By: Karen Penafiel, Vice President, Advocacy, BOMA International
At its Every Building Conference this summer, the Building Owners and Managers Association (BOMA) International announced the relaunch of its BOMA Energy Performance (BEPC) toolkit. BEPC is an industry-vetted, proven process to plan, procure, and implement performance-driven building retrofits that has been used in successful projects around the world. For this reason, BEPC and the Investor Confidence Project (ICP) are a “natural fit.”
ICP, an Environmental Defense Fund initiative designed to unlock investment in energy efficiency, is accelerating the development of a global energy efficiency market by standardizing how projects are developed and energy savings are calculated. Together, BEPC and ICP can be used to execute successful, reliable, investment-grade energy retrofit projects from concept through measurement and verification.
ICP’s Roadmap to Investor Confidence lays out six major steps in the project development cycle: origination, project development, quality assurance, certification, underwriting, contracting, and performance. BEPC includes a flexible framework and supporting toolkit of template documents that can assist building owners, operators, and program managers at each stage of this process. Two key areas where the BEPC toolkit is particularly useful in the ICP project development cycle are:
ICP and BEPC in Practice
The LA Better Buildings Challenge (LABBC) provides a real-world example of how all of these pieces come together at the program level. Funded by the local utilities, LABBC works as a neutral third party to facilitate development of Investor Ready Energy Efficiency™ projects utilizing ICP and BEPC best practices.
As part of its onboarding process, the LABBC works with property owners to understand their investment criteria, internal capacity to manage and execute projects, existing contractor relationships, and areas of interest and opportunity . Depending on the scope of the project, the owner’s internal resources, and contractor preferences, LABBC then recommends three firms from its list of prequalified Implementation Partners – each of whom has signed on to the BEPC Best Practices – and facilitates an expedited interview procurement process as described in the BEPC Toolkit. The selected Implementation Partner then conducts a comprehensive, investment-grade audit using an ICP-compliant software tool to facilitate quality assurance and certification by LABBC technical advisors and underwriting by the owner or third party funders. Once the scope of work is finalized, LABBC introduces the BEPC model contract language, including a full contract or contract exhibit to use with existing contract form agreements of the owner, to ensure that whatever agreement is used clearly addresses adjustments to the energy-use baseline, calculation of savings, transparent pricing, and measurement and verification.
ICP and the BEPC team are excited to continue finding ways to bring joint benefits of both programs to the retrofit industry. ICP is represented on the BEPC Advisory Board and the BEPC team and ICP plan to continue collaborating to increase the flow of rigorous, successful building retrofit projects.
ICP’s Roadmap to Investor Confidence lays out six major steps in the project development cycle: origination, project development, quality assurance, certification, underwriting, contracting, and performance. BEPC includes a flexible framework and supporting toolkit of template documents that can assist building owners, operators, and program managers at each stage of this process. Two key areas where the BEPC toolkit is particularly useful in the ICP project development cycle are:
- Origination – Service provider selection
- Project Development – Contracting for success
ICP and BEPC in Practice
The LA Better Buildings Challenge (LABBC) provides a real-world example of how all of these pieces come together at the program level. Funded by the local utilities, LABBC works as a neutral third party to facilitate development of Investor Ready Energy Efficiency™ projects utilizing ICP and BEPC best practices.
As part of its onboarding process, the LABBC works with property owners to understand their investment criteria, internal capacity to manage and execute projects, existing contractor relationships, and areas of interest and opportunity . Depending on the scope of the project, the owner’s internal resources, and contractor preferences, LABBC then recommends three firms from its list of prequalified Implementation Partners – each of whom has signed on to the BEPC Best Practices – and facilitates an expedited interview procurement process as described in the BEPC Toolkit. The selected Implementation Partner then conducts a comprehensive, investment-grade audit using an ICP-compliant software tool to facilitate quality assurance and certification by LABBC technical advisors and underwriting by the owner or third party funders. Once the scope of work is finalized, LABBC introduces the BEPC model contract language, including a full contract or contract exhibit to use with existing contract form agreements of the owner, to ensure that whatever agreement is used clearly addresses adjustments to the energy-use baseline, calculation of savings, transparent pricing, and measurement and verification.
ICP and the BEPC team are excited to continue finding ways to bring joint benefits of both programs to the retrofit industry. ICP is represented on the BEPC Advisory Board and the BEPC team and ICP plan to continue collaborating to increase the flow of rigorous, successful building retrofit projects.
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