Energy and Environment

Under a mandate to slash energy use, federal managers and procurement specialists are thinking creatively and saving billions of dollars in the process. And building occupants reap the benefits of better infrastructure-for example, state-of-the-art controls and sensors and thermostats on the heating, cooling and ventilation system.

The federal government is the largest energy consumer in the nation. Its half-million buildings have more than 3 billion square feet of floor space. Electricity alone costs more than $3.1 billion a year.

Raising the Bar

Halfway to their mandated goal of reducing energy use 30 percent between 1986 and 2005, federal offices got a jolt. On June 3, President Clinton issued an executive order requiring them to cut energy consumption 35 percent by 2010 and imposing tougher energy-savings reporting requirements on agencies. The White House expects this initiative to save $750 million a year. (At press time, a rider to a Senate appropriations bill proposed blocking implementation of the order.)

From 1985 to 1996, government decreased energy consumption by 15.2 percent per square foot. According to John Archibald, director of the Energy Department's Federal Energy Management Program, that required an investment of $2 billion and has saved $6.3 billion so far. But to meet even the 2005 deadline, the government needs to double the current rate of savings.

Plugging In Contractors

One way many offices are reaching for the goal is by using Energy Savings Performance Contracts (ESPCs). These agreements with private companies enable federal agencies to upgrade their facilities without laying out the money for the improvements. The contractor pays all up-front costs, including those to evaluate each facility's needs and buy, install, operate and maintain the equipment. The firm makes its money by taking a share of the savings over the life of the contract (up to 25 years).

With ESPCs, "the risk is on us," points out Lou Jonske of Johnson Controls, a leading ESPC contractor.

New "Super ESPCs" are indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity contracts for energy services negotiated by the Energy Department. Other agencies can use the contracts, cutting contract negotiation and award time. Super ESPCs are based on six regions in the country and on specific technologies. The first were awarded to 10 vendors for the West Coast in May 1997. The Army's Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Ala., and the Energy Department also have master contracts that other agencies can use; the Air Force has one available to installations throughout the service.

First delivery orders on the Super ESPCs were awarded in June this year. They provide for such things as:

• Energy-efficient lighting, occupancy sensors and more at the Coast Guard Support Command in Kodiak, Alaska. (Anticipated savings: $228,824 a year for seven years on an investment of $954,353)
• Lighting upgrade and pumping changes at the Federal Aviation Administration's Air Traffic Control Center in Auburn, Wash. (Investment: $527,000; estimated savings: $102,263 a year for 12 years)
• Boiler replacement, an energy control system and more at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in San Francisco. (Investment $4.8 million; estimated savings: $528,000 a year for 19 years)

In June, the Defense Department awarded a contract to upgrade energy performance at 800 buildings at five Army installations in the Washington area to Viron Energy Services of Kansas City, Mo. The $200 million contract-the largest ESPC-will run 18 years and is expected to save almost $220 million over the life of the contract.

Presentation Software

Everyone has seen a presentation with software-generated graphics, and some people have sat through hundreds of them. So when putting together such a presentation, the trick is to avoid coming up with something members of the audience feel as if they have seen hundreds of times before. That's where new developments in presentation software come in.

Some new presentation software packages allow presenters to import and export content to and from other programs. This is good news for those who want to avoid the ubiquitous PowerPoint look by augmenting their presentations with artwork from outside the program. The most sophisticated programs allow a seamless transition to HTML for presentation on the World Wide Web. Just beware of a program's limits: Some cannot be viewed by users with certain browsers (for example, Netscape users can't view a presentation developed in Microsoft's PowerPoint).

Many tools are more Web-friendly. No truly bilingual (presentation soft- ware/HTML) programs exist yet, but today's presentations can be more easily integrated with the Web. Jim Endicott, owner of Distinction Communication, a presentation design and consulting company in Portland, Ore., says users often have to sacrifice animation because viewers' browsers may not support it. As time goes by, says Endicott, "there will be more WYSIWYG [what you see is what you get] between these programs and the Web's HTML, but it's not there now."

All the major software packages use a slide structure to walk users through presentation design. Once designed, a presentation can actually be viewed in five ways: on slides via projector, electronically with a computer, via the Web, on overhead transparencies or on paper.

PowerPoint is "by far the 1,000-pound gorilla in this field," says Endicott. "It doesn't have the strongest set of features, but it's so widely distributed." That makes it hard to stray from the Microsoft fold, because most users want to share their presentations easily and even let others edit them.

The newest version of PowerPoint (just released in June) will help users apply consistent styles to heads, text and so on. It uses pop-up messages to warn users of poor layout choices, such as too many bullet points, or fonts that are too small.