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A common misconception about third-party outsourcing is that in-house teams can’t impact delivery times. The theory goes that you are completely removed from the process and the Design consultants you hired to do everything. In reality, though, you have a lot of control over delivery times. If you choose to set-and-forget, perhaps not. But if you’re willing to be involved, you can speed things up considerably.

Here are three ways to speed up the process while ensuring quality.

Getting full plan sets doesn’t need to mean tons of in-house work. If you are willing to work with trusted third parties, you can collect survey data and seamlessly get quality plan sets developed in under 48 hours. If you are thinking of scaling up your solar team without any additional overhead or fixed costs, here’s how the process looks.

While outsourcing can be efficient, it’s essential to not just find the right partner but also build the right working relationship. Engaging with third-party designers requires some nuance–a few things to focus on and a few to avoid.

Outsourcing is a new growth lever in solar. In 2023, over two-thirds (67.1%) of Designers report outsourcing at least ten percent of project volume, and 13.4% report they always outsource something. This is a complete flip from just two years ago—in 2021, the majority of solar contractors (63.3%) did not outsource any tasks. What’s driving the change?

Design is the part of the solar process where it’s easiest to get behind or backlogged. A lot of contractors choose to outsource some or all of their design work to third parties. Unfortunately, that opens its own problems—namely, how to choose a vendor to work with. In this article, we’re sharing our rubric and the steps to follow when it comes to selecting the right design partner.