One thing I’ve learned many times over with approaching or ongoing energy efficiency projects with clients, mostly end users, is that when the decision maker is replaced for whatever reason – the guy took a different job, retired, moved to a different place in the company – you name it, it is time to pull over to the side of the road. The most common thing a new guy (androgynously) does upon taking over the helm of whatever ship he’s driving is say no, to everything. I’m not sure why this is but I think it possibly has something to…
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Although I don’t appreciate talking about it, we have a black list of companies and organizations for which we will not again partner with, work with, or bid their request for proposals. What type of activities land somebody on this list? Companies or organizations that take our business development efforts and give it to someone else. We are working on retro-commissioning for a major player in the Midwest grocery market. As with most of our investment-grade studies for energy retrofit or retro-commissioning, we like to use contractors to provide us with pricing because we expect they will get the work…
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For this week’s publication, I was trying to think of an expensive, short-lived, duplicative, inconvenient, limited use, frivolous novelty. Did I mention expensive? After a half-hour of wonderment, the best I could do is a Homer Simpson bottle opener. But really the Homer Simpson bottle opener will last longer and at least be useful (note, I didn’t say serve it’s purpose, which is to make people laugh) probably for a far longer period than the electric car. Twenty years ago “they” were talking about developing electric cars, I guess to save us from carbon dioxide, but I don’t recall the…
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