Tag Archives: Performance

Performance Contracting Helps Save on Energy Costs

Performance Contracting Helps Save on Energy Costs

To improve energy efficiency, some companies are doing more than just turning out the lights at the end of the day.

As soaring energy costs increasingly affect the bottom line of U.S. businesses, the “energy performance contract” has become an attractive solution for commercial building owners. This contract is a financing or operating lease offered by an energy service company, also known as an ESCO, to help businesses improve the energy efficiency of their buildings or facilities.

The key to energy performance contracting is to use long-term utility savings to fund the improvements. The ESCO often guarantees energy savings that will meet or exceed annual payments to cover all project costs, usually over a contract term of seven to 20 years.

“A building owner either pays a utility for an inefficient building, or they can pay an ESCO to improve their building,” says Jeff Stokes, a vice president at World Energy Solutions, a publicly traded ESCO (symbol: WEGY) based in St. Petersburg, Fla.

World Energy Solutions strives to reduce kilowatt usage by up to 30 percent. The company offers a variety of services, including utility billing and rate analysis, energy auditing, installation of building improvements, building systems maintenance and ongoing monitoring and verification of the energy savings.

ESCOs can provide flexible and unique ways to finance their services. For example, World Energy Solutions offers to pay the

total up-front cost of installation as well as equipment maintenance in return for an 80 percent share of the actual savings realized over a minimum 10-year period.

“In some cases, our company will fund the entire installation, at no charge to our customer, and live off the savings we generate over a certain amount of time,” says Ben Croxton, chief executive officer of World Energy Solutions.

ESCOs not only identify energy-saving opportunities, but also develop engineering designs and specifications and manage the entire process. They also can provide staff training and ongoing maintenance services.

Even the federal government has gotten into the act, and for good reason: Executive orders that require federal agencies to use 35 percent less energy by 2010 in comparison to 1985 levels will require billion in energy projects. Much of that will go to “Super Energy Savings Performance Contracts,” offered by the Department of Energy.

Recognizing “Smart” Performance Can Be Difficult

Acknowledging “Smart” Performance Can Be Difficult

The monthly efficiency recognition awards have actually come round once more however, again, Fiona White makes sure she will not be including. Fiona is a constant administration employee. She is well arranged as well as removes her desk of the day’s work without making hassle or having 5-minute panics like some of the others seem to do. She frequently aids these individuals out due to the fact that she has enough control over her very own job to be able to reschedule things. Nonetheless she is not a high profile income earner for the firm. She’ll never ever make the huge sales, discuss the mega-deals or save business thousands through the job that she does. She understands she is one of the better performers in her area yet does any individual else?

Since the advent of ‘time as well as activity’ research studies there has been an understanding of the difference between working hard and working clever. Some people prefer to work in a state of mayhem. It provides them with the difficulty that possibly the work does not. They can fight poor organization rather of strolling along getting the job done. Making substantial accomplishments for them constantly has the appearance of running a marathon.

Smart workers, on the other hand, might seem doing the matching of cycling downhill with their feet on the handlebars due to the fact that they have the work so well structured. They understand that both collections of outcomes, from the tough and the smart approaches, have comparable value and also they would be very unhappy if their sweating co-worker was rewarded with appreciation as well as they were not.

Individuals operating at the coal face of the organisation often understand exactly how to obtain results that will certainly draw in recognition. That they don’t do this permanently is a representation of their motivation as well as their understanding of the market value for their initiative. This can be seen most plainly where team are paid base pay. If more effort can achieve better revenue through benefits, overtime or a performance acknowledgment system they would choose to use this as opposed to make themselves a lot more effective.

These sights of performance could give a complicated photo yet all they actually do is verify that a “job well done” have to be seen in context. A coat of paint never did hide inadequate craftsmanship and also most work can be broken down right into the important phases of:

preparation and also preparation
product sourcing as well as processing
element production
top quality checking elements
item assembly
feature testing
top quality monitoring item
packaging
shipment

Even a composed file, a software application or a product design has to adhere to these steps otherwise the entire point will come back and attack your ankles.

Excellent performance worthwhile of praise will inevitably be a subjective judgment; nonetheless inspecting back to make certain that the appropriate steps have been complied with will certainly assist to place points in viewpoint.

Fiona White’s supervisor would certainly require some quite sophisticated radar to discover how well she was actually working because, allow’s encounter it, she may never ever obtain round to self-promotion.

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