Building Resilience Before Breaking Ground: Risk Lessons from Solar Projects

Solar Construction: A Contractor’s View of Risk and Resilience

As renewable energy projects continue to be planned and delivered, attention naturally focuses on technology, capital investment and project execution. Yet some of the most important decisions affecting project resilience are made long before the first pile is driven into the ground.

It is generally a much harder proposition to retrospectively address risks once construction has started. By that stage, costs tend to rise rapidly; schedules are often locked in, and options may become limited. In most cases, the greatest opportunity to improve outcomes exists earlier in the project lifecycle.

For project stakeholders, this presents an important shift in perspective. The challenge is not simply transferring risk. It is understanding where risk originates, who is best placed to manage it and how decisions made during planning can help influence resilience, insurance discussions, and project performance over the entire lifecycle.

The Earlier Risk Is Identified, the More Manageable It Can Become

In solar construction, known risks may become costly problems when they are inadequately understood, underestimated, or excluded from project assumptions.

Often, taking a little more time with site investigation and feasibility can provide for better outcomes in the long-term. Site conditions, geotechnical variability, constructability challenges, and grid requirements may have significant implications for cost, schedule, and execution.

Large-scale solar farms can involve hundreds of thousands of piles spread across vast areas of land. Ground conditions may vary significantly across a single site, creating challenges that may not become apparent until construction if adequate investigations have not been completed beforehand.

For project stakeholders, spending more time and effort understanding risk upfront often reduces both cost and uncertainty later. A modest investment in additional due diligence such as enhanced geotechnical investigations can help avoid substantial expenditure once construction resources, labour and equipment are fully mobilised.

Risk Allocation Can Matter as Much as Risk Identification

Identifying risk is only part of the equation. Equally important is determining who is best positioned to manage it.

Risks should be allocated to the party best placed to manage, control, or price them. In practice, this may include contractors, developers, insurers, or other stakeholders, depending on who has the greater ability to manage or price the exposure involved.

Problems often emerge when ownership of risk is unclear. Ambiguous responsibilities can result in risks being overlooked, under-managed, or transferred to parties without the necessary control or expertise to address them effectively.

For project stakeholders, this reinforces the importance of clarity. Effective risk allocation is not simply a contractual exercise. It is a practical discipline that aims to align accountability, decision-making, and mitigation strategies across all stakeholders involved in project delivery.

Solar Construction Is Increasingly Becoming a Logistics Challenge

While solar farms are often viewed primarily as engineering projects, their successful delivery can depend heavily on logistics and supply chain management.

Utility-scale solar developments often require significant shipments of equipment and materials sourced globally and delivered in a carefully planned sequence. Delays, storage issues, weather events, and supply chain disruptions can all affect project outcomes.

This creates an ongoing balancing act. Excessive inventory can increase exposure to weather-related losses and damage, while insufficient inventory may create costly delays if supply chains are disrupted. Finding the right balance is generally considered one of the industry’s key operational challenges.

Operational discipline can also be significant. Well-organised sites, effective inventory management, and clear construction planning are often strong indicators of broader risk management maturity.

For insurers and project stakeholders alike, these practical indicators can help provide valuable insight into how risk is being managed on the ground.

Designing for Resilience Can Require Trade-Offs

Many construction risks can involve balancing competing objectives rather than selecting a single optimal solution.

Road infrastructure provides a useful example. Access roads generally need to support heavy construction traffic and maintain site access during adverse conditions. At the same time, developers must balance cost, environmental requirements, and site design constraints. Striking the right balance between appropriate design, resilience and cost can be a key challenge.

A similar dynamic exists in relation to trenching, cable installation and other construction activities where insurance requirements, engineering considerations and operational practicality intersect. Early engagement between project stakeholders can help ensure these factors are understood and addressed before designs are finalised.

Resilience often requires informed trade-offs, rather than a single ‘best’ solution. Those trade-offs often need to balance risk, cost, and long-term project performance.

Technology Is Helping Manage Hail and Wind Exposure

Hail, wind, and other weather-related exposures remain significant considerations for solar projects.

Encouragingly, technological innovation is helping improve resilience. Advances in tracking systems, automated weather response capabilities, and enhanced module designs can provide new tools to help manage weather-related risks.

However, technology alone may not be sufficient. Construction and commissioning phases can present elevated exposures, particularly during transitional periods when systems are installed but not yet fully operational. These moments may require careful planning, monitoring, and decision-making.

As weather-related exposures remain a major consideration, resilience is likely to depend on combining technology, operational preparedness, and robust risk governance.

From Compliance to Continuous Improvement

A key lesson for risk professionals is that effective risk management should not be viewed simply as a compliance exercise.

Mature risk management is best embedded into day-to-day project decisions, rather than treated as a monthly compliance exercise. Monitoring, feedback loops, and the use of both leading and lagging indicators can help organisations continuously improve performance across projects and portfolios.

This approach can benefit more than individual projects. Reduced claims, greater predictability, and stronger risk management practices can improve confidence across the broader ecosystem, including underwriters, brokers, banks, and developers.

In an industry competing to deliver low-cost generation, disciplined risk management can support confidence and help projects be delivered more effectively.

Conclusion

As utility-scale solar projects involve large sites, complex logistics and multiple delivery risks, resilience should be considered and designed into projects from the outset.

Stronger project outcomes are more likely when risks are identified early, allocated clearly, managed collaboratively, and improved through feedback loops throughout the project lifecycle.

For developers, contractors, insurers and risk stakeholders, the opportunity is clear: move risk conversations further upstream. Better information, stronger collaboration, and more disciplined decision-making before construction begins can help deliver better project outcomes, support more constructive insurance discussions, and help projects be delivered with greater resilience.

To explore how these pre-construction risk principles could help strengthen your next solar or renewables project – visit our Renewables Insurance and Risk Management page or complete the short contact form to speak with an Aon specialist.

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These insights were originally shared at Aon’s 4th Renewable Energy Insights Forum in Sydney in March 2026.