By: Deborah Johnson Wood
It all started when Chris Byrnes, owner of Viability, LLC, saw a business gap that needed filling. Viability helps for-profit businesses secure grants, tax credits and other funding for initiatives like marketing programs, R&D infrastructure projects and new product launches. The company services 90 clients in 14 states, securing millions in financial assistance.
When Byrnes started helping businesses get funding for ‘green’ energy projects, he got the money okay, but there were no reliable designers, engineers or construction companies to help the business leaders design, engineer or build their wind turbine, geothermal, biomass or other alternative energy projects.
“Early in the process they’d turn to us and say, ‘Are there better options than this project we’re looking at?’ and we’d end up hooking them up with a local engineer or construction company,” Byrnes says. “But we haven’t been happy with the quality of the work, so we needed to step up our experience and were fortunate to find some partner companies in our own back yard.”
Those partners are GMB Architects and Engineers and GDK Construction, both of Holland, and both known for their alternative energy expertise. The new company they’ve formed with Byrnes is Viability Energy.
Viability LLC will help the companies get the funding they need for their energy projects, and Viability Energy will help them decide what kind of energy they need, what kind of equipment, and will help them create what they need to make the endeavor succeed.
“These are not small mom and pop projects,” Byrnes says. “One client in Ohio is undertaking a $15 million biomass project for their four-million-square-foot greenhouse operation.”
Viability Energy launches October 1, and Byrnes expects to add jobs over time, in addition the four jobs created earlier this year.
Source: Chris Byrnes, Viability Energy
Deborah Johnson Wood is development news editor for Rapid Growth Media. She can be contacted at [email protected].
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