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4 min read

Our Story and How We Can Help Accelerate Yours

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Sit down and take a deep breath. This isn’t a twelve-step meeting, don’t worry. But recovery is part of our story. Recovery from what, you’re wondering?

See, we’ve always believed in helping the planet: solar energy, wind power, fossil fuel reductions, that kind of thing. But we didn’t always go about it the best way, and if you’ve read our various screeds about environmental consulting, you’ll get a little hint of our story.

Realizing a better way to help Mother Earth was a gamechanger for the Transect team. It’s why to date, our company has been able to save clients more than a quarter-million hours and over 7 million dollars on environmental due diligence.

Not that, like, we’d ever brag about it.

Oh, did we mention the part about evaluating about 15.5 million acres so far? All are using cutting-edge, up-to-the-minute environmental reporting tools unlike anything else on the market? We didn’t? Well, we’re humble like that.

Before we pull the Modesty Train into Humility Station, let’s take a step back. Who is Transect, really? What do we do and why? Just what’s the story, and how can we help you accelerate yours?

Buckle up because we’re going to tell ya.

Why Are We Here?

The world is a complicated place, and we have questions. Why do some people prefer vanilla when chocolate is clearly superior? How do you fold a fitted sheet? Why does a perfect game of Madden require only a 77.5 percent completion rate??

Perhaps nowhere is it more complicated than when it comes to environmental permitting, however. From changing clean water regulations to stream protection rules and migratory bird permits, there’s no end to the ecological and other considerations for development sites. These include:

  • Wetlands and waterways
  • Geological formations and features
  • Utility access and power lines
  • Tribal and cultural regulations
  • Risks to wildlife
  • And so much more…

And because any of those considerations can derail a project if you don’t account for it properly, any land developer has to put in a lot of time ensuring all boxes are checked. (Okay, they don’t have to – more on that later – but that’s how it’s been done up till now.)

That means talking to environmental consultants, spooky specters who control your permitting due diligence workflow but somehow don’t answer to you. They make no promises, and they respect no timeline. Rather than moving forward on green energy projects, you end up twiddling your thumbs and waiting to hear whether you can develop a promising piece of land. Oh, and paying out the nose for the privilege.

It’s exhausting, frankly. It eats up your resources, steals your energy, and leaves way too little time for a proper amount of Netflix binging. (Or conversely, you get too depressed to do anything else.)

We’re a little sheepish to admit that we are recovering environmental consultants ourselves. (Told you there was recovery in this story.) Realizing that glacial permitting times meant too few projects were actually being completed and producing clean energy gave us a major wake-up call.

And Transect was formed.

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Who Is Transect?

Like we said, our team is comprised of recovering environmental consultants, development experts, and software nerds. Our CEO Robin Laine, formerly a field biologist from Austin, has spent a gazillion hours – nay, years – exploring proposed development sites. During that time, she became adept at identifying environmental risks and determining the site viability.

And slowly, she realized that the "desktop" environmental research and report, conducted as a routine part of her clients' due diligence, was inefficient, and the process was broken. The static text report deliverable was antiquated, inflexible, repetitive, time-consuming, and clunky – for the client and the consultant alike. It took too long and required too much waiting for both parties. The business model of “charge by the hour and drag your feet to inflate the bill” simply does not scale - and it is just plain wrong.

Sure, we like to believe that we weren’t as bad as some consultants back then. Even those who don’t overcharge and underdeliver were stuck in an old, broken system. It simply took too long to create those bank-ready reports that developers need to get loans, break ground, and move their project timelines forward.

Uh … no, thanks.

We came up with a better way.

 

Get the eBook that exposes the broken system

 

The New Environmental Desktop Report

Robin’s realization was simple: if you compile information in a one-time report without adjusting it over time, it quickly becomes outdated. That means you have to spend more time waiting in line for environmental consultants and twiddling your thumbs while praying the data come back in your favor.

What if you could instead:

  • Generate a thorough report on multiple sites in a short amount of time?
  • Change buffer zones, reduce parameters and play with different “what if” scenarios to optimize a potential site?
  • Learn about every parcel feature without getting in line to speak with a consultant?
  • Collaborate with your entire team on a single platform and share only the information you choose.
  • Do it all from the comfort of your own office or home, shirt, and shoes totally optional?

… to which we obviously said, “Yes, please!” And not just because we like to control our own clothing destiny.

Imagine a full suite of environmental reporting tools at your fingertips, available with a few keystrokes. Thus was Transect born (after three years of labor and R&D).

Today we’re on a mission to make due diligence easy. From just a few employees in 2017, we’ve grown to over 30 and counting, available in all 50 states and serving five different industries.

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Whom Do We Serve?

We know you have environmental concerns and site selection considerations as unique as you are. Every industry is working with different rules and goals, which Transect respects. That’s why we’ve put our hands-on field experience to work crafting software that works for a wide range of industries, including:

  • Solar
  • Wind
  • Storage
  • Oil & Gas (Midstream)
  • Infrastructure
  • Utilities
  • Real Estate
  • Engineering

Our out-of-the-box solutions are both ready to go and tailored to you so that you can get started immediately – but with the confidence that you’ll find what you need. We offer:

  • A variety of reports to help you meet environmental due diligence goals and streamline the permitting process
  • Siting and sharing tools that allow you to collaborate with people all around the world instantly
  • Bank-ready reports you can generate in minutes
  • A user-friendly dashboard that combines all your tools and reports in one place, which you can access again and again, forever
  • Transect Academy to keep your team trained, certified, and up to date on new features.

Just like that, you can stop the endless waiting and inflated charges. You can start and finish more projects every year. Most importantly, you can watch the right amount of Netflix at the end of the day.

Change Your Story Today

Look, we know change is hard. We’re in recovery ourselves, remember? But that doesn’t mean it’s unfeasible. It is possible to step out of line, save money, get projects off the ground faster and increase the world’s green wattage quickly. Really, it is. Trust us when we say we’ve built an entire business on it.

That’s our story, and we’re sticking to it. So are you ready to change your story?

We’re ready to help. If you’re in it to win it – assuming by “in it” we mean project success and by “win it” we mean saving Earth – then we’ve got your back. We invite you to learn more about our environmental due diligence solutions suite or book a demo today. Land development doesn’t have to be this complicated, so don’t wait any longer.

 

Get the eBook that exposes the broken system

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