The situation
Arbor Energy develops commercial and industrial rooftop under a 9 MW facility. Drawdown required a lender's engineer to certify progress, and the engineer visited monthly — so a milestone completed on the third of the month waited four weeks to be paid.
Arbor was carrying that gap on its own balance sheet across six concurrent sites.
What changed
The milestone definitions did not change. What changed was that each one now closes with evidence the lender's engineer had already agreed was sufficient — a fixed set of photographs, the commissioning record, and the goods-received note, captured against the milestone rather than filed separately.
The negotiation that mattered was not about faster visits. It was a one-page agreement on what a completed milestone looks like in evidence.
Our engineer still visits monthly. He just is not the reason the money moves any more.
Finance director, Arbor Energy
Rohit builds the financial models behind ReDesk's portfolio tooling and has spent a decade on the asset-owner side of solar.