Webinar: Benefits of ESPC for Finance and Leadership in the MUSH Market

all right hello every everyone thank you for joining us today and for spending part of your afternoon or late morning with us uh to learn about the benefits of espc for finance and Leadership teams in the mush Market uh my name is Daniel stockall and I'm a fellow at the department of Energy's State and Community energy programs office supporting our technical assistance resources for Energy savings performance Contracting or espc at the state and local level uh today's webinar is the part of our espc campaign initiative uh which is aimed expanding and enhancing the use of performance Contracting across the public sector so for those that have not yet joined the espc Campa espc campaign we welcome you to the webinar today and we hope that you consider joining if you find this event useful or informative uh and so before diving into today's content uh we do have a couple housekeeping rules to go over um first if you have any questions uh please post it using the Q&A feature uh attendees are in listen only mode today uh so we look forward to engaging with your uh with your comments and questions through this feature um we'll address your questions at the end as time allows and finally we are recording this uh webinar uh and we look forward to posting it on the doe YouTube channel afterwards and we'll make sure to follow up with this information for your convenience and with that out of the way we are joined today by a great panel of speakers uh and I'd like to introduce them to you all um and so first we'll be joined by Chris Halpin uh since 1985 Chris has worked for several Premier consulting firms in esos in Engineering Management and sales and is a former Global energy manager for a Fortune 100 company with almost 40 years of experience in managing comprehensive energy management programs and one of the first espc owners representatives in the industry Chris has shephered more than $3 billion dollar worth of espc and other complex energy deals success for the federal mush market and private clients and he is currently a consultant for ESC uh and for the US Department of Energy's Federal Energy Management program and the state and Community energy program here uh as well as Lawrence Berkeley National Labs and several private entities and Chris has a BS in mechanical engineering uh and he's a registered professional engineer in Nevada and an accredited certified energy manager and certified measurement and verification professional and he's been a US Department of energy certified espc project facilitator for over 20 years now and next up we'll have Shel Almas introduce her work for the city of Key West Florida sheel is the adaption and energy coordinator for the city of Key West and a former climate resilience research fellow for the national parks Conservation Association she has a bachelor's degree with honors and Environmental Studies specializing in Environmental manag and policy development from York University of Toronto Canada and with multiple certificates Yeah couple more speakers to introduce here um and as we'll share with us uh sheel is currently working on developing a 10-year energy reduction plan and is the primary liaison for the upcoming espc project for the city of Key West uh she's also on the steering committee for the city's first climate adaption plan which is in development um and we're also joined by Regina wheeler of the city of Santa Fe in New Mexico Miss wheeler holds a Bachelor's of Science and electrical engineering and a master of Science and environmental engineering and as a seasoned executive manager Miss wheeler has proven abilities to lead organizations to build capacity deliver on strategic goals and identify and respond to risks and opportunities while measuring progress and engaging a wide range of stakeholders uh during her career Miss wheeler has led private and governmental organizations through game-changing projects and initiatives such as conceiving and constructing the first lead certified solid waste facility in New Mexico and leveraging $1 million worth of legislative appropriation into a $17 million energy project for the City of Santa Fe and finally we have Steve Gail on today uh Steve is a 25-year Public Finance veteran with extensive background in the municipal Arena as the senior VP of Da Davidson company his area of expertise focuses on the visioning and execution of Energy Efficiency saving models building retrofits for Energy savings redundancy and Renewables Finance for local government entities um his practice is National and scope uh with cost-effective sustainability in the governmental sector as the main stay of his practice and he's a long serving member of the National Association of energy service companies the association of governmental Leasing and finance and a multi-chapter member of the Energy Services Coalition now with this great panel of experienced practitioners on Deck I'd like to pass it off to Chris to really set the scene for what we'll be covering today thanks all right thank you so much Daniel and uh thank you all the panelists for attending today I you're all very busy and we really appreciate your time and for all of you who have signed up to uh take part in this webinar we really truly appreciate your time again we know you have a lot going on and it's a busy time of year and we thank you for taking this hour out of your day so you know today we really want to focus on um talking about what it means for the uh finance and Leadership teams in the mush market for espc some of the common concerns questions I run into and then some of the key considerations and messaging that's used to to secure their participation and leadership in these projects so we've already gone through the introductions we'll talk about where we are in the espc process um we're going to get input from uh Santa Key West and from uh Steve on the finance perspective then we'll finish up with questions and discussions and then we're going to put up a few links to deal resources in some upcoming events all right uh Dub Taylor is going to start with our first poll if you can put that up there dub so just please uh follow along here what is your role or planed role in implementing an espc project it's multiple choice so please uh pick which one best fits you and we finishing up that poll I'm going to move on to the first slide start talking about where we are um Finance working with finance and Leadership teams happens throughout the process as as you would imagine right from inception through the end of the contract term so this could be 25 years in some cases right and you really want to start off at the very very beginning because you need approval and you need money to two most important things to do any project really right and so we're not going to go through this this has been in all the trainings and things we've done so far but these are primarily the five different phases of espc according to Department of energy right so as you hear things being talked about uh during this webinar they all have been occurring during these various phases of energy savings performance Contracting is this moving there we go and this is there's a lot on this slide and this is mainly for a takeaway for everybody um but having done this as an owner's rep for 25 years these are a lot of the things that I have seen in the marketplace including funding constraints you know the tight budgets that you all live with you end up having limited Capital you're competing priorities there's always lots of reasons why it's hard to get these things done and espc really addresses this it's difficult to get decisions made on a consensus basis as as all of you know you always have to worry about the Politics as we're seeing now with you know the change in federal administrations there's things that need to be thinking about there's sometimes a very large technical expertise Gap especially if you're a small organization you don't have a whole engineering department to basically act as your back bench and really need to go and secure outside help you know committing to long-term contracts is a really big problem for for many entities that's why a lot of States put enabling legislation in place for espc to allow all their agencies and all the local governments to be able to get above and beyond the standard you know design bid build one-ear funding uh problem and learning how to really measure verify the savings that are the backbone of these espc projects right because you're banking on that literally in figuratively to be the money you're going to use to pay off your loan right that we're going to uh Steve's going to talk about later on and finally Regulatory Compliance issues most of you that are in the government in in various different uh ways or school systems or NOS or whatever you have strict regulatory Frameworks so you have to try to make all these different things fit within that framework that you have and espc is is great at being able to manage these things but you have to make sure you you you all your procurement regulations right which which can be pretty difficult sometimes and what it really requires is everybody working together right from from the beginning all the way through the end to make one of these projects work okay all right so now we're going to get into uh the meat of the uh presentation so first we'd like to start off with the shidel alas from City of Key West sh welcome to the program hello everyone thank you for um inviting me over to speak today um a little bit about Key West before uh I start so we are a um remote island Coastal Community we are in city um we are 120 miles away from the mainland and we are 4X one miles um in in Geographic space um and as everyone know uh West is absolutely gorgeous but we do have our issues that we deal with um some of the issues that we have is shortage of staff and local contractors uh who shelter name it everything is very expensive down here um we do not have enough housing availability our electricity and water comes from 200 miles away from the mainland um and the city itself owns about 100 buildings 47 of which are in the historic um District next slide please so um there's there's quite a lot of reasons why we went with a uh espc route um so lack of local contractors we don't have enough contractors uh that are local to begin with and the ones that we do have are very much focused on residential and Commercial they're too busy to take on any City projects um the secondly if we were to get um any other contractors that are not esos and if we don't choose the espc route we'd be paying a lot of money and just travel and um stay cost on top of the project cost for contractors so we knew uh we also knew that our in-house staff won't be able to take on um retrofits for our buildings so we do have 100 buildings uh interestingly we've done this before uh we one of our police stations that is 24,000 square feet uh we had our uh Community Services um um employees actually do the retrofits there only all they did was change lighting to LED lighting and it took us one year and we were like how are we going to achieve our energy resilience goals if it's going to take us one year to do one building um so we knew that uh we need a different approach and um therefore we wanted to go with an espc project that would kind of accelerate the process uh for us to achieve our energy goals um and then you know there were other issues like lack of funding waiting on grants um and the good thing with the espbc is that you could start a project with no uh upfront cost um and then third party finances financing is available for that so um we thought that was a great tool for us to use and to top everything off there's direct pay and tax credits that could really bring down the project cost um and then the last thing that we we really loved was um guaranteed savings you know you can't find guaranteed savings when you work with any other contractors and a espc approach kind of gives you that guaranteed savings um to do the work and um there was another thing that really gave us the satisfaction to do an um Energy savings performance contract was the fact that you know esos really um rely on reputation for future business and they're working with like Federal and federal government and mush markets um and a good reference means future business so we knew um that we could trust this process next slide please so challenges that we face so uh I started this position about a year ago and my role was new this position was new um I come in first month into my position um I was told hey you know we want to we want to do an energy savings performance contract um and all we know about it that we can get our retrofits done with no uh upfront cost so you're going to this R3 conference and you're GNA learn about the whole process because we don't know we don't know enough uh so it was it was really interesting I had a lot of fun with it uh although it was challenging I didn't even know what questions to ask at first um and I found out that every question that I asked every response gave me like raised like five more questions I was like okay let's find out answers to these five questions now um so those were some of the challenges to just finding information and then uh when it came to our finance department um we talked to them about hey this is what we're planning to do and their biggest question was like how do we procure this um and then when we presented to our city manager uh and our upper management they were like we've never heard of this before uh we need to see more CI do it so like it's going to be a no for now like we don't know what you're talking about uh so those were some of the challenges that we faced and um we knew that we needed an different approach the good thing for us was that our upper management changed so it worked out for us but changing of uh upper management could be a potential um challenge for other other governments and then another challenge was not having data available all in one place so um I had to work reach out to different departments find out who has building information utility information as well as meter numbers like where could I find out all this information so I had to collect all that and it was a process of its own um next slide please so how have you managed to get finance department upper management on board um well what we did was used trusted messenger and what what this really means like we connected our finance director who had a lot of questions with a finance director and finance staff from other cities and they were able to speak in their Finance language and communicate and that build that trust that okay they have done this before uh we also invited Timothy D anra who's the executive director of nesca who I met at at the R3 conference in New Orleans last year um and you know a really nice person always happy to help and speak to uh mush markets and local governments and we had him present to our um staff as well as upper management and you know that really that really also helped us um and the number one selling dialogue that we used with our upper management and our finance department was guaranteed saving like we kept pushing on hey we're going to get guaranteed savings so no matter what happens these savings are guaranteed that will get through an espc espc route um and um we also made a list of Florida cities who have successfully completed an espc project we also used a dollar value while we talk to upper management to like sell our project to get them to approve an espc so we can get started um you know a lot of times they don't understand when we speak like oh we'll reduce this much you know energy in kilowatts per hours so that um putting a dollar sign next to it like is very useful so we're are in the process we just finished ranking our RFP for an owner's representative yesterday uh fingers crossed looking for looking forward for an approval from the commission um next month and um I won't get into uh the benefits of O but all I would like to say is that um for me the biggest thing was that I would get that extra help of expertise to overseeing like commissioned reviews and IGA report reviews and some of the recommendations that are a lot more Technical and I don't have expertise in it next slide please um and just take away from my journey that I like to share is you know I highly encourage you to build your interdepartmental team early on in the process it'll make your entire journey of work through your espc project a lot more smooth and a lot more efficient Benchmark your properties early on in the process uh network with your peers ask a lot of questions with peers from other governments who are in your same position um and you do and once again you do not need to have engineering or architectural experience to lead an espc project um that's where the O could help you uh use dollar values to communicate and highly highly recommend the PCN RC certificate series that's something that I did to better understand uh what o could do for um for us as well as a lot more detail on the espc and that is all for me thank you thank you so much we really appreciate those comments it was great I'm done with so much passion and enjoyment that's so nice to see thank all right thanks sh okay up next from City of Santa Fe New Mexico Regina wheeler uh thank you so much Chris and um thanks for having me um I'm going to talk a little bit about a project that the city of Santa Fe just completed so we'll take it from the theoretical what you'll want to do to what we did and how we got it done um this uh road map that Chris showed earlier is exactly how I think about the project and I think if if you think about the project this way it'll be really helpful because it is complicated but it's cookie cutter all at the same time um so uh next slide please so the city of Santa fe's project took us five years from the very beginning planning stages to the actual completing of construction stage which we we just completed you can see in about mid 2024 um and we the way we started was um we invented this idea to tell the state legislature that we we needed a $1 million appropriation that we would leverage against private financing to make a really big splash and solar to really move our sustainability goals forward that resonated really strongly with our state legislature because of course you know um we're a democratic State and and people really uh believe in global warming here and want to do all the actions they can to mitigate um and address climate change so five years through the process just take it step by step uh but we got a lot done and it started out with the idea to leverage a grant that's really important so simple million dollars made all the difference here um and I'll tell you a little bit more why next slide um so the in the end of the day we started out with a million dollars we ended up putting solar on 22 sites 17 of those sites were our water pumping facilities um so 23 solar arrays all in all you see the picture here where we put this carport near our public pool um it's also connected to a senior center on the same site so that array is uh serves 80% of the use of those two facilities we saved over 7 million kilowatt hours of uh electricity per year with our conversions and 2,000 gallons of 2 million gallons of water per year which is a a big deal here in the Arid Southwest so really exciting results um and we'll talk a little bit more how we got there next slide so the big deal is to align the project with already adopted City goals and policies so the city of Santa Fe has a sustainable Santa Fe plan that was adopted just a few years ago it has a whole bunch of specific activities outlined in it you know adding solars definitely one switching to LEDs and being more energy efficient is another um you know reducing our overall climate impact is another so we were able to align this project concept our planning phase both with the state legislator's goals as well as with the city's established policies and then we just spoke really simply we said to the I mean the sentence to the legislature was one long sentence it said we'll use a million dollars leverage against private financing to solarize every facility in the city of Santa Fe that is feasible super clean Super people are like wow really you can do that um then you know the the seed money I think is a really good way to just F nobody asked any questions since we had a million dollars even though an Esco will tell you that you can enter the contract for the investment grade audit without any money because it'll be waved if you move forward with the construction in the state of New Mexico you have to encumber the cost of the IGA the investment grade audit just in case you don't move forward it gives it complete you have to leave each governing body decision autonomous so anyway we have had that seed money it was like we have the grant here we are encumbering for the investment grade audit the governing body just felt like they were be being given one big gift that helped them achieve their goals um procurement is one of the steps in the process um in the state of New Mexico the state has actually done a Cooperative procurement that all Municipal entities can use of esos and they have a template contract they also certify the results that the Esco comes up with so when the Esco says here's your facility Improvement measures here's your savings the state of New Mexico reviews that and certifies it so that just really helps so you know like where shidel said that her leadership said I've never heard of this thing our leadership feels confident that the experts at the state have reviewed it and yay verily we're going to have that savings that the that the Energy Services contractor is is guaranteeing um we really included 45 facilities in our review um all of our water pumping stations all of our Wastewater facilities all of our buildings um or you know a lot of them anything that seemed even feasible so I would say you know especially your utilities utility departments really look at the long-term financials and so if you can say you pay for the improvement over 20 years but the next 15 after that are just Revenue or saving straight up savings to the Enterprise fund that that's really compelling for a utility uh Enterprise fund and then it's funny that I put number six as just the strong financial and legal support not to forget the Energy Services Company support it's absolutely essential you know we don't have that kind of expertise to evaluate the facility find out what the improvements would be and then calculate the savings but they sure did they looked at every single one of our utility bills they understood the average annual energy use they could size the solar they could identify inefficient Transformers um underperforming uh solar facilities all those kinds of things so really important to have the really strong financial legal and Energy Services Company professional support because these are complicated contracts when when you go out to the market to uh Bond you know to get $17 million for an energy contract uh for energy project that contract is complicated um and you're going to definitely need your bond professionals your you know your funding Market professionals your legal professionals uh um and then one more thing I should mention here that I that I think shidel mentioned better and I didn't which is that when you're looking at all these different facilities in the city it's important to think about the relationships of the ownership because for instance our W surface water treatment plant that got about a megawatt out of three megawatts of solar that we installed there that's a quasi governmental entity of its own so we had to get the county involved we had to get an agreement with them we had to get their board to approve it um so it's really actually I could have done a better job of early early on realizing how many entities were players in this project um but we did end up bringing them all along and they were super grateful because they have these goals and here we were in Action meeting them next slide yeah so that's our project um it we did a we did a you know it took us five years we we got we did it through covid we did it with a little bit of seed money um and now you know just so lucky when we did the project there weren't tax incentives for governments but we installed a megawatt um of solar after January 2023 so we're we're um submitting for tax credits now of a million dollars and that's my story all right fabulous that is so nice to hear great job and you know five years over the pandemic the fact that you got that far a lot a lot of folks are still kind of stuck right it's still two three years later and they've just gotten stuck so you know Hots off that's a fantastic job all right thank you Regina really really appreciate it okay uh next we have uh Steve Gail from da Davidson uh thank you good afternoon everybody U as I said my name is Steve Gale with da Davidson company and we provide uh project financing for Esco related projects and energy projects on a national basis um when you think of financing traditionally or typically what we've seen is um the process is that an escal gets that is thought of is Esco gets selected the project gets uh developed and then financing is thought of um and that what we found is that uh because they think that the en because the Esco is providing a guarantee that the financing is automatic because the financing is U predicated upon the financial strength of the Esco when in fact what is ha what happens is the Esco is guaranteeing F it's guaranteeing savings they're not guaranteeing the payments so the underlying credit of the issuer is key uh and that's why instead of moving it in the financing in the uh at the closing time it needs to be considered in the beginning time of the project so you instead of just selecting an Esco what you want to do is develop an overall team somebody the Esco to help Define the project uh with the issuer and the financial experts to help us start us with the structuring of the financing looking at doing the due diligence portion of it um things that we look at is that we we start looking at the financing not only do we U we start doing the due diligence looking at the audited financial statements to see make sure that uh there's a u that there's Financial strength we look at things that we know that uh Finance years U the ones that are going to be buying the instrument the financing instrument are going to be looking at if it's a we look at the demographics of the community of the school district uh what their population Trends are what the enrollment Trends are for a school district uh we look at uh for utility if it's utilities involved uh we look at if there's large users what's going on what the collection rates on the system are what uh if the if a larger user uh would l leave what kind of impact would it have on the system uh with school districts and with uh cities and counties uh what um what type of Trends uh with their assess valuation uh is the community grow is the population growing is there being investment made in the community is there is the community stable um so we take into all those things and we were able to then uh help uh determine if okay what if this project this community or um School District may have a a huge projects but they can't afford that we can then uh work at the beginning rather than letting a huge project get developed is something that can't be financed so that's why you want to get the um the uh financer and or the somebody as the finance professional involved early in the stages to help with the preliminary stages of the planning once that is deter then we start working with the Esco um as they develop the savings uh we start running preliminary numbers because not all projects have are 100% savings so there might be a components of the project that do not provide savings such as there might be you putting a new raw fund a building that will it won't provide savings but it's necessary to the overall project so we can um start developing the financing and um running preliminary numbers and uh the structuring of the financing and then at the final is the closing part of it um and that's where we start talking um well let me back up what we also do is you want the finance professional to be able to come in to your community and talk with the um your city councils your board your school boards because um you know all politics are local and the last thing that your the decision makers want to do is go to the coffee shop and then have to and somebody ask them how are they doing the financing and they say well XYZ from there U 200 mil away 500 mil away said this is the way to do it we don't understand but they've done it before they you want to make sure that everybody's educated and has an understanding of the financing so they might so that they can uh discuss it as well the final Parts is then the structuring of the financing itself once the project is determined uh restructure the financing is uh completed and then determin it how you're going to uh access the markets you can access it by doing a private placement um if it's you might have to do it where the private placement is where you go to individual Banks it's a story issue that there the city or the school district might have experienced some hiccups in their um like their enrollment went down for some odd reason that uh that it can be explained away that and that the uh enrollment would be coming back or the a large user might have left but we have a new one coming in to replace it and so it might be a story financing or you want to just start contacting individual financial institutions to uh purchase the issue it may be that you want to do a private placement where it's uh competitively bid uh and private placements the reason you do those is one they it's a lot quicker and uh it's less cumbersome but then you can also do a competitive bid um going to the private Mar or to the public market which may get you overall interest uh better interest rate so we want to sit down and go over all the options with the uh Community or the school district or County and so that uh and determine what is the best for that institution uh and then after that uh once everything is done uh you want to be able to compile it is uh because if you go into a private placement Thea the even though it's bid and you put the parameters on the bid proposals a lot of them will provide you with what they want not uh specifically what you want in terms of um different comp um like call Protection um so you want to try we you want your financial uh person to be able to get it as close to Apples as apples as possible and then U after that we make a recommendation but the final decision if this is all private placement on the final decision the um decision on the financing which which Finance here is um or financing institution that is purchasing the issue is best for the community sometimes it may be a local bank otherwise times it may be a National Institution that buys the instrument um let me back up a minute one other thing in your due diligence stages that you want to look at is the if the U issuer has outstanding debt uh outstanding bonds you want the the financier needs or the financial expert needs to look at those indenters to see if there's any um nuances with that in issue uh your existing issue that would preclude if you're going to do a lease financing using um some of the equipment for collateral on the issue okay and that's all I have all righty thank you much Steve well as you can all tell financing is one of the single most important pieces of this right really what drives espc most of the rest of these deals are Technical and contractual which happens all the time whether you're doing design bid builds design build whatever but providing enough financing upfront like sheel was saying and not having to come up with any extra funding from the beginning like Regina was saying using that little bit of um appropriated capital or or a grant or something and using the private financing to leverage it is so unbelievably powerful I mean it's it's it's hard to uh not continue to say more about it so uh thank you all for uh providing us this great input it's uh truly enlightening and educating and uh redeeming for folks like this who've been in this uh business a while um so we'd like to move into the Q&A uh portion of the program like we said at the beginning if you have any questions um please type them into the Q&A feature I I can't see I'm trying to get my screen down here there is where's Q&A come on it just keeps disappearing on me here we go Q&A we have two questions it looks like all right that was it okay so looks like we don't have any other questions luckily I prepared a few questions um for the panelists here unless Steve Regina shid you have any particular questions you'd think you'd like to to talk about or things that came up that somebody else said or I can just ask give you these questions whatever you'd like to do one question I started getting is why use an Esco and not the the design uh bid build yeah and the answer that I usually give is um I equate it to somebody buying a house uh if you buy a house from a builder that's already built uh it's not necessarily what you want and so you end up and have to change things encourage additional costs so basically you're when you're buying that house you're uh getting change orders where if you do the you build your own house you select the Builder and you design the house and you build what you want that's what a esal by going the escal rod is you're you're getting what you want uh and no change orders because there's the project is guaranteed and and the beside the savings there's no you typically there's no change orders in the eso project yes one of my favorite favorite aspects of performance Contracting is I used to do this as an A young energy engineer in Florida actually uh doing energy Audits and then follow-up design and contract Administration and the contractors are constantly sending change orders back and forth claiming you know mistakes on the drawings and this and that and espc really made a huge difference uh um can I add to that though um yeah sure you know I I i' I'd beg to differ with that being the key point about why why to hire inesco you you can't find any design engineering firm that has the skills inesco has with respect to calculating Energy savings looking at energy bills you know it's not straightforward to project what your on Bill savings are with your electric bill if you've ever looked there's like all the tacted on charges and you know if you're going to reduce demand try it's that in itself is a you know PhD level science and then they also know how to walk through a building and really they know the top of the line like best Energy Efficiency you know um improvements that you can do they know solar you know you're not going to find an engineering firm that has the bread of expertise that you're going to find in an Esco our Esco in you know since we installed three megawatts of solar you know 22 arrays you know something like 5,000 LED lights there were change orders actually we found Cobble as we were trying to put in the ground Mount so we had to apply extra money for uh drilling through larger Rock than was planned um but and but the lucky thing that we did was is that the Esco um was really smart and put a significant $350,000 contingency on the $17 million project so we had room we we never actually had to amend the contract um and honestly that that um contingency came from the fact that the state of New Mexico exempts solar installations from state tax um so we had a GRT a gross receipts tax savings they keep it in the project we know that we're not going to have to spend it so it becomes a really good contingency so I think the real reason to get the Esco in there is because of their expertise in energy uh Improvement measures as well as uh guaranteed Energy savings uh learning how to read the electric bills like all that kind of stuff they are completely invaluable to the process yes that's fabulous point and you're spoton right because most Engineers that design things design new buildings and they design Renovations and there's no skin of the game right they do the design they basically walk away and again I used to work firm that did this when I was younger and you're right the the esos have got not only the evaluation capability right but then the implementation capability and they're experts at hiring the local subcontractor right they you know year out who you work with hires you know local electrical contractors right and they hire the solar installers and they hire the commissioning agents they do all these things that you just don't get otherwise right and all with one risk agent right one person or one one entity that's exactly right Chris that's a great point the expertise that was brought in on the construction side and local too so now we have these relationships with these local vendors who in installed our equipment and they'll be our long-term um maintenance providers but we didn't have to bring them in we didn't have to find them we didn't have to procure them it all came under that Esco contract really big way there's none of this right there's none of this you know it's it's their fault his fault her fault no it's it's the one company that your partner um okay just to add on to that and I think even on the finance side like finance department has to do a lot of procurement and it really helps them not to have to deal with like you know 50 different procurements because we're using a process that is just designed a certain way so I think that's all I think um espc is also very helpful to the finance department as well yes that's a great point we spent a fair amount of time of on that and I think that was our third training that we had did with you know reviewing the es RFP this and that and just the fact that your procurement and finance people don't have to fire hire four firms right they hire one firm right and just the time alone that gets spent doing that especially today's world right everyone inside of a city town or school district is doing five jobs right on average and you're adding yet another job to theirs that they really don't have the time for and it's something different right so you know bundle it all together and and make their life a little bit easier it's it's always great to be able to you know one of the things that has always struck me uh you know having done this as an owner's rep for 20 something plus years this first question is you know the finance and Leadership folks are always hearing from facilities people we need more money we need more money we need this fix we need this replaced and like yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah here's here's some more duct tape and bailing wire can you maybe next year right and it's it's constant and did you run into this um and if so were you able to really address this issue or are you planning on addressing this issue did you ask somebody specific that question Chris just that the three of you know Gina you you've focused on the solar um I saw in that last picture of your solar carport you heard solar powered LED in the background we actually did an Energy Services contract before this one just for HVAC upgrades actually there you go yeah and that you're right you're so right like you just cannot get your facility maintenance funded to the proper level we we've of course indicated to our decision makers that we need you know $6 million doar a year just to do regular maintenance investment in our 100 facilities to keep them from degrading in performance and value we're never we never get that money so you're I think you're right the espc um we didn't work with year out on the first project and I got to say the the product the investment grade audit produced by the first Esco was really hard to penetrate and understand so um you know year outs produces this really great document that's super actionable super clear um and uh but I think it is a I I mean I I think I will probably look at undertaking another project um to do more building controls and upgrade the HVAC and use anco for that I think it's a great idea that's great to hear right to here okay we've got about uh 10 minutes left is sheel Steve you want to add anything else yes um I'll add to this so it's very interesting that you bring this up and you know I myself have experience like visiting our buildings and just the facility staff come over and be like hey you know like so and so are issues with this building and work needs to get done and and um I discovered that we have two people um um in our community services department who actually um do all the building work um something that needs to be fixed a light that needs to be changed like maintenance and repair and um that is again shortage of Staff has been a huge problem for us and these two individuals like constantly managing 100 City owned buildings um and mainly focusing on the 53 that are city-owned in in the use of city employees um so that's a lot of work and I feel that um bringing an Esco on board would really really help them and give them that that help that they need it would be very helpful and the other thing about that you were mentioning before um the the espc pro uh process the entire process itself is very helpful in many different stages you know including their expertise and I think the the training and monitoring phase that actually helps staff understands that once implementation's been done um there's a training aspect included in it um and I I think that's like that's very helpful to our facility staff because then more of the staff members could learn how to operate um some of the things that we are looking to implement so that's fabulous fabulous points and um that really is one of the central benefits that I've seen doing this for decades both working on the Esco side in the 90s and then as an owner's rep is that you're really able to improve the everyday life of the people who keep your buildings running right and in different parts of the country you deal with different issues right in in the desert where Regina and I are it's dust is your enemy right the Sun and dust is your enemy and having lived a long time in Florida when I was young it's humidity and saltwater right the salt water gets over the saltwater spray especially on an island my goodness what that does to Rooftop HVAC equipment mind-blowing and and outdo air intakes and all that's right so it really does make a difference um and we appreciate that that that input um all right I think let's uh get moving on here to a couple of few slides maybe give people a few minutes back uh of their precious time so we've got a bunch of resources from the Department of energy and some upcoming events uh Energy Services Coalition has put together a bunch of uh podcasts around all of these topics right and um this 10113 introduces espc and considerations for leadership um doe has this old toolkit around espc right and there's including espc Champions toolkit so many of you who are watching this webinar are the the peers of sh orina at your particular organization these are meant for you right these are things that you can learn about how to really do these projects uh well um the pcrc uh course that shidel took which is so nice to hear I was lucky enough and outed enough to help take part in putting that together and it really is a fabulous tool a lot of folks inside doe and some of the National Labs started it and we kind of helped finish it up and it was aimed at owner reps but for anybody inside an organization who wants to work in espc it's what I don't know 15 hours is something like that couple two two to three days of your time you get a certificate if you're a you know professional need cus or pdh credits to to keep your license um it's it's a fabulous thing right so please check that out and these are all live links when you get the final version of this and uh when we distribute it you'll be able to click on these links and go to these um and there's a bunch of guides here right we're not going to go into all these but there's a lot of great things in here uh to help you then the campaign itself right this is a you know fabulous thing that you know uh Daniel's been working on here for the past year and Laura Carpenter who is lucky enough to be off on vacation right now has been doing doing a masterful job of of cat hurting all of us and and others to try to create this great campaign and we really hope that for those of you who are watching today and haven't joined you know please join this scintillating conversation is just one example of the kind of benefits you'll see um it allows you to really get in contact with with your peers like the folks on on this panel and others and really share perspectives on on what's worked what more importantly what hasn't worked right because those Lessons Learned often stay in the little silos of where where they happen don't often get shared across City County state lines even nationally and this is a a way to help you do that um The Campaign also provide you with an amplif amplification toolkit which is awesome I haven't again I've been doing this a long time I haven't seen anything quite like this before where it's all the tools in a box that you need to be able to create a program and and grow it right and share the knowledge and bring people in and and create something that really what will and and keep going down the road on your your behalf and and for me one of the best things about all of this it's demonstrating impact right we're using EO Express which you probably heard a bunch of times if you've been to any of these trainings as a uh it's a database that we're using to be able to take the uh kilowatt hours and dollars and everything else that's being saved through these performance contracts more the participants and supporters and put it into this bucket and we're going to aim for hitting a billion dollars in measured and verified savings sort of like the United Way campaign thermometer that's what we're going to do with kilow savings and dollar savings in uh epx and really giving you all a chance to Showcase your achievements right it's it's always fabulous for me to see this going on and hear about projects I never heard about before to see what the art is right and there's so many opportunities now with utility rates continuing to increase regardless of like who's in power in Washington right utility rates are going to continue to increase and we need more tools to be able to address that situation whether it's conservation whether it's just Financial uh fiduciary responsibilities there's a lot of different ways to attack these issues um so please again if if you've joined welcome to the team we' haven't joined you know please fill out this expression of Interest I think Daniel has put something in the chat um but you feel free to uh grab on to upcoming events we have uh three or four coming up in the next month or so uh just in a short two weeks from now uh we're going to be having this uh training on paying for your project sort of understanding how to fund these projects and leveraging the effect of espc on contributing funds right so similar to what regia was able to do with that million dollars we're going to be talking about how to do that over the course of an hour or so and then our um Brethren at the acle E have hired NCO to do these ecbg blueprint cohort trainings this next one's going to be on uh financing understanding Prof foras our project cash PL forers and how to secure financing right this is really really helpful to to know even you know a a longer course than what Steve was able to do for you in in 10 minutes uh today so please join that and then January 9th we're going to be talking about the performance period right we've done four trainings already that have gotten us through those four of the five phases of that uh the road map I showed you at the beginning this is going to be the last one in that series of how to really manage the project the one that's been completed quote unquote and you've accepted it how do you go into the next you know 5 10 15 20 years whatever the case may be for you and best practices are measuring savings and ensuring success all right so that's that should be interesting and then uh ACA is going to be holding another one Monday January 13th about Contracting learn about a standard contract forms and forming the contract which is really really helpful to know right these contracts are a mixture of services design construction measurement verification there's like five different contracts all wrapped up into one so you want to know as much as you can about this and lastly there's this office hours that the campaign is offering to have somebody either me or somebody like me who's a US Department of energy project facilitator get on the phone with you for an hour two hours or whatever it is about anything you want to talk about regarding performance Contracting or anything related to Performance contract right so it's it's you know really anything you want we don't have a set set of questions it's you you have a project you want to start right you have somebody above you you're not sure how to handle right you have colleagues who are naysayers right whatever it might be um we're here to help right and it's and it's all free of charge so I think with that we've got three minutes left um any final questions input see seeing now we have one thing in chat there we go I think that yeah we have already talked about that so with that thank you all very much enjoy the rest of your day and take care have a good holiday season thank you take care thank you thank you [Music] bye okay