Recently the Department of Energy (DOE) and the Governor’s Energy Office of Colorado (GEO) sponsored a workshop in the GEO’s offices to discuss the current needs and spending impediments of Colorado grantees. The workshop covered the current situation of the EECBG program, the future goals of the program, and how to help the slower spending grantees accelerate or facilitate their spending.

A common theme of the meeting was that there are sustainability managers at cities or counties that are trying to implement energy efficiency programs in their entities’ facilities. However, the sustainability managers, at times, are not experts in facility retrofitting. Because they lack the necessary skills to develop an energy retrofit program, they need to work with their local facilities staff to get the requisite information and implement the program. There is oftentimes a technical information gap between the EECBG grant managers and the facility personnel and in order to communicate effectively, it is important that EECBG grant managers speak with and understand the needs of their facility staff and vice-versa.

At this meeting several of the EECBG grant managers, who lack technical retrofitting know-how, were able to speak with both grant managers in their same position and ones that were very experienced with facilities management. This peer-to-peer exchange fostered a sense of community and enabled the less experienced grant managers to learn from the more experienced ones. In fact, by the end of the meeting, one of the grant managers actually invited a more technically focused grant manager to a meeting with her city’s facilities staff in order to help her communicate the requirements and goals of her city’s EECBG projects to the facilities team.  

This theme of more experienced grant managers working with less experienced grant managers seems to be repeating itself not just in facilities but for every portion of the grant management and technical implementation.  There have been grant managers that are experts in anything from Davis-Bacon to street lighting that have met with grant managers that are new to the process.

So, if you are interested in peer-to-peer matching as either an expert or as someone who is looking for answers, the DOE regional coordinators have created a database of grantee experts that are willing to speak with other grant managers. This peer-to-peer matching has become a valuable way to flow information from one grantee to another and expand the network of people working in the broader field of sustainability. If interested in participating, please comment below or call your regional coordinator or project officer in order to inform them of your interest in being matched with another grantee.

Content for this blog post courtesy of Micah Brill, South Central Regional Coordinator, ICF International.