, PACE can be used to pay for new heating and cooling systems, solar panels, insulation and more for commercial, nonprofit and residential properties. This allows property owners to implement improvements without a large up-front cash payment. The company has partnered with Ygrene Energy Fund to provide a national PACE program. Clients The company’s clients primarily consist of investor and municipal owned energy utilities, public and governmental agencies including cities, counties, redevelopment agencies, water districts, school districts and universities, state agencies, federal agencies and a variety of other special districts and agencies. The company also provides services to private industry, hospitals, hotels, and a wide variety of other commercial enterprises. The company is organized to profitably manage numerous small and large contracts at the same time. The majority of the company’s contracts typically range from $1,000 to $10,000,000 in contract revenue; however, several of its construction management service contracts exceed $20,000,000 and range up to $90,000,000 in construction value. In addition, many of its multi-year utility program management contracts exceed $10,000,000 and, two of its largest contracts provide contract limits in excess of $100,000,000 in revenue over a period of five years for the management of utility incentive programs for the implementation of energy efficiency measures. The company’s contracts typically have a duration of between two and thirty-six months, although it has city services contracts that have been renewed or re-awarded and in effect for over 30 years. Most of the company’s contracts include a provision allowing for termination for convenience after reimbursement of any unbilled effort under the contract. As of December 30, 2022, the company had approximately 2,200 open projects. During fiscal year 2022, the company had one customer that accounted for more than 10% of its consolidated contract revenues. For fiscal year 2022, the LADWP accounted for 12.0% of the company’s consolidated contract revenue. For fiscal year 2022, the company’s top 10 customers accounted for 54.6% of its consolidated contract revenues. The company’s largest clients are based in New York and California. In fiscal year 2022, services provided to clients in California accounted for 41.7% of the company’s consolidated contract revenue and services provided to clients in New York accounted for 22.8% of its consolidated contract revenue. The company collaborates with the LADWP through the Commercial Direct Install Program, which is a small business lighting energy efficiency program that serves all commercial customers in LADWP territory with demand up to 250kW. On average, this program typically implements approximately 8,000 energy efficiency projects a year and has implemented over 100,000 projects since program inception in 2008. Over that time, the company has saved the LADWP and its customers over half a million MWh per year and almost one hundred MW of peak demand and also provided lead generation identifying roughly 10,000 water efficiency upgrades. The company also collaborates with Duke Energy - Progress to manage the small business direct install program in North Carolina and South Carolina. Since its launch in 2013, the program has grown to encompass all eligible Duke Energy customers in North Carolina, South Carolina, Indiana, and Kentucky. The Small Business Energy Saver Program offers eligible commercial customers the opportunity to retrofit a comprehensive list of existing inefficient equipment with more energy-efficient measures. The program provides integrated turn-key services, including program marketing, energy assessments, installation by local contractors, up to 80 percent incentives to offset the cost of projects, and education to encourage the replacement of existing equipment with improvements in lighting, refrigeration, and HVAC. The company continues to implement programs across these four states and have completed over 28,000 projects for Duke Energy resulting in over 840,000 MWh in savings to small businesses. In January 2017, the company announced a new three-year contract with Consolidated Edison to implement Consolidated Edison’s Small and Medium Business Direct Install (SMB) program across the utility's New York City and Westchester County service area. In connection with the company’s acquisition of substantially all of the assets of Genesys in March 2016, it entered into an administrative services agreement with Genesys pursuant to which its subsidiary, WES, provides Genesys with ongoing administrative, operational and other non-professional support services. Under such administrative services agreement, WES provides administrative services for a series of Genesys’s DASNY and other contracts. WES provides administrative services to Genesys in its performance of rehabilitation and construction work and architectural and engineering services at various sites within New York State. Services for DASNY under these contracts also include energy efficient design, utility cost evaluation and review, and various regulatory compliance services. Specific project descriptions are set out by DASNY in work authorizations, which are issued under the terms of the contracts. The termination dates of the DASNY contracts vary; the latest of which is November 2026. Work authorized but not yet completed under this contract continues to be bound by the terms of the agreement beyond the termination date until completion of the projects. Genesys expects to continue to receive amendments from DASNY to the master contract extending the termination date under DASNY’s option to extend this contract term twice, one year at a time. DASNY may at any time terminate any of the contracts or suspend all projects, for its convenience and without cause. DASNY is a customer of Genesys. Intellectual Property The Willdan, Willdan Group, Inc., Willdan Engineering, Willdan Energy Company, Willdan Financial Services, and Willdan Energy Solutions names are service marks of the company’s, and it has obtained a service mark for the Willdan and W logo. The company has also obtained federal service mark registration with the United States Patent and Trademark Office for the Willdan name and Willdan Group, Inc. name. The name and logo of the company’s proprietary software, MuniMagic+SM, its California energy efficiency CEDA, as well as its proprietary platform as a service VIEWPOINT are also registered marks, and it has registered a federal copyright for the source code for the MuniMagic+ software. In connection with its acquisitions, the company has obtained the trademark for its LoadSEER software, has obtained the patent for Optimization of Microgrid Energy Use and Distribution, have obtained the service marks for the Enerpath, Enerworks and Lime/Green Dial Design, and have obtained the registered copyright of Lime, Lime Energy, and Main Street Efficiency, NEO, Net Energy Optimizer, Collaboration Analysis Research, and several Weidt Group designs. History Willdan Group, Inc. was founded in 1964. The company was incorporated in 2006.