Today we’d like to introduce you to Senthil Arunachalam.
Senthil, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
We started this organization in need of the high-performance buildings across the nation. When we started we saw there is a lack of this particular skill in the market.
We have been in business for more than 5 years now and worked on almost all sectors such as commercial, residential and industrial. Our revenue never dropped and kept on increasing. Currently, we have two years worth of projects.
Our goal is to offer value engineering and technical consulting services to our clients and provide superior quality which would benefit our clients.
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
Off-course, we had some rough patches on the way but it is part of the game. Since we are a small business we had a hard time competing with the big companies. 80% of our business comes from building commissioning/LEED consulting services, which doesn’t require big teams, we try to convey this to the clients but 90% won’t buy and we ended up losing the job even though our price was competitive and we had experience in those type of projects.
Some clients just call us to get a price I still believe, we still need to educate the future client about the work involved and amount of people need to execute the work, otherwise, we will lose most of the job that we bid. Some clients they just shop around for the price to compare with the vendor they already got in place, that is very difficult to digest because we never had a fair opportunity. We spent hours to submit a proposal but few clients even’t provide us with an update that who got selected. Luckily, we had no payment issues so far on any of this project we worked on, which is a big thing in small business.
So, as you know, we’re impressed with BTU Engineers – tell our readers more, for example what you’re most proud of as a company and what sets you apart from others.
BTU Engineers is an independent firm of engineers, consultants, and technical specialists offering MEP design, commissioning, retro-commissioning, monitoring-based commissioning, energy and daylight modeling, energy efficiency and LEED certification Consulting Services. We specializing in offering high-performance green buildings.
We are known for building commissioning, energy audits/modeling, CALGreen, and LEED consulting services. Our methods benefits building owners, operators, architects and design engineers. We work with other project team members or trades to maximize the quality of a project. We provide solutions to the issues, instead of finger-pointing. We provide strong technical expertise in our area of work, which we are proud of.
Do you feel like our city is a good place for businesses like yours? If someone was just starting out, would you recommend them starting out here? If not, what can our city do to improve?
City of LA is a great place to live and work. The City of LA encourages green and high-performance buildings and mandate building commissioning which is a good thing for an investor (owner) and building tenants. Building commissioning saves money and improves comfort in both existing and new buildings. (commercial) Both the City and the State is creating is creating a lot of opportunities for a green industry which is a good thing for the environment and job market.
I am really proud, that State of California has passed a law that new commercial building which are built after 2030 should achieve Net Zero level. Net-zero energy building (NZEB), or net zero building, is a building with zero net energy consumption, meaning the total amount of energy used by the building on an annual basis is roughly equal to the amount of renewable energy created on the site. Traffic is the only thing I least liked about the City, but not a major complaint.
Contact Info:
- Address: 6601 Center Dr. West, Suite 500 Los Angeles, CA 90045
- Website: www.btuengineers.com
- Phone: 310.684.3503
- Email: senthilka@btuengineers.com
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BTU-Engineers-LLC-498361216861432/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/BTUEngineers
- Other: https://plus.google.com/+BtuEngineersLLCPlano
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Getting in touch: VoyageLA is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you know someone who deserves recognition please let us know here.
