Energy Star National Building Competition: Bootcamp Announced

This year’s Energy Star National Building Competition: Bootcamp, hosted by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, is a great chance for facility managers to transform their properties into lean, green, energy-saving machines.

Many building managers achieved impressive energy savings with the Energy Star “Battle of the Buildings,” and Bootcamp takes the competition to the next level with the opportunity to engage tenants and employees in creating a workplace culture of energy conservation. Plus, there’s the benefit of using Energy Star Portfolio Manager and other resources to achieve EPA recognition for environmental leadership.

Registration is open until July 31.

How it works:

o Sign up by July 31 to compete to reduce energy use in your building. There’s also an option to compete to reduce both energy and water use.

o Register up to five of your properties for the competition (service providers can enroll five properties per client).

o From September 1 to November 30, use Bootcamp Toolkits to share information with your tenants and employees about what they can do to be more energy and water efficient.

o Within each building type category, the building with the greatest reduction in total weather normalized source energy or water use per square foot (as reported in EPA’s Portfolio Manager tool) will take home the top honors.

Beyond cutting energy waste and saving money on utility bills, plus earning EPA recognition for environmental leadership, the Bootcamp program can help facility managers engage employees and boost workplace pride, and deliver value to tenants in the form of a more efficient workplace. The competition can help achieve lasting bottom line benefits in just three months.

What you need:

o A Portfolio Manager account. Use it to register for the competition. If you’re new to this free  benchmarking tool provided by EPA, you’ll need about an hour to set it up. (These short videos can walk you through the process: https://www.energystar.gov/buildings/training). Once you’ve registered, you’ll receive BOOTCAMP toolkits from ENERGY STAR. Get introduced to ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager.

o Utility data. To measure improvement, you’ll be asked to enter data twice: once at the beginning of the competition (data between August 31, 2015 and August 31, 2016); and once at the end of the competition (data between September 1, 2016 and November 30, 2016).

o If you qualify for recognition, you’ll need a Professional Engineer or Registered Architect to verify your data. Partner “training kits” which include posters, banners, social media graphics, and printable reminders, can be found at: https://www.energystar.gov/buildings/creative-graphics. There will be more kits going live on the website in the next couple of weeks.