The challenges that communities face today need solutions beyond tomorrow. On today’s episode of 5G Talent Talk, we’re joined by William Davidson, Director of Strategic Initiatives at NextEra Infrastructure Solutions, to discuss how NIS is closing the digital equity gap.
NextEra Infrastructure Solutions is a workgroup of affiliates of NextEra Energy that offers unregulated, commercial fiber, lighting, and smart meters solutions for developments, municipalities, and commercial businesses.
Internet service is a utility often taken for granted, but as we shift into the Information Age, access to reliable, “future-proof” connectivity is more important than ever. By collaborating with local government, public utilities and other providers, and by installing more localized cellular/fixed wireless solutions, NIS aims to bridge the digital divide.
Join us for an engaging interview as William and Carrie discuss the challenges of workforce availability, the advantages of outsourcing and using contractors, and the impact of economic conditions on fiber deployment.
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Building Future-Proof Foundations and Partnerships with William Davidson of NextEra Infrastructure Solutions (NIS)
In this episode, my guest is William Davidson. He is the Director of Strategic Initiatives for NextEra Infrastructure Solutions. Will, thank you so much for joining me.
Thank you very much for having me, Carrie. I appreciate it.
Will, how did you get to where you are? Where did you come from? How did you get here?
I was born and raised in New York City. I lived there until 2014. In high school and college, I did your standard summer jobs like at the ice cream parlor and sandwich shop. I interned for a judge in Brooklyn. Right out of college, I worked at a big white-shoe law firm as a legal assistant working crazy hours, 100 hours a week, weekends, holidays, missed engagement parties and that kind of stuff.
I prepared for multiple rounds of federal litigation. It was great training in terms of how you get prepared but hellish hours, like 40-hour shifts, not knowing which way the copying machine is spitting the paper out. Despite all that, I still decided to go to law school. Knowing that I didn’t want to go back into that environment, I had the wherewithal to be able to go try different things.
I worked for the New Jersey Nets in the first summer, doing partnership marketing. They were trying to build a new arena in Brooklyn and we’re trying to sell ad space. I then worked on a Holocaust restitution litigation the following summer through a program at school, trying to help the families, relatives and descendants of French Jews who have been deported from Paris by the Nazis regain restitution for their property that had been taken from them.
While my friends were scrambling for placement law firms, I was out doing things that interested me. That’s always been my goal, which is to go do something that interests me. Whatever that was going to turn out to be in my life. My family runs a small business in New York City. I was seeing my dad get up and do something he loves every day. I didn’t want to go join the family business. It was eminently important to me because if you love what you do, you’ll never work a day in your life. It’s the mentality that he was able to instill in me and my brothers.
If you love what you do, you’ll never work a day in your life.
I graduated from law school and thought I’d be going into sports management either on the team side or as an agent and managed to wind up in public service. I wound up working for the New York City Office of Emergency Management as in-house counsel and worked through a plethora of matters as their attorney but also held a role as a planning section chief in the emergency operations center. I worked through events, incidents and emergency building collapses, snow storms, the Thanksgiving Day parade and then Hurricane Sandy, being the big kahuna up there.
I moved down to Florida in 2014 and wanted to keep doing in-house work. I love the variety that that environment provides you. It gives you a very macro view of a business and/or a company, knowing a lot about everything while still being involved in some of the day-to-day project stuff. I’m fortunate enough to get my foot in the door at Florida Power & Light, doing regulatory affairs work and working on a whole bunch of different dockets, rate cases, mergers and acquisitions. I moved over to NextEra Energy Resources, an FPL sister company for the unregulated renewable business.
The solar and battery market was starting to boom. In our first year, we did 100 megawatts of solar and in 2023, it’s 4,000 megawatts a year that the company’s doing solar. It’s grown incredibly. I had a position where I was running due diligence, management, reporting and forecasting. It’s a very macro view of the entire business. We looked at it as the person who knew where every project stood and could give an answer quickly. Every piece of information that went in or out came through me and my team.
I had a great opportunity to come over to NIS to help start up a new fiber business called NextCity Networks, which is part of the group. I moved over here in October of 2021 and it’s been awesome. If you had told me that this is what I’d be doing though, when I was in law school in New York City in 2007 and 2008, doing infrastructure work in South Florida, I probably wouldn’t have believed you.
It’s been an interesting journey but at the same time, all those experiences, whether it’s working a counter, scooping ice cream or making photocopies at 2:00 in the morning, helping the fire department find out where they need to go in an emergency, to building projects for winds or solar. All played a huge part in who I am and how I got here.
In our journey, it takes twists and turns but I do think it’s cumulative. I always ask this question because there are people reading thinking, “What do I do next? How do I plan my life and my career? How did he or she get there?” I love to hear about your journey. My son graduated from law school so it’s interesting to hear how you got here. Tell me who is NextEra Infrastructure Solutions or NIS. Let’s go deeper here.
NIS is NextEra Energy’s unregulated street lighting, AMI, water and electric meter, fiber and escrow business. We build, own and operate infrastructure that makes a stronger and more connected community. We do this through those products but offer turnkey bespoke solutions. We don’t just come and say, “Here’s how we do it. This is how you have to do it.”
Our goal is to come in, work with the customer, whether it’s an internet service provider, energy co-op, municipal entity, government agency or HOA developer and see what their needs are. Our job is to come up with a solution that works best for them. Just because it worked down the road for one person in one way doesn’t mean it’s going to be that way for the next person.
Our goal is to concentrate on reducing expenses and conserving natural resources through our ownership and operation. We allow providers to reach markets, where they may not go themselves because they don’t have the capital or it’s not necessarily in their 2-year, 3-year plan and maybe 10 years down the road that they wanted to get there. We can help accelerate that growth for them. We do it all while providing world-class customer service for the people who use our network and also for those who are the ultimate end user.
What are your key differentiators?
We’re a part of NextEra Energy. It’s the parent company to the largest renewable company in the country, as well as the largest utility in the country. That size allows us to be a little more patient with our money. What that allows us to do? It puts us at a unique advantage. We can deploy long-term capital for these projects and take a lower return. We’re able to deploy that capital for our customers and partners upfront.
NextEra has deployed the sixth most infrastructure capital over the last few years across the country. Our old CEO had a thing. We’re the largest company you’ve never heard of. That’s changing a little bit, now that our new CEO has taken hold. We operate in the 48 states so we know the regulatory, environmental and political atmosphere of every state. We always have a large pipeline of projects across the multitude of entities we have.
We have that large pipeline so we also have a large network of vendors, suppliers and distributors who are always willing to work with us on interesting and cutting-edge technology and projects. We do transmission, hydrogen, solar, wind, battery, nuclear, pipelines, fiber and lights and a lot of things. We’re not just your traditional pull-and-wire utility to the home. There are a lot of interesting opportunities here. We have the ability to carry costs and buy at the parent level and charge the cost of the project when the time is right.
In terms of NIS, we have a process called Dig One, where we put in multi conduits. We overbuild our networks through our multi-conduit solution. That allows us to minimize labor costs, future-proof capacity and minimize the disruption to the community when we’re building. You’re only digging up your street once. You’re not having each provider come down the street, tear up the street, block the traffic and block the interest of your business. We work with multiple partners, providers and different customer segments. We can co-build products, stretch our capital and keep costs low for people.
I heard you speak at Connectivity Wireless. You talked a little bit about economic conditions. I’d like your perspective on how inflation and economic conditions would affect fiber deployment.
We’ve already started to see the market condition impact deployment. Money is getting more expensive. Capital markets are drying up. Funding is getting harder and harder. For some of the traditional backers of these smaller, mid-sized internet service providers, as well as the big providers, money and the cost of capital are rising.
We’ve seen our partners and their investors slow their funding. We’ve been able to help. With our balance sheet and the nature of our differentiators, we have access to a lower cost of capital. Our supply chain allows us to help keep those individual projects, as well as their pipelines keep going and staying on schedule so they can meet their goals. We’re not immune. We face some of the same pressures. Our size and nature of how we do business have enabled us to weather it a lot better than a lot of people. We’re built to survive any economic condition.
At least, that’s how the leaders of the company have run the company. It’s not just, “We’re only here for the good times. We’re here for the bad times.” We plan and make sure the business is being run that way. We have been able to secure some assets and development rights and maintain those project schedules, which is great because we can deliver those promises that have been made to that community.
That’s a big piece of what we’re doing here too. It’s working to close that digital equity gap, ensuring that the projects aren’t being left half-built. “We got a new owner here but it’s going to take another four years to build.” We come in and we keep the process moving as seamlessly as possible to make sure that it’s benefiting the community and those end users.
We build our networks to be future-proof too. We’re allowing multiple customers onto the network of varying segments. “I don’t need to sell it all. I can sell some down the line.” My project return isn’t dependent on selling out the whole network all at once. My capital allows me to survive inflationary conditions where maybe someone’s not willing to commit. If they want to wait 1 year or 2, my network will be there. It’s designed so that they can jump on and not feel that they’re using an antiquated product or anything like that.
Will you be receiving federal funding?
We are not. It’s clear that to reach every home in the country, it’s necessary to use grant funding. It’s impossible to get down every farm, road or rural road in this country and hit every home without using funding. In those areas that we are targeting, we are looking for federal funding and we’ll be using some of it. It’s not our core funding source. We build everything off our balance sheet or at least try to.
We’re not an internet service provider. We’re not providing the service to the end user. There are some grants that we’re not able to go after. I can’t offer people ACP funding or those programs myself. If a partner of ours has received grant funds, it’s not going to stop us from working with anyone to ensure that the project gets done or that the funds are wasted. Our goal is to get fiber to as many people as we can. Based on the need in that area of what we’re able to support from our balance sheet, that’s when we make that determination.
It’s not necessarily our primary focus though to go out and get it. That allows us to be a little nimbler. We can go fill a need as people are waiting for grant funding. For an area and a project, we can come in and build a network that is future-proof and that helps the community grow, instead of maybe waiting 1 year or 2 to line up the funding, go through the protest periods, reapply and have a map redrawn on you and then try and find labor. We can say, “Let’s go and build it.”
How do you partner with companies? What are the benefits to the partner companies as well as to NIS?
We are provider agnostic. That’s one of the big differentiators that can’t be overlooked. The providers build a single-use. They’re not going to go out there and say, “Wireless company 1 isn’t necessarily going to want wireless company 2 coming and using their fiber to supply a competitive edge in that market.” We’re provider agnostic so we’re not beholden to any one customer or segment. We’ve overbuilt the network so we’ve got plenty of capacity. We were able to work across those competitive market lines.
When we put in the multiple conduits, we’re able to provide not only fiber to the premise through an internet service provider but we’re also able to provide capacity for 5G carriers, the local government, commercial or industrial customers, your utilities, whether it’s a cooperative or municipal agency or big investor-owned utilities, along the lines of FPL or someone like that in another state. We would do that. Allowing ourselves to have that multitude of customers, we’re able to spread a lot of the cost across that.
We have markets that we look at and we have partners who have projects and markets they want to look at. We market our projects and they’ll come to projects with us like, “What do you guys think of this?” We’ll do an internal analysis. If we think we can make it work like any other project, we’ll go build it. We’ll own it and operate it for them.
We’re able to go in and leverage those other customer segments, whether it’s the wireless or the government. Through C&I, we can lower the cost across the board and for everyone. That ultimately helps the end consumer and homeowner because there’s less money that has to get paid out since our return is based on our capital.
What are the unique advantages of being an energy company?
We leverage our energy customers as well as other projects that we’re building across the country to help expand fiber to the home connectivity and also to help make these communities stronger and healthier. There’s always a huge pipeline of projects going on here. NextEra does a great job of being out in the community, sponsoring schools, rodeos and work programs for wind technicians and stuff like that. We fit into that segment. We can build fiber to those sites and then we can also bring fiber to the local community.
These wind farms aren’t in your New York, Dallas or Washington DC. They’re always far away in super rural areas. We can help close that gap through a multitude of enterprises. As an energy company, we understand the needs and financial goals of those partners. Our goal has always been to build projects on time, scope and budget. We take a lot of those lessons into our fiber projects.
The skills we all learn working on the utility, the energy or the unregulated side of the renewable business, we put into place here. Working with cooperative and municipal utilities, we understand how they think. We understand the goals that they want to reach and how they want to treat their members. We understand that ultimately, they want to keep costs down, be more efficient and provide good service.
Having that ingrained in our DNA, when we go talk to them about efficient lighting, fiber or AMI smart meters, they know that we’re coming to them because we’ve done all of this for ourselves. We learn a lot from what FPL and NextEra Energy Resources do. They know they’re getting best practices. That’s been proven on the biggest stage.
As an energy company with the largest renewable fleet in the nation, all of our projects are built with efficiency and the environment in mind too. Every reduction in usage reduces emissions and carbon footprint. We enacted our real zero plan in 2022. We’re continually looking to improve technology and our infrastructure so that we can save costs, commodities and materials and reduce the impact on the environment.
We have tons of experience linking renewable infrastructure, reducing carbon footprint and connecting EV chargers to the grid. Fiber plays a role in that, whether it’s demand side solar, small solar plants for an individual city or an energy cooperative who were building a larger wind or solar plant. We can create a whole renewable ecosystem that can help those other energy customers or private customers reach their energy goals.
Solar reduces emissions. Smart meters allow utilities to better track their systems and waste. Are they missing revenue? Do they have leaks? Cities can encourage battery-operated cars, trucks and fleets to pull combustion engines off the road. Fiber helps you track everything. Being an energy company, we’re consistently touching these technologies and know how to connect them and integrate them into everyone’s way of life.
Let’s talk a little bit about the workforce. What challenges are you seeing maybe industry-wide? Where are the gaps in your organization with workforce and talent?
There are $42.5 billion in Federal funds. That’s from the Federal government. That’s not including private investor or investor-backed investments. The total market is expected to be 3 or 4 times over the next years. It is a crazy number. One of the biggest challenges is having enough people who know how to do this and who know how this technology works. How do the systems work? Do they know enough about technology that they can keep up with technology changes? Are they keeping up with the latest advancements? Is there a new type of fiber or electronics? Is there a new wireless system that is out there that can change the world or change the community’s way of life?
Ultimately, the biggest challenge is, “Are there enough crews? Is there enough labor to go build this stuff and build them in the way that’s necessary so they work well?” I can dig a hole and put PVC pipe in and say that I built it properly. Is there enough knowledgeable workforce to go out and build these things properly? One of our goals is to by putting in all of this conduit once we free up crews to go build other projects elsewhere.
We can go to a local government or cooperative and say, “We can put in the fiber. We can provide it for the internet service provider, you and your network. We can build enough. The 5G wireless carriers can come in and use it too but we’ve saved two crews from having to come out here. Those two crews can go build another project for you, me and someone else.” We bring a bit of a solution to that log jam. My biggest concern and the concern of a lot of people in the industry is having enough people to hit goals and project deadlines and get the fiber in the ground so that we can serve the end users.
You utilize contingent labor. What would you say are the advantages of outsourcing and using contractors?
You cannot beat the ramp speed. Larry picked up the phone and said, “Here’s my need. I’ll have someone there tomorrow.” Although the next day, the market cap is $160 billion. In NIS, we operate as a startup within the greater framework. While I may not have the capital constrictions and I’m not running around raising funds or talking to private equity, we try to run a lean team. I still have a balance sheet I need to answer to. We try to avoid a full-time headcount in certain areas.
We grow when we can grow and can’t. We’re operating on a lean budget. We know that the best way to hit our needs is to go out, outsource and grab that subject matter expert from a trusted partner whom we work with and who we know has provided good help in the past. That person can be anywhere we need them to be almost immediately. They’re pre-vetted and knowledgeable. Being able to escalate a need and get something done quickly is immeasurable. Be able to fill a gap quickly without having to wait for some of the internal like the timelines of hiring a candidate internally.
The best way to hit your needs is to outsource and grab a subject matter expert from a trusted partner.
RHR does a great job but there are rules, policies and procedures they have to follow in terms of background checks. They won’t act on it until a certain time. You’ve got to get jobs posted. If there’s a need, we can go out and leverage a labor partner. It’s invaluable. Our contractors and partners know how to build and design systems but they also have that industry expertise. They’ve been doing it a lot longer than I have.
I started doing fiber in telecom in October of 2021. While my background in the company allows me to develop and build projects according to the ways the company wants them done, I don’t necessarily know the best way to do it. There’s someone who I can trust, who will tell me how to do it and now I have to make sure it gets done.
Not having to worry about getting that person in-house, throwing down my project and knowing that I can call and say, “Do you have someone on your staff who can help with this? Do you have a team that can help design this?” “Yes, we’ll have it to you in 1 week or 2,” instead of, “It would take me 3 or 4 months by the time I got interviews, hiring background and then up to speed on how to map your printer.”
That’s a huge part of our business model. Well said there. Will, how can we reach you? How can we find out more about NextEra Infrastructure Solutions or NIS?
You can visit us on our website, www.NextEraInfrastructureSolutions.com. It is a bit of a mouthful. You can reach out to me and our team at [email protected]. 4 or 5 people monitor that email on a daily basis. We’re out at conferences. We were out at the Wireless Connect (X) in New Orleans. I’m going to be at the Fiber Broadband Association Conference in Orlando. We’re out there and around.
We want to help find solutions for people, whether it’s municipalities, ISPs or developments. We feel that our value proposition is second to none in the industry. Reach out. I’m always happy to talk on the phone, chat and come meet you to some extent. That email and website are the best ways to at least engage us and then we’ll follow up in person.
Will, it’s been a pleasure having you on the show. I will see you in person as I saw you at Connect X because I probably attend every conference you do. Thank you for coming to the show. It’s been fascinating. I learned a lot.
Thank you very much for having me. I appreciate all the help that you give us on all aspects of our job. Thank you.
Thanks, Will. You take care.
I appreciate it. Bye.
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About William Davidson
William Davidson is the Director of Strategic Initiatives for NextEra Infrastructure Solutions (NIS) responsible for guiding the team through internal and external legal, regulatory, and executive oversight while coordinating cross-selling opportunities for all products.
Prior to NIS, William worked in NextEra Energy Resources’ Business Development group where, in 2021 alone, he directed and coordinated internal project approvals for over $6 B of capital and 5 GW of wind, solar and battery capacity.
William joined NextEra Energy in 2014, working in Regulatory Affairs for Florida Power and Light Company (FP&L) where he led discovery, drafted testimony, and advised on compliance for a multitude of dockets and matters.
William holds a J.D., graduating from Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, is licensed to practice in both Florida and New York, and worked as in-house counsel for the NYC Office of Emergency Management from 2009-2014.
William earned a B.A. in History from Williams College, where he played varsity lacrosse and currently serves as President for the Class of 2002’s 25th Reunion Committee.
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