Proterra, a U.S. electric bus start-up from Greenville, South Carolina, has used the

lessons learned from successfully delivering three buses to the King County

Metro Transit, Seattle, Washington, to develop processes to accelerate the

delivery of future bus orders. The Metro has been testing the functionality to

determine if the buses meet their requirements to serve the customers in the

county's public transportation market. Following a successful test and adoption,

Proterra has an option to possibly supply an additional 200 buses over five years.

What did Proterra learn that would help reduce the delivery time from 12

months on the first buses to about seven months on any additional buses? What

did Proterra do to deliver what was specified by the King County team?

Proterra was in position to listen to the customer. Bid and proposal manager for

Proterra, Ethan Carbaugh, had implemented a more formal project management

process that included overcommunication of the customer's expectations to

everyone on the bus production team. "You can't assume that just because

something is in the contract it will get done," stated Carbaugh.

After being selected from a competitive bid to produce the buses, the Proterra

team invited representatives from King County to the Proterra headquarters for a

three-day technical review. A comparative analysis of the standard bus design to

the desired specifications was completed. A determination was made for how to

customize the standard design to meet the specs. Approximately 80 change requests were included in the final design. Having a plan with all the changes

included before production began allowed the Proterra team to save time on

product reviews and change requests during production.

Project meetings and progress reports included discussions of the benefits to the

community and the agency. Such aspects as energy savings compared to hybrids

and fast charging were included in the education. According to Carbaugh,

"Getting more people involved helps secure buy in and makes them excited about

the technology." A Proterra service technician provided answers to maintenance

questions on site after the delivery of the first bus.

Carbaugh commented, "You have to find the right balance between

accommodating the customer and managing your own time and resources."

Listening to the stakeholders and engaging them from the start has been a

successful project planning strategy for Proterra. Adding features such as a rear

towing option were part of the change management process.

If the team had not taken the time to listen to the stakeholders during the

planning phase, implementation of the changes during production would have

been costly in the form of time and money. "This process helps us avoid rework. It

improves our cash flow because we deliver projects on time, and it improves

customer satisfaction."

Proterra recorded and used their lessons learned to be in position to be efficient

and cost effective if they should receive any more orders for buses for the King

County Metro Transit. The project team has processes in place to be responsive

due to paying attention to the lessons learned

Question:

What did Proterra do to deliver what was specified by the King County teams? What were the outcomes because of what they did?