Trio of Juneau entrepreneurs proposing light-manufacturing and software enterprise in Wrangell

(City and Borough of Wrangell photo)

By Larry Persily

Wrangell Sentinel

A trio of Juneau friends — who also are business partners — is looking to locate much of their work in Wrangell, putting together a new kind of system that utilities and industries use to remotely monitor and control their operations.

Known as SCADA, for supervisory control and data acquisition, it’s been used since the 1970s to monitor systems such as sewage pumps and water lines, including Wrangell’s own utilities.

The trio, doing business under the business name Structure, were scheduled to give a presentation to the borough assembly on Tuesday, April 14.

“Structure is working in partnership with the borough to explore modernization of Wrangell’s utility systems — including water, wastewater and power infrastructure — while also evaluating the potential to establish a hardware assembly and manufacturing presence in the community,” according to the borough’s announcement of the meeting.

SCADA systems work with software and hardware talking together, collecting information from remote locations by radio signals, such as alerting operators of a broken line, pump malfunction or pressure change that needs immediate attention.

Structure is looking at sites in Wrangell for constructing assembly and manufacturing facilities, Jake Haas, one of the three founders, said in an interview in advance of the assembly presentation.

“The idea is to keep it in Southeast,” he said. In addition to assembling and training in Wrangell, they envision software development based in Sitka and company offices in Juneau.

In particular, they are looking at the 6-Mile Mill industrial park the borough is trying to develop, Haas said.

They also are looking at borough property on the north end of the island, said Blake Rider. He and Haas were scheduled to attend the assembly meeting for the presentation.

Initially, it might mean about a dozen jobs in town, Haas said. “We want people to stay in Wrangell.”

The third partner is Kyle Farley-Robinson. Both he and Rider have electrical engineering degrees from the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Rider has been working on SCADA systems for almost 20 years, and the two engineers have worked on a variety of setups throughout the state.

All three live in Juneau.

Farley-Robinson, Rider and Haas said the team has two prototype systems up and running, which they self-funded over the past six months.

The partners want to avoid relying on venture capital from outside the state, Haas said.

Structure’s business plan is to design, construct and market a system that is less expensive and easier to use than existing options, which generally are sold by larger companies. They want to start with rural communities in Alaska because they are the most challenging, but the system will be widely available, Haas said.

They are creating their own visuals for the software end of the system to make it more understandable for users, part of their drive for an improved system that operators can run without so much costly, specialized training, he said.

“While the business goal is to build a novel system, we want to do this with the communities that we’ve been working in so long,” Rider said. “We’re trying to provide a system that is so intuitive and easy to use that operators can build and maintain their own systems versus needing integrators like me.”

SCADA systems are in operation across the state and worldwide, Farley-Robinson said, including wastewater systems and schools in rural communities in Western Alaska, North Slope oil producers and hydroelectric power stations on Prince of Wales Island.

The business partners see Wrangell as a good location for assembling the telemetry units and training operators.

Training rural Alaskans in the system would help communities avoid the high cost of flying in technicians, Haas said.

“Wrangell is strategically a good spot,” Rider said. It has available land, a deepwater port, affordable hydroelectric power and an eager team of borough officials, Haas added.

“Wrangell has the type of people … who would want to work at something like this,” Rider said.

Rider, who worked on the SCADA system for Wrangell’s old water treatment plant, also worked on the system for the new plant that went online last year.

In addition to the three friends working together on the venture, they have “20 or so” software developers and others with different skillsets helping with the effort, Haas said.

• This story originally appeared in the Wrangell Sentinel.