Focus on Energy • Scope, Priorities & Staffing for Quad V
3 FTEs — A small, highly capable team that originated as back-end analytics and data engineering and has evolved into full-stack development, infrastructure, and intelligent systems.
We design, build, and operate internal tools, dashboards, identity systems, data pipelines, and infrastructure. We prioritize low-maintenance systems and rapid iteration so a small team can sustain a large and growing portfolio.
We are actively moving away from a fragmented Retool-heavy environment toward a modern, custom-built stack. The majority of our current effort goes into two strategic themes:
We are consolidating the old “toolbox” of separate apps into a single, unified experience. Staff, utility partners, and implementers should log in once and immediately understand where they are, what they can access, and how to move between tools — without wondering “Is this the right app? Is this the right login?”
Outcome: One front door. Clear navigation. Consistent permissions. No more context-switching friction.
We are embedding intelligent agents as helpful sub-managers throughout our systems. These assistants handle the mundane, repetitive, and high-volume tracking that humans previously couldn’t sustain at scale — cost oversight, proactive monitoring, exception detection, and routine follow-up.
Goal: Agents that quietly keep things on track so people can focus on judgment, relationships, and program outcomes — not chasing data or status updates.
We sorted every task and tool into three buckets based on impact and necessity.
| Item | Description |
|---|---|
| Night Shift | Core ETL pipelines that feed all reporting and dashboards |
| Core Contract & Implementer Dashboards | Quad contract KPIs + per-implementer performance tracking |
| Utility QuickSight Dashboards | Full suite of QuickSight dashboards and access management supporting utility partners’ data needs |
| Focus IDP | Single Sign-On / Identity platform (staff, utilities, customers — hundreds of thousands of records) |
| Control Center | Permissions, access management, and federated module used by all new apps |
| Communities of Focus | Contract deliverable — interactive map of Wisconsin communities |
| QuickSuite Manager | QuickSight administration & utility partner account management |
| api_v1 | Shared utility API — foundational service layer |
| Validator | Critical address & data validation service used by implementers |
| qc_troll | Automated quality control checks on program data |
| Notifications API | Centralized email notification service across applications |
| Item | Description |
|---|---|
| Measure Maestro | Energy efficiency measure proposal workflow and approvals |
| focus-workspace | Internal ticketing + project management system (in active development — high potential to become core infrastructure) |
| Smarty Emailer / Quests | Proactive alerting system that surfaces anomalies and required follow-ups |
| Item | Description |
|---|---|
| Cost Effectiveness app | Streamlit mTRC / cost-effectiveness analysis tool |
| outreach_map | Auto-updating outreach event map |
| Clifford | Security & issue monitoring across applications |
| IRA Participation Dashboard | Public-facing program participation visualization |
| R Shiny maps (various) | Weatherization, Energy Advisor, Certificate of Completion, etc. |
| Data Bodega | Dashboard discovery and marketplace hub |
| The Librarian | Compliance chatbot with policies, procedures, and reference documents |
| COI Admin | Certificate of Insurance tracking for subcontractors |
| EA Managed Account Navigator | Specific implementer account management tool |
| Marketing Communications Calendar | Marketing department workflow tool |
| Pigeon Campaigns | Internal staff engagement / nurture campaign tool |
| Survey Roundup | Customer satisfaction survey ingestion, sentiment analysis, and routing |
| TA Performance Navigator | Trade Ally performance dashboard and comparison tool |
In a traditional organization, the breadth of work we currently deliver would typically require 8–12 specialized FTEs across separate functions:
Our three-person team achieves this scope through deliberate low-maintenance design, heavy automation, and a focus on building systems that require minimal ongoing support.
We are not asking to grow the team. We believe the current three people can continue delivering — and increase impact — if we scale the leverage tools that make a small team this productive.
Projected to support growth beyond 25 applications. Covers current production (including large RDS databases), test + production environments for a growing portfolio, and headroom for data warehouse migration (BigQuery-style) to improve performance and scalability.
Claude Max + OpenAI + flexible buffer for the team. Enables the “Assistants Everywhere” vision and future-facing development without each person maintaining separate personal subscriptions.
These investments in infrastructure and agent capacity are significantly more cost-effective than adding headcount while directly supporting the two strategic themes above.