Alex Debord – Quanta Aviation Services

When the Camp Fire destroyed Paradise, California, in November 2018, it killed 85 people and leveled nearly 19,000 structures. Alex Debord grew up there. In the aftermath, helicopter crews connected to what would become the Quanta Aviation Services network flew firefighting and infrastructure restoration missions across the region.

Alex Debord | Quanta Aviation Services | VP & CFO

Today, Debord is the Chief Financial Officer and Vice President of Quanta Aviation Services Group, the central aviation platform within Quanta Services (NYSE: PWR). But the title undersells the job. Following Quanta’s acquisition of PJ Helicopters, Debord arrived at a pivotal moment and—alongside a growing team and with the backing of Quanta’s corporate infrastructure—helped build out the enterprise support layer across what would become a portfolio of nine operating companies: finance, HR, IT, M&A integration, operational strategy, and technology infrastructure supporting one of the largest civilian helicopter fleets in North America.

The platform holds FAA Part 135 air carrier certification and supports powerline construction, aerial inspections, tree trimming, helicopter lift services, maintenance, and wildfire suppression. Its crews help keep the lights on and protect communities across the continent.

“My job is to make sure the financial architecture can support the mission — and then push the organization to think bigger about where we can go next,” Debord says.

From Wall Street to the field

Debord’s path to aviation started early and took several deliberate turns. His father, a financial advisor, introduced him to the mechanics of markets and corporate performance as a kid — sparking a fascination with how financial results drive investor behavior and what that reveals about the underlying business.

He studied business and finance at UC Berkeley, then went straight into investment banking at RBC Capital Markets, working on mergers, acquisitions, and IPOs. The work was high-stakes and technically rigorous, but Debord realized he wanted to be inside the operating companies, not advising them from across a conference table.

He moved in-house — first at Clorox, where he learned how large, process-driven organizations function, then at Sierra Nevada Brewing Company, where he ran budgeting, forecasting, and operational planning with significantly more autonomy in a mid-sized, founder-led environment. The contrast between the two shaped his approach to financial leadership: build strong processes, but stay close enough to operations to understand what the numbers actually mean.

Finding purpose in aviation

The turning point came during the COVID-19 pandemic. Debord was offered the opportunity to join PJ Helicopters, a helicopter operator and power line contractor recently acquired by Quanta Services. The role placed him squarely inside the infrastructure projects that shape communities — a world away from consumer-packaged goods.

The personal connection made it hit differently. This was the same network of aviation crews that had supported his hometown after the Camp Fire.

“Selling consumer products never felt like this,” Debord says. “Here, the helicopters we manage are literally protecting communities and keeping critical infrastructure running.”

He joined in 2021, initially supporting PJ Helicopters before the scope expanded rapidly as Quanta built out its aviation platform through acquisition. Today, Debord and his team oversee finance, operations support, HR, IT, and strategic planning across a portfolio of aviation businesses serving utilities, construction firms, and government agencies.

Scaling through acquisition

Growth through acquisition has defined the platform’s trajectory, and the integration work that makes each deal accretive rather than just additive has been a team effort — coordinated across Debord’s group, the leadership teams of acquired companies, and Quanta’s corporate resources.

Two recent additions illustrate the strategy. Wilson Utility Helicopters, the aviation arm of an Oregon-based powerline contractor, deepened integration between helicopter operations and large-scale transmission construction. Billings Flying Service, based in Montana, brought specialized wildfire suppression capabilities and hard-to-find expertise in maintaining heavy-lift Chinook helicopters — assets that are increasingly critical as fire seasons intensify.

In each case, the approach has been the same: preserve the leadership and culture that made the business worth acquiring, while layering in the financial controls, reporting standards, and operational infrastructure that come with being part of a publicly traded platform.

“We don’t acquire companies to replace their leadership,” Debord says. “We acquire them because those teams already know how to run these businesses. Our job is to give them better tools and broader reach.”

The resulting footprint spans operational bases across California, Oregon, Montana, Texas, Pennsylvania, Utah, and beyond — positioning aircraft near major infrastructure projects and wildfire-prone regions nationwide.

Building the machine

Aviation is an asset-intensive business. Helicopters are expensive to acquire, maintain, and crew. The economics come down to utilization — keeping aircraft productive and delivering measurable value to customers. Every idle hour is a cost without a return.

But the harder challenge isn’t managing individual aircraft economics. It’s building the organizational infrastructure to support a multi-entity platform that didn’t exist five years ago.

When Debord arrived, much of the enterprise support function was either nonexistent or fragmented. Working with Quanta’s corporate team and a core group of early hires, he helped stand up the functions that now span accounting, financial planning and analysis, HR, IT, payroll, and marketing across all nine entities. Together, the team developed the reporting standards, internal controls, and integration playbooks that allow acquired companies to plug into the platform without losing what makes them work.

The finance organization Debord has built at Quanta Aviation Services Group reflects his philosophy that developing people is inseparable from developing the business. Team members routinely take on responsibilities well beyond their original scope, and the results compound across the group. Trish Fleming, who oversees multi-entity accounting as senior controller, is one example. She came to the team from retail banking with no aviation industry experience. “When I transitioned from banking, I never imagined how far this path could take me — but Alex did,” Fleming says. “What sets him apart is how deeply he cares about the people he works with; if you have the desire to grow, he will find a way to help you get there. His mentorship has propelled my career well beyond what I thought was possible.”

“Watching people grow into roles they never imagined for themselves is one of the most rewarding parts of this work,” Debord says.

The shared goal is to build an organization that doesn’t depend on any single person — including Debord himself.

“I want the team to be able to run this without me someday. That’s the real measure of whether we’ve built something that lasts.”

Innovation & endurance

The aviation services industry is evolving. Drones and unmanned aerial systems are expanding what’s possible in inspection, monitoring, and vegetation management. Quanta Aviation Services is investing in these capabilities — not as a replacement for manned helicopter operations, but as a complement that changes the economics of how utilities manage their infrastructure.

The platform is also expanding into fixed-wing operations, building out a charter and mission-support capability that broadens the range of services available to customers. The long-term play is an integrated aviation services platform — rotary-wing, fixed-wing, and unmanned — that can serve utilities and infrastructure customers across every phase of a project lifecycle.

Technology investments extend beyond the aircraft themselves. The organization has become an early and aggressive adopter of artificial intelligence, deploying it not as a novelty but as core infrastructure. The team uses AI to accelerate financial analysis, streamline reporting across entities, support M&A integration work, and reduce the manual overhead that comes with running a multi-company platform on a lean staff.

What surprised Debord was how quickly people leaned in. There was no resistance, no waiting to be told it was safe. People across the organization saw what was possible and started running with it — testing workflows, flagging what worked, discarding what didn’t.

“That willingness to just try things is something I fell in love with about this team, and honestly about aviation and construction professionals in general,” Debord says. “These are industries where you don’t get to sit in a conference room and debate for six months. Conditions change, stakes are high, and the culture rewards decisiveness and resourcefulness. That same mentality translates directly into how this team adopts new tools.”

The approach is practical: identify the highest-leverage bottlenecks, build repeatable AI-assisted workflows, and free people to focus on the judgment-intensive work that machines can’t replace. The result is a small team that consistently operates beyond what its headcount would suggest — not because anyone is being asked to do more with less, but because the friction that used to slow them down is disappearing.

On the business development front, the organization is working to deepen relationships with utilities nationwide. Historically, some of the acquired operations relied on regional partnerships. The growing national footprint creates the opportunity — and the obligation — to build those relationships in new markets.

Outside the office, Debord pursues challenges that mirror the pacing his professional life demands. He’s an ultramarathon runner who regularly races distances exceeding 50 miles, with finishes well beyond 100.

“You can’t sprint an ultramarathon, and you can’t sprint building a company,” he says. “The discipline is the same — pace yourself, stay consistent, and don’t quit when it gets hard at mile sixty.”

For Debord, the CFO role has never been about the balance sheet in isolation. It’s about enabling the people, aircraft, and systems that support modern energy infrastructure and emergency response. In an industry where the stakes are measured in both dollars and human safety, that work carries weight — and for a kid from Paradise who watched his town burn, the chance to help build a team and a platform that fights back is not something he takes lightly.