Workplace Health and Safety
*Student and school have already been selected*This project is perfect for someone studying workplace health and safety. As a small company focused on renewable energy, especially solar PV installations, we need the help of someone with expertise in the health and safety field to help us ensure we remain in compliance with all workplace safety rules. Our work is slowly moving from an office environment to requiring us to supervise at a construction site as the PV panels are being installed.The student will be responsible for helping create a health and safety program we can roll out to our employees as well as create checklists of the items that need to be completed on a regular schedule such as PPE inspection.
Financial modelling for a solar leasing business
This project is meant to two students in two separate teams.We are looking for a student with a financial analysis or financial modelling background. Someone who is very comfortable with making and reviewing a model of a business interested in leasing equipment. Our end goal is to create a model to show to bankers and possible investors that provides profitability for us as well as all other partners involved.You will be given an initial model to modify and tweak as appropriate for our industry.We are trying to build a portfolio of solar projects that can then be securitized together to be financed at better interest rates. We are already speaking with a bank interested in providing us with a revolving credit facility if we can show a pipeline of projects to be built in the next 24 months that create a portfolio $2 million+ in size.You will modify, update and error correct the excel spreadsheet given to you in order to make it applicable for solar projects. Modify this spreadsheet so it may function based on a number of line items given for a specific cost per watt. Further edit the spreadsheet so the number of years of the agreement and amortization can be changed. Have the spreadsheet identify the LCOE and monthly payments based off given variables for $/watt CAPEX, DSCR, debt interest rates and the fact that revenue is generated by two income streams, one of which is for the O&M beginning in year 10 of the agreement. Include the ability to factor in generation losses over time. Provide analysis of savings of switching to onsite generated solar energy vs paying the utility for electricity with it increasing by 2.5% each year. We will be providing you data provided to us by multiple banks we have been in contact with in order to ensure the modelling outputs are relevant.
Optimize HR software
Naveco is looking for 1 student in 1 team to complete this project.We are looking to work with an individual with an understanding of HR related processes and can help us build out and/or optimize the following functionality:TimesheetsGov't reimbursement formsEmployee onboarding processThis person will take our current HR management software and will update it to simplify the process for our employees to fill out timesheets and record the work that was completed. This is necessary so we can begin analysis of how long certain tasks take so we can better measure and value the work we do from a monetary cost perspective. Using this information, it will inform what we need to bill our clients in order to remain profitable.Currently we manually file away employee related paperwork and government reimbursement forms. Our intent is to use this reimbursement tracker as a way to be notified when certain documents are due and to be able to act as a repository of completed forms so they do not get lost when a task is done.We've built a great employee onboarding process for people who apply through our careers website. This is not so for people who apply from other sources. You will be responsible for solving what needs to change in our current process so it is simple to on board hires who send us their resumes from other recruitment sources (ie job boards, gov't agencies)
Configure Business Intelligence Software
Positions available:1 student acting as part of 1 teamNaveco Power is looking for a student to help setup their business intelligence dashboards in order to gain better insight within what is happening in the company. We would be looking for someone interested in learning a software similar to Microsoft Power BI, known as Zoho Analytics.This project would entail taking the pre-existing dashboards and checking the underlying data to ensure that the inferences being drawn use the correct dataset and that the data is being presented in the most easy to read manner possible. (Examples of this would be using the proper digit grouping. You wouldn't want to display 100 site visitors as 0K visitors as an example.)We are interested to see what new inferences you may generate with all of the marketing as well as financial data that we have been accumulating.The dashboards in need of this quality assurance related work include our Google Analytics data for three different websites. It also includes data generated from our Linkedin, Facebook as well as Twitter pages. Additional dashboards include financial dashboards for the different companies that we run.
Podcast for a renewable energy company
Positions available: 1 student as part of 1 teamWe are looking to work with a student interested in helping us create a series of podcasts that are thought provoking and help us inspire individuals to take action with respect to climate change as well as help make the audience more aware of the renewable energy solutions we provide.This individual will be tasked with helping to create enough short podcasts and interviews for us to have a pile to release every two to three weeks throughout the summer and fall. Potential interviewees may include individuals well known in the industry as well as other thought leaders. Our hope is to be seen as a thought leader in our industry by doing this series.The right individual would have some previous experience in setting up a podcast series, with scripting and putting together an interview guide of questions as well as helping with the overall production and editing of the podcast.We look forward to working with you the summer of 2021!
Customize ERP Platform using Deluge Script
We are looking for 1 student to help us customize the functionality of our ERP platform. You can learn more about Zoho at www.zoho.comThis individual will be responsible for programming our business process management software so we may schedule and automate recurring annual tasks and reduce our administrative burdens. You will have conversations with members of our team to learn about the recurring tasks we face with our work so you may then help us to make these tasks less mentally fatiguing to complete. After learning more about our needs you will then be responsible for creating and then testing the robustness of the functionality and ensure it will operate flawlessly.As an example of the types of things you will be optimizing, one of the annual tasks is to file and pay for our Annual Return to the government which allows them to know that we are still operating and in existence. You will break down the steps from the moment we receive an email reminder or something by mail, to filling in the forms, saving a copy of the submitted form, to submitting the form and then creating a backup copy of the file in our repository.
SEO and Social Media Strategy for an Immigration Consultancy Business
Number of individual students required: 2Here's a project with a twist: Instead of working on our website, (which is focused on solar) you'll be working closely with us to help ensure the success of a tenant in our building who rents office space from our business. We'll be working together to bring a lovable digital neophyte into the 21st century!The website in question is: https://www.delongimmigration.ca/DeLong Immigration is focused on helping people come to Canada and make this place their "forever home." This includes supporting students with their visa applications through to business investor immigrants.Our team is looking for a social media marketing wizard who can help Larry drive more traffic and improve Larry's SEO positioning. The primary project requirements include:Meet with the end client and ourselves to receive insight into the business and discuss some potential strategiesKeyword analysis to determine relevant search terms to our organizationA strategy document to outline:Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) requirements to ensure his organization appears on the first page of Google for relevant keywordsSocial media requirements to increase the number of followers/likes and share https://www.facebook.com/DeLongImmigration/Content Calendar Execution: Timely deployment of all our social media content to drive maximum traffic to our siteCreating engaging content for prominent media websitesThis is a great project for students to prove their digital marketing expertise to future employers, as the impact of their work on this project can be easily measured and communicated.*We're doing this not just because we want him to make money and keep paying us rent, (that's a given) but because he's actually a really good guy who helps people choose Canada as the country to call home...but sucks at marketing himself.
Digital Content Creation for an Immigration Consultancy Business
Number of individual students required: 2Here's a project with a twist: Instead of working on our website, (which is focused on solar) you'll be working closely with us to help ensure the success of a tenant in our building who rents office space from our business. We'll be working together to bring a lovable digital neophyte into the 21st century!The website in question is: https://www.delongimmigration.ca/We would like students to help us with creating content that is aligned with his vision, mission, and sector. We will ensure the student has a clear understanding of what these elements are for the organization. DeLong Immigration is focused on helping people come to Canada and make this place their "forever home." This includes supporting students with their visa applications through to business investor immigrants.To accomplish this, we expect the student(s) will:Meet with the end client and ourselves to receive insight into the business and discuss some potential marketing strategiesWrite blog articles, and other content pieces on assigned topicsAssist with a social media video launch to promote his organization (Examples of his previous videos are here: https://www.facebook.com/DeLongImmigration/ and https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvzoAS1Fdht-VgmdKmvK1vg/videos )Evaluate recent successful user-generated campaigns, preferably in our sectorIdentify media outlets that are most beneficial to share our storyGet rid of Silk Road Canada Inc and replace Google Business with the correct one.Ultimately, you will be working on content creation for our organization, including video, social media, and other collateral that we can use as go-to marketing tools.If you like the sound of our culture, and are ready to tackle this challenge with us, then we'd love to hear from you.A student or team with excellent writing and video skills would be the ideal candidate for this project.*We're doing this not just because we want him to make money and keep paying us rent, (that's a given) but because he's actually a really good guy who helps people choose Canada as the country to call home...but sucks at marketing himself.
Website Development for an Immigration Consultancy Business
Positions available: one individual studentHere's a project with a twist: Instead of working on our website, (which is focused on solar) you'll be working closely with us to help ensure the success of a tenant in our building who rents office space from our business. We'll be working together to bring a lovable digital neophyte into the 21st century!The website in question is: https://www.delongimmigration.ca/We would like a new website for him. We aren’t sure which platform he's using but more than likely it was built on Wordpress. We have an idea of what we would like it to do. The goal is to make this guy a immigration consultancy superstar!You should be prepared to:Conduct a needs analysis to determine which platform is most suitable.Hold meetings in conjunction with us as facilitators with marketing expertise along with the end client who will be using this website.Create a design proposal including mock-ups and timeline. Build a fully-functioning website.Include such functionality as online appointment booking, online payments, new client contact forms, etc.Provide training on updating and maintaining the site.His current aspirations are to have a website that looks like the following: https://nsimmigration.ca/For us, that's great....if we're just looking to move someone from the 19th century into the 20th. Please, DO NOT deliver us something so boring. Please help us upgrade him into the 21st century. He's so eager he's even order new headshots for himself!*We're doing this not just because we want him to make money and keep paying us rent, (that's a given) but because he's actually a really good guy who helps people choose Canada as the country to call home...but sucks at marketing himself.
Bookkeeping for a Solar Company
Positions available: two individual studentsOver the last few years we have transitioned from utilizing one specific bookkeeping software to another. We are now using the Zoho Books application for all of our bookkeeping needs. While moving from one software to another, we have faced some growing pains and have two very specific scopes of work.General book keeping related data entry by reviewing scanned receipts, invoices, bills, and adding them into our system according to the description listed for for each one of our accounts. (ie. Operating expenses vs travel etc)Reconcile and identify transactions that maybe in one bookkeeping software but not the other. This would be done by reviewing the trial balances for each software according to each account to then find the missing transactions. We are looking for that needle in our haystack. Some of this comparison work was done previously by another intern with great accuracy, but to truly finish this project will require scrutinizing our trial balances from the first year of operation until the present.Completion of these tasks will then allow for you to help us catch up and file our HST returns correctly too!
3D renderings of a facility
Positions available: 2We are looking to work with an individual(s) interested in the creation of 3D renderings for our different companies. This work will range from the creation of photorealistic images of the exterior of a building showing different options of what it could look like through to the design of an interior space for one of our tenanted units.An example of the building you will be rendering, (and some of the previous renderings created for the property,) is located at https://www.82westmorland.ca/We will need someone to render an image of the exterior showing what the facility looks like with solar panels added to the roofs.A rendering of the back side of the building (which has never been made) with the addition of an LED signboard used for advertising purposes.Interior renderings for a soon to be tenanted space for a new sport recreational facility that will have indoor golf simulators and a lounge.Interior renderings (a mock up) of potential office suites throughout the building depending on a tenant's potential use case. (ie. A high density office space utilizing cubicles to create an ideal office for 30 people, a wealth management company, a startup looking to use an enclosed space without exterior windows.) These renderings will be based on a provided floorplan as well as photos taken of the space to provide a reference for the renderings.Renovated hallway connecting these multiple office suites.We are open to your choice of preferred software for creating these designs, be it V-Ray, FluidRay, Blender, Keyshot, etc. so long as it maintains consistency in style with our previous renders.
VBA Macro for Excel
Positions available: 1We are looking for an individual to help us with creating and optimizing macros for Microsoft Excel that are programmed using VBA. These macros will help automate the process of formatting data in a manner ready for import into our book keeping system.In our current situation, we have a book keeper who is switching over from one software to another. Our new software needs all of the General Ledger entries to be formatted in a specific manner for it to be acceptable for import into the software. You will be developing macros to help format csv payroll files into the correct columns in order to be prepared for import.Once this task is complete, we will go through a similar process for formatting banking csv files for import.Depending on how long these two tasks take, this project maybe expanded to include analysis of two files in order to compare and find missing entries between each dataset.
Chat App Design & Implementation
Positions available: 1We are looking for an interested individual to create and then program a chat bot for our website. We have a number of FAQ already designed for the chat bot but need someone to implement it into the chat bot and then place the chat bot onto our website.The chat bot will be built on the Zoho platform. https://www.zoho.com/salesiq/ai-bot-builder-for-business-zobot.htmlThis platform is part of our larger ERP system known as ZohoOne and integrates well with our web traffic activity reporting. By having this chatbot made, we hope to be able to convert more individuals into buyers and to track the path people go through on our website in order to identify web pages with high vs low engagement rates.Your chatbot will then integrate with other meeting booking software that you will then initialize to create a seamless experience both for our staff and the client they will be meeting.
Vinyl Graphics for Solar Company
Number of individual students required: 1Our organization needs some graphic design help! We are looking for an individual that can help amplify what makes us unique and create better messaging for our brand. This would include creating graphics that we will then send to print to be used on the office building we reside in for advertising purposes. We believe this project will require:Meeting with the client to understand objectivesDesign graphics consistent with our brand image and are ready to send to printPre-flighting of graphicsUsing tools like Illustrator to design prototypes that can be implemented into our marketing collateralWe will give you access to organizational assets to support this project such as personnel, website analytics, sales and brand collateral, and more.
Youtube video SEO
Number of individual students required: 1Our team is looking for a social media marketing wizard who can help us drive more traffic and improve our SEO positioning for our Youtube videos. The primary project requirements include:Create custom Youtube url for our channelAnalysis of free SEO strategies that can be employed to boost Youtube videosImplementation of these SEO strategies so our Youtube videos are more visible to our target audienceAdd clickable links within our videos that then lead people back to our websiteCreate descriptions that utilize our identified target keywordsIdentify keywords we have not yet thought of but would be helpful for SEO purposes in our industryQuick presentation showcasing the changes made and the anticipated impact of these changesWe’re excited to work with students who can help us not only brainstorm, but also execute a strategy to achieve:Our videos being ranked first for anyone searching for New Brunswick based solar PV installers and financiersThis is a great project for students to prove their digital marketing expertise to future employers, as the impact of their work on this project can be easily measured and communicated.
Integrate Calculator into Website
Positions available: Two individual students. One working on the integration with the website, one on enhancing the calculator itself.We have built webpages like the following to garner interest by people wishing to switch to solar PV.https://naveco.ca/solarenergy/https://naveco.ca/solarbenefits/These pages were built with the plan to integrate a quotation tool that would help individuals assess if solar makes sense for their home or business. We would require the help of an individual or team to help integrate this tool either on the webpage itself, or be linked to this page if the tool has to be hosted on its own separate page.https://github.com/SarahAlAshwal/NavecoQuoteThe inspiration for the calculator is based off of the calculator found on this webpage: https://quote.wattsupsolar.ca/This project will also require an individual or team reviewing the code of the application for errors or parameters that could cause the application to hiccup when trying to create a proposal.
Optimize ATS (Zoho Recruit)
As our organization continues to grow, it is important for us to stay up to date with our tools and processes for applicant management. We have a desire to focus specifically on our applicant tracking tool in order to better serve the deluge of applicants we have every year. The goal is for this tool to be interactive, user-friendly and relevant to our staff to assist with adoption.We want to use this opportunity to optimize the present system, Zoho Recruit, into a tool to ensure targets, goals and performance issues are being documented and called upon. Through this collaboration, you will be working with us to optimize the software and be responsible for the following:Research and identify gaps in the present hiring process and automation techniquesIdentify key words and key skills from previous job descriptions in order to program the AI functionality to search for these terms in new applicant resumesIntegrate video interviews and setup online interview booking functionality with our ATSCreate template emails for different steps with a potential applicant. (Emails for setting up an interview, for filling out an online employment agreement, etc.)Create template employment related documents ready for signature within the ATS platform using our pre-existing Word docsDevelop workflows to simplify the applicant management processDevelop pre-screening questions to reduce the potential for bad hires or applicants that are not qualifiedConvert applicants into new followers of our social media pages and email newsletter
Civil engineering task for rooftop solar
We are looking to build a solar array for our office building as well as propose a few preliminary designs for a few other buildings in town. We would need the support of someone with a civil engineering background to research and analyze the roof loading parameters according to the blueprints of each building versus the additional load placed on the roof due to the solar array. The primary concern is to ensure that the new array, with the snow loading guidelines for the jurisdiction, do not exceed the safe limits for dead load on a structure. These preliminary calculations will be used to assess a high level go/no go of the project. If the solar array and snow loading is determined to be within the safe limits, then the individual will be tasked with preparing any necessary additional construction drawings, which will then be submitted to a PEng for approval prior to the project moving forward with construction.
Bookkeeping and data verification for reconciliation of accounts
We are presently in the midst of shifting from one accounting software that was heavily paper based to an accounting platform in the cloud that has a digital workflow. A number of our journal entries in our general ledger need to be reconciled with the scanned paperwork before publishing it within our main set of books. You would be reviewing scanned data and creating expenses and bills to replace some of the draft general ledger entries in order for us to have a proper set of accounting records.
SEO Strategy & Recommendations
We want to be found on the first page of Google. We know that we need to implement SEO, but we’re not sure where to start. We would like to collaborate with students to understand what we need to do to generate more traffic and revenue through search engines. Students should be prepared to:Complete an SEO analysis on our websiteConduct competitive keyword researchUpdate our website with the best structure and elements for SEO.Develop an on-page and off-page SEO plan.Identify key metrics to track for success.
ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) Deployment
Part of being an entrepreneur means managing many tasks at once. I have to manage my own business as well as businesses created by my father over 43 years ago. We are transitioning this computer sales and IT solutions business to utilize a singular ERP platform in order to collect business intelligence data in order to become more nimble in the future. Becoming nimble means moving away from a separate order tracking platform, a separate CRM and inventory management to one suite of software products. We will be implementing the Zoho One suite in order to unify all business functions.We expect students will need to do the following:Hold meeting with staff members to learn their current business processes for conducting business.Research best practices and integrate these into the current business processes.Define and document systems in our organization. Make recommendations to improve on current practices.Implement software modules based on these selected best practices.Each student will be responsible for the implementation of a different module.The three modules to be implemented first will be CRM, Inventory and Expense tracking.