Evaluating existing assets can help governments save energy—and money

One question city and county officials should ask themselves is: How are their existing assets performing? That’s what Jennifer Perkins, Government SME at Brightly, asks. Brightly, a Siemens company, offers intelligent asset management software, including computerized maintenance management systems (CMMS), enterprise asset management (EAM) solutions, as well as consulting and support services. The following link spotlights Brightly’s public sector case studies.

“To better inform their sustainability efforts, local government leaders should evaluate their existing assets and gather data on their performance, energy usage and overall health,” Perkins explains. “This allows them to look across the entire city and proactively coordinate projects that combine sustainability and other goals with asset upgrades or replacements.” She says that taking these steps will help the government improve outcomes, reduce costs and improve service levels while also enabling the city-county to reach sustainability goals.

Perkins defines government assets to include the following: municipal buildings, streetlights, parks, public transportation, roads and bridges. She adds that governments have valuable information to help inform and improve sustainability at their fingertips. She says this information is available from the government’s own assets.

Local governments, says Perkins, are working to make government functions more sustainable. These can include purchasing, maintenance, services, utilities, parks and streets. She notes that governments are paying more attention to the following areas:

Energy usage and consumption. Perkins notes that this category “has long been on the leading edge of sustainability and will continue to be prominent as it can be greener, save money and feels attainable.”

Climate change. Perkins explains: “This category is charging ahead as we face more extreme weather that impacts communities in different ways. Resiliency is also becoming a greater focus as communities look at how to prepare and recover from disasters.”

Perkins says one important first step that local governments should take on their sustainability journey is establishing a comprehensive baseline. She says this measuring instrument should reflect the current status of vital building assets, including asset condition, life expectancy and current energy usage. She says setting a baseline is “a pivotal and often overlooked aspect of sustainability efforts.” She explains: “A lot of cities are naive to how much energy and expense dollars they’re wasting by not monitoring their energy usage.”

Perkins notes that setting up a wide-ranging energy baseline can be a challenging task, yet it can yield great rewards. “Cities that invest in asset monitoring solutions can help decision-makers identify areas of utility waste and uncover opportunities to reduce usage and save money in the near- and long-term.”

Capital planning is the key to developing sustainable communities, Perkins tells Co-op Solutions. She adds that capital planning is a sometimes overlooked process. “It can bring the community together to look at ways to achieve their goals. After tackling easier fixes (energy efficient equipment, solar panels, LED lighting), communities must look at larger projects from a sustainability viewpoint. Eventually, all assets need to be repaired and replaced, so by looking out multiple years, cities and towns can plan such projects to include sustainability.”

She offers the following example: “A local park has a consistent problem with puddles and becomes unusable during parts of the year, and residents want it fixed. By using the government’s cross-departmental, cross-functional capital planning group, officials can see the leaking water lines that are buried underneath, the grading issues, and the protected wetlands nearby.”

Through the process, Perkins says the capital planning group and government officials can go beyond just repairing the park. “They can undertake a truly sustainable solution that saves money (from excess water usage), increases the useful life of the park and continues to protect the wetlands.”

Perkins says local governments are sitting on valuable information that can aid municipal management. It is information from the local government’s own assets. She believes it can be helpful to city officials when they have one source of truth about the assets they own and operate.

Perkins urges local government officials to take the following step: “By examining existing infrastructure and the entire asset portfolio, cities can look at ways to become greener, save money, conserve resources and operate more efficiently.”

Perkins takes a strategic, long-term view of sustainability’s role in local government. “For cities and counties, sustainability is about more than upgrading to LED lights or installing solar panels—it’s a way of thinking and making decisions to ensure that the government entity is still there in 10, 20 or 100 years.”

OMNIA Partners, who sponsors this page, offers a portfolio of cooperative contracts in the public procurement space. The firm lists numerous cooperative contracts under the keyword “Sustainability.”

Michael Keating is senior editor for American City & County. Contact: [email protected]