John Hoopes

Senior Developer

John Hoopes is a Senior Software Developer and team lead in Utility Services Business unit located within Madison, WI. John has experience in developing, architecting, designing, managing, and delivering project goals and requirements in a unique and scalable fashion to enable flexibility throughout custom applications and integrations. As part of the development team, John works with many programs to deliver tools and workflows for many of Nexant’s program types in to provide better communication, project deliverables, and better visibility into timelines and usages for every step of a program’s needs, including working with data scientists and analysts to visualize and track energy savings progress over time.

Areas of Expertise

Software Development / Software Architecture: Leading several development projects to build enterprise level software for usage in energy efficiency and calculation processing. Creating software that allows for easy customization for each program that uses each software application and developing each feature in a flexible way to allow for it. Creating flexible data structures to allow for changes and variations by programs so that each program can configure tools and calculations to their needs specifically instead of being locked into a particular way of doing something. Working with marketing teams to deliver customized front end websites and marketing materials for customers, contractors, and utilities.

Data Architecture & Visualization: Creating data architecture to allow for program customization, but then providing standardized outputs such that each program can be tracked with standard energy efficiency methodology and reporting needs. Working with programs to create visualizations within Tableau and custom visualizations as needed. Working with programs to develop an enterprise data warehouse in order to better provide an interface for utilities to access their data in a single unified place that aggregates, normalizes and sanitizes data from many different data sources.

Project Management & Requirements Gathering: Working with program delivery teams to be able to understand their needs and requirements in order for them to effectively deliver their programs. Developing cross functional requirements that many programs need in so that end goals and features become better in the long term due to input from multiple sources. Bridging the divide in terms of how program delivery teams operate and need access to tools and translating that into needs and requirements for what custom software development teams need.

Server Administration & Maintenance: Creating and maintaining the current server architecture that uses multiple services from virtual machines with Digital Ocean, S3, Tableau, Cloudflare, HAProxy and load balancing, Docker containers, MySQL, SQL Server, and public/private networking. Including integration with other systems and platforms such as AdobeSign, OneLogin, and other DSM systems.

Programming & Development Skills: Leveraging skills, including:

• PHP, HTML5, CSS, JavaScript, NodeJS, SQL, Python, Bash scripting and automation
• Automated Testing, UX/UI Design, API Design & Testing, Database administration and model design
• Server Administration with Ubuntu & Debian based systems within many cloud providers, DevOps CI/CD, AWS experience with S3, EC2, Cloudfront, RDS, Redshift, ElasticCache, Lambda

Representative Project Experience

Energy On TAP / Mobile Assessment Tool (2017-Present)
John works closely with various program delivery teams to develop custom tools and software in order to deliver a prescriptive or comprehensive workflow path for contractors to create and manage their projects, calculate energy savings instantly for customers, and see incentives directly, which is then packaged up for customers to sign agreements to continue with installing their energy efficient equipment:

• This tool eliminates the need for often separated and disjointed offline workflows for defining calculations for measures and energy efficiency data and combines the project management for both trade allies and Nexant staff to effectively load in energy audit data and approval process for incentives, savings, costs, etc.
• Provides integration with other tools and systems that Utilities use to report on in an automated fashion to enable seamless data integration and reporting without the need for manual reports to be uploaded separately

Custom / Retro-Commissioning Project Management Tool / Europa (2018 – Present)
John has so far worked with the ComEd RCx team to build a project management tool to enable better project management for every step of the process. Previously many separate tools were used that did not communicate with each other, and no workflow was enforced or used in practice, and this new tool brings all of that within the same tool to eliminate the need for many of the manual processes that were done. As the implementation of this tool continues, the ComEd RCx team will utilize visualization tools such as Tableau to visualize savings trends and more, including the using of data models to monitor and track if energy efficiency savings practices are utilized to their fullest potential by getting this data from smart building platforms or monitoring reported energy usages.

As this tool was built with additional flexibility in mind, it can further be extended and customized into other program’s needs for different program offerings and data tracking.