Building Baselines: Melissa Kelley
1. Can you tell us a little bit about your background, Leidos and your role specifically?
Thank you so much for this opportunity. I am Melissa Kelley, program manager, energy efficiency, at Leidos, a Fortune 500® innovation company rapidly addressing the world’s most vexing challenges in national security and health. Leidos was contracted with the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to benchmark 40% of its HUD-assisted properties starting October 2023 through 2027.
As part of the benchmarking, a tailored property analysis report is furnished to each property exploring its unique needs and offering areas opportunity to increase energy and water efficiency and offers a host of resources to fund those projects.
Before joining Leidos to launch the HUD contract, I started my career in public relations and marketing, working across a variety of industries. In 2018, I found my passion for utility energy efficiency marketing, which quickly turned to a desire to dive deeper into the operations side of energy efficiency programs. This transition from marketing to operations coupled well by earning my MBA in 2023.
2. What led you to joining Leidos?
I worked for Michigan utility companies for the last five years running energy efficiency programs and felt great satisfaction in contributing to the local impact. The HUD initiative presented a country wide opportunity to increase awareness around reducing energy and water use in multifamily properties while lowering operational costs for the property owner and simultaneously increase resident comfort. I knew instantly I wanted to join Leidos to champion this effort.
3. Let’s dream a bit. Tomorrow, you wake up and every utility can deliver a complete data set for the built world when owners ask for it. Utility program owners can use it to empower and inform their programs. Customers and building owners can use it to make smarter decisions for their buildings. What are you most excited about and why? What else do you think is possible with this whole building data access?
There are opportunities for third-party benchmarking teams (e.g., Leidos), with the permission of the owners, to have easier access to the information. With anything in life, by measuring performance, you uncover opportunities for improvement. Benchmarking is the key to identifying inefficiencies in your property so strategic investments can be planned, like implementing energy efficient equipment which improves the property and lowers greenhouse gas emissions. In this way we can each do our part to protect our environment.
4. Can you share some background on the HUD product?
Funding was provided through the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). The benchmarking service is free for owners of properties participating in HUD’s Multifamily Assisted Housing programs, including Section 8 project-based rental assistance, Section 202 Housing for Low-Income Elderly, Section 811 Housing for Low-Income Persons with Disabilities, and Section 236 Preservation programs. Owners that choose to participate in HUD’s benchmarking service can use the resulting data to make operational and tenant comfort improvements and submit scores to state/local governments as mandates to report benchmarking are becoming more common. This data can also help owners understand and qualify for other energy and water efficiency programs funded by IRA or through their local program and utilities. The free benchmarking service offers owners:
- Specific information about a property’s energy and water performance, comparisons of this usage with similar properties, and recommendations for savings;
- Benchmarking analytics from the ENERGY STAR® Portfolio Manager®, a tool developed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency; and
- Multiyear support, technical assistance, training, and other resources.
5. Given the role whole building consumption data plays in benchmarking buildings, can you share how you have seen the process of gathering data from different utilities around the country?
There is a myriad of ways to get the data. The best and most accurate way to get the data is when the utility offers a web connection to Portfolio Manager and pushes the monthly usage and cost data after the connection is established. Unfortunately, there are only a large handful of utilities across the country that offer these services. A lot of times we resort to asking the property owner to get tenants to sign release forms, emailing those signed release forms to the utility, entering the data into an aggregation calculator and then entering that data into Portfolio Manager and we still need to get the common area usage data. Sometimes utilities even charge us to fulfill this request, the highest I’ve seen is $400 per property, which impacts the speed of the benchmarking process.
6. Does this process seem to be driven by local utility regulations, or by specific utility policies?
We have noticed the correlation between web services being offered by the utility company and there being either a state or local requirement to report benchmarking results to the government. Utilities offering web services make it easier for us to benchmark the properties on behalf of the owner. Typically, we just need an authorized party to provide consent, and we can handle the rest. This is our preferred scenario because it limits the amount of effort for property owners and takes this to do off their list.
7. What were the major challenges you expected with this program?
As with any new work, there’s a start-up mentality that needs to be created (yesterday!) from scratch. This was the first time Leidos worked with HUD to perform this type of benchmarking and the first time HUD provided an initiative like this to support their growth in climate resiliency, preservation, and sustainability in the nation’s housing supply. I feel honored I was hired to launch this program, write communication templates, develop procedures and curate a team of professionals to perform this great work. When this was awarded, it was like flipping on a light switch, everything was firing all at once to get this project started successfully.
8. How close were your expected challenges to those you encountered?
There were many busy days and evenings getting templates and procedures approved, systematically all the pieces fell into place with hard work and strong communication. Now, almost a year in, it’s more a refinement to the process and changes in the market than the busy days of drafting and learning about your new team. The whole year has been equally rewarding and it is great to see the impact.
9. Once HUD benchmarked the building, are there plans to move into implementing measures in the buildings?
After benchmarking is performed, my team provides a property analysis report that does a deep dive into what the energy and water scores mean, provides a list of the most impactful measures to lower energy bills and improve the property. The list also includes an estimate of upfronts costs, so an owner can prioritize the upgrades. The report also offers multiple pages of different federal, state and utility resources that offer funding to complete those projects with as little money out of pocket as possible.
10. Do HUD buildings create any unique challenges above and beyond other building types?
HUD buildings no, but certainly multifamily properties are the most challenging to benchmark. Not only do we need consent from the property owners to gather the common area utility usage and cost, but we also need them to contact the tenants to get release forms signed if the tenants are paying for the utilities. In some states, tenants in the same building could have different energy providers. It takes a lot of coordination from the owner or property manager, which is something we try to avoid as we know their time is already spread thin. In other cases, a property could be multiple buildings, and a campus might need to be created to get the correct score. There are numerous decisions we make to achieve an accurate benchmarked property and try to keep the owner or manager’s time commitment to a minimum.
11. Does the term Grid Enabled buildings resonate with your work?
Absolutely, benchmarking is the first step in evolution of Grid Enabled Buildings (GEB). Understanding how energy is used in your building, making the building more efficient (which also makes it a better place to live) and when getting it connected/smart to be flexible are the steps to GEB. Right now, our current scope is focused on creating a more efficient space and our recommendations include information on installing solar panels and electrification. We live and breathe this work, if there is an interest in a contract where my team and Leidos could help property owners and utilities achieve GEB, we are there, every step of the way.
12. What role do we need utility regulators to play in this type of market evolution?
As more and more local municipalities and states create mandates for benchmark reporting, we need the utilities to allow easy access to utility usage and cost data (aggregated is ideal) in a web service connection to Portfolio Manager, with just a couple click of an owner authorizing us as a third-party to create this connection on their behalf. I say a couple of clicks because some utilities providing web service connections need all the meter numbers to establish the connection, with us not being onsite at all properties, we need someone to collect that information and send it to us so we can ensure all meters are included. Working with addresses, opposed to meter numbers, is a much more efficient way to setup a web connection. Some utilities already offer this user-friendly service and I implore others to join ahead of any mandated curve as benchmarking is only gaining more popularity, especially those who have energy and sustainably consciousness.
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