Thought Leadership from Sieben Energy Associates

We will host a brown bag lunch seminar entitled "What Makes a Successful Retro-Commissioning Project" later this month. The seminar will commence at 12 noon on Wednesday, February 15, in the Harris Bank Building, 115 South LaSalle Street, Chicago. Sieben Energy Associates has to date performed over 80 retro-commissioning projects, comprising over 55 million square feet of building space.

During this seminar, we will draw upon our leadership and expertise in retro-commissioning to advise members of the Building Owners and Managers Association of Chicago (BOMA Chicago) on the project attributes that lead to a positive outcome. This event is listed on the BOMA Chicago website.

Jerry Burin, vice president and partner at Sieben Energy Associates, recently authored an article on the value of long-term energy planning. ​In his article, Jerry provides sound rationale for "the orderly execution of an energy plan aligning with the organization's other long-term planning objectives."

Rather than approaching energy management as a series of ad hoc tactical initiatives, adopting a strategic approach can achieve greater success and a stronger return on investment. The article was published in the January 2017 issue of Building Operating Management magazine and appears in three parts online.

On the evening of Tuesday, December 6, Sieben Energy Associates attended the Illinois Chapter of ASHRAE's annual holiday party. For the second year in a row, we left with brand new hardware recognizing our energy efficiency work. We were honored by our industry peers with two Excellence in Engineering Awards for projects completed in 2016. The Chapter hosted the party at the Metropolitan Club on the 66^th and 67^th floors of Willis Tower in downtown Chicago.

Joining us at the ceremony were representatives from the client organizations with whom we worked on the award-winning projects. Thanks to the esteemed judges for recognizing the innovative and cost-effective approaches to energy efficiency our engineers demonstrated in their work.

We use SkySpark, a software platform from SkyFoundry, to perform monitoring-based commissioning. In SkyFoundry's words, SkySpark is: "A Revolutionary New Technology for Transforming Smart Device Data Into Business Solutions."

​ The September 2016 issue of SkyFoundry Insider, their company newsletter, focuses on "how engineering firms are using SkySpark to deliver significant financial results and help owners and operators make energy and operational efficiency improvements permanent." Sieben Energy Associates is one of the specialty consultants featured in this issue. One of our recent monitoring-based commissioning project is described on pages 5 and 6. For this project, we were engaged by Transwestern, the building management company for 500 West Madison, formerly known as Citigroup Center Chicago

As we reported on July 11, one of our retro-commissioning projects was a finalist for the Michigan Governor's 2016 Energy Excellence Award in the "Best Projects – Commercial (Private)" building category. We had nominated Matt Roman and Visteon for the award. 

The ceremony was a roaring success. The Odawa Casino Resort, owned by the Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians in Petoskey, won the award in the commercial (private) category.