Brands's List: DOL Veterans Green Jobs Training Grant

Document Type: Grants Notice
Funding Opportunity Number: SGA-10-02
Opportunity Category: Discretionary
Posted Date: Mar 26, 2010
Creation Date: Mar 25, 2010
Original Closing Date for Applications: Apr 26, 2010
Current Closing Date for Applications: Apr 26, 2010
Archive Date: May 26, 2010
Funding Instrument Type: Grant
Category of Funding Activity: Employment, Labor and Training
Category Explanation:
Expected Number of Awards: 4
Estimated Total Program Funding: $2,000,000
Award Ceiling: $500,000
Award Floor: $100,000
CFDA Number(s): 17.802 -- Veterans' Employment Program
Cost Sharing or Matching Requirement: No

For this PY 2010 grant solicitation, VETS seeks applicants that will provide services through a case management approach that network with Federal, State, and local resources for Veteran support programs. In support of the President’s green technology initiatives, applicants must propose clear strategies and obtainable goals related to providing Veterans with training and employment opportunities within the renewable and sustainable energy economy. For purposes of this solicitation, Green Jobs opportunities are occupations which can be categorized under the following specific green jobs sectors and/or industries, as identified and defined under the Green Jobs Act
of 2007. Furthermore, the Department will give priority to workforce development projects that focus on connecting target populations to career pathways and training programs that will prepare individuals for careers in any of the seven energy efficiency and renewable energy industries defined in Section 171(e)(1)(B)(ii) of the WIA, which include:
1. Energy-efficient building, construction, and retrofit industries;
2. Renewable electric power industry;
3. Energy efficient and advanced drive train vehicle industry;
4. Bio-fuels industry;
5. Deconstruction and materials use industries;
6. Energy efficiency assessment industry serving the residential, commercial, or industrial sectors; and
7. Manufacturers that produce sustainable products using environmentally
sustainable processes and materials.

Veterans Workforce Investment Program (VWIP) Informationvets logo

Eligible Applicants: Applications for funds will be accepted from State and Local Workforce Investment Boards, Public agencies, non-profit organizations, including faith-based and community-based and neighborhood partnerships. Applicants must have a familiarity with the area and population to be served and the ability to administer an effective and timely program

Note that entities organized under Section 501(c)(4) of the Internal Revenue Code are not eligible to receive funds under this announcement. Section18 of the Lobbying Disclosure Act of 1995, Public Law 104-65, 109 Stat. 691 (2 U.S.C. 1611) prohibits instituting an award, grant, or loan of federal funds to 501(c)(4) entities that engage in lobbying.
* VWIP Grant Provisions (Power Point Presentation) (PDF)
* General Grant Provisions (PDF)
* Fact Sheet

2010 VWIP Solicitation for Grant Applications (SGA)

* VWIP PY 2010 SGA (PDF)"

"The tables below contain direct links to each of the 95 publicly available prefunctional checklists, functional test procedures, and test guidance documents referenced in the Functional Testing Guide (FT Guide). Combined test forms contain both prefunctional checklists and functional test procedures. Each test is categorized based on the system module in which it occurs in the FT Guide. Click the Test Name to open the desired test.

* Prefunctional Checklists
* Functional Test Procedures
* Combined Forms: System-Level Prefunctional Checklists and Functional Test Procedures
* Combined Forms: Component-Level Prefunctional Checklists and Functional Test Procedures
* Testing Guidance Documents"

The original Functional Testing Guide for Air Handling Systems: From the Fundamentals to the Field has recently been expanded and revised by Portland Energy Conservation Inc. (PECI) under two projects:

1. Strategic Technologies Advancement Collaborative (STAC) – a US Department of Energy program co-funded with the California Energy Commission (CEC), New York Energy Research & Development Authority (NYSERDA), Texas Engineering Experiment Station (TEES), University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL), and Oregon Department of Energy (ODOE). Additional support was provided by the Iowa Energy Center (IEC), the Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance (NEEA), and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. PECI provided management and technical support for the project.
2. U.S. Department of Energy under partnership with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

Control System Design Guide Acknowledgements

The Control System Design Guide was developed in May 2003 by David Sellers, Hannah Friedman, and Tudi Haasl of Portland Energy Conservation, Inc. (PECI) and Norman Bourassa and Mary Ann Piette of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. This work has been supported by:

1. The California Energy Commission’s (CEC) , Public Interest Energy Research Program, under Contract No. 400-99-012, and
2. Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Office of Building Technology, State and Community Programs, Building Technologies Program of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) under Contract No. DE-AC03-76SF00098.

Special thanks to Martha Brook (CEC) and David Hansen (DOE). Appreciation is extended to Marti Frank of PECI for her assistance. Technical review was provided by Gretchen Coleman, P.E., Engineering Economics, Inc. (EEI), Karl Stum, P.E., CH2M HILL, and Steven Taylor, P.E., Taylor Engineering, LLC. "

If the owner is pursuing a certification under the U.S. Green Building Council's LEED for Existing Buildings: Operations and Maintenance (LEED EB), you need to check the LEED EB retrocommissioning requirements, which are different from other LEED versions because they pertain to an actual building. Retrocommissioning is covered in the Energy and Atmosphere section, credits EA 2.1 and 2.2.
Staff should be knowledgeable and field-savvy with BAS, controls, data acquisition, analysis, calculations, building system interactions, and the O&M of mechanical, electrical, and plumbing (MEP) systems.
Certification and training

One way to help assess the skills of your staff is to examine existing guidelines for retrocommissioning projects. Can members of your staff perform the duties described in the BCA's “Best Practices in Commissioning Existing Buildings,” or in NEBB's “Procedural Standards for Retro-Commissioning of Existing Buildings”? (The guidelines are free at www.bcxa.org, and www.nebb.org, respectively.)

In addition to guidelines, BCA, NEBB, ASHRAE, and other organizations offer credentialing opportunities for obtaining a commissioning or a retrocommissioning certification. Some require experience in addition to taking a test; others only require taking a course and a test. It's up to you to decide if certification is a valid way to build a retrocommissioning process. Early on, however, it's probably best to focus on getting training, experience, and successful projects under your belt.
Commissioning process templates: Free PDFs of the Building Commissioning Assoc. checklists and sample documents: www.bcxa.org/resources/templates/index.htm.
Cost-benefit analyses with statistics of commissioning by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory: http://cx.lbl.gov/cost-benefit.html
Document database: Free online database of commissioning documents, reports, and templates by the California Commissioning Collaborative: www.cacx.org/resources/providers.html.
Functional Test Guide: A commissioning and retrocommissioning tool:

"Budgeting – Operational & Capital
Engineering Economics, Inc. (EEI) has provided its clients with detailed budgets for various programming, engineering, construction, and preventative maintenance projects. EEI makes every effort to analyze the lifecycle costs associated with all its projects in an effort to help the owner understand both the short- and long-term ramifications of each project. Where needed, EEI will calculate project budgets using current costs, projected future costs, financing charges, immediate energy savings, future energy savings and estimated project “paybacks”. EEI also has the ability to prepare cost and budgetary projections with factors for depreciation and the time/value of money. The firm is also a big proponent of always including a contingency allowance.

Design and Specifications

Engineering Economics, Inc. (EEI) provides design and specification packages for new, retrofit, renovation, repair, and modification projects. Our design capabilities include computer-aided design (CAD) for fast and efficient design/specification packages. We have provided design services to our clients in the following areas:

* Mechanical Systems: New, retrofit, and renovation design and specification packages for HVAC, plumbing, and piping systems for energy management, performance, and maintenance improvements. Emphasis is placed on providing energy efficient systems and equipment which represent cost-effective strategies for the owner. EEI also provides special mechanical design work involved in laboratories, research facilities, clean rooms, manufacturing, and hospital facilities.

* Electrical Systems: Design and specification packages for new and retrofit projects for electrical systems, including primary and secondary systems, distribution, substations, emergency generators, UPS, co-generation, and lighting. Lighting systems design incorporates efficient luminaries, lamps, ballasts, etc. Lighting calculations are performed using various computer programs such as Lumen Micro a

"Finally, the scope of work should identify the process a manager expects to use. Each project has unique features and requirements that managers must assess separately, but a project matrix defining responsibilities serves as a good starting point. An experienced retrocommissioning professional can assist managers in this process.

Once managers have clearly identified these items, they can begin to write a proper scope of work. Visit the NEBB web site — www.nebb.org — for more information and examples of scopes of work.
Developing an RFQ

If a manager does not have a relationship with an experienced retrocommissioning professional, the next step is to develop a request for qualifications (RFQ). This document outlines the qualifications a manager is seeking in a retrocommissioning professional, such as experience on similar projects, experience, and references from other projects.

This document also should include the scope of work, as well as a request that the retrocommissioning professional provide a proposed implementation plan. Managers should evaluate all responses to the RFQ for their thoroughness and practicality."

"Web was just the proof of concept. Now the revolution gets real." These are words from Chris Anderson Editor in Chief of Wired Magazine.
"So can my old mind grasp what might be the next big thing after web deployment? I am betting that rapidly evolving low cost wireless BAS devices that actually work well with open protocols with self discovery, self healing, cell phone like networks closely coupled with web deployment will completely redefine our industry.
This dynamic duo will eliminate complex installations, provide; self set up, connection, and commissioning while self populating the needed information for web deployment. As industry equipment such as chillers, boilers, air handlers, etc are moved into place and powered up they will wirelessly connect to their creator and powerful web services will take over complex commissioning. Their identity, an IP address will be a part of the manufacturers, owners, designers, and operators web deployment, it is a new world and these are the next big things."

"software tools based on fault detection and diagnostics (FDD) that have taken actionable information and system intelligence to a new level. There are now a number of credible companies in the marketplace that have FDD-based tools with case studies of implementations that resulted in optimal system performance, energy savings and improved operations. For those that understand return on investment from commissioning systems and given the normal degradation of the performance of a HVAC system, FDD-based software tools will be a core operational tool. What follows are a description of FDD and some issues in utilizing FDD software tools.

FDD focuses on HVAC systems. HVAC systems are one of the more complex, sophisticated and energy-consuming systems in a building involving different processes and the interaction of different types of equipment. We measure the performance of an HVAC system in several different ways: indoor air quality, energy consumption and thermal comfort.

FDD is based on research of faults in HVAC systems and the development of hierarchical relationships and rules between the different equipment and processes that make up the HVAC system. For example, a chilled water plant supplying chilled water to air handling units is a relationship; the chilled water plant is the single �source� and the air handling units are multiple �loads�. Another relationship is an air handling unit delivering supply air to terminal units; the air handling unit is the single �source� and the terminal units are the multiple �loads�. In an HVAC system this relationship between �source� and �load� can be via air or water. It is these relationships and the rules within the relationships that are at the core of FDD.

These hierarchical relationships are used to collect fault reports and raw data, and then apply a set of rules. For example, there is a set of rules for systems consisting of a chiller, a boiler, air handling units receiving hot and chilled water from the boiler and chiller, and terminal units receiving supply a

"June 29, 2009
Scientific Conservation Launches Breakthrough Continuous Commissioning Energy Efficiency Solution

SCIwatch™ SaaS Platform Slashes Commercial Building Energy Spending Up to 25%

Berkeley, CA – June 29, 2009 – Scientific Conservation Inc., (SCI), a leading provider of energy efficiency solutions for the $4.5 billion commercial building market, today announced the launch of SCIwatch,™ a breakthrough Automated Continuous Commissioning (ACC) software platform that enables commercial building owners and facility operators to slash annual energy spending up to 25 percent. SCIwatch is the industry’s only software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution that persistently and automatically predicts, detects, diagnoses and prioritizes system faults and anomalies that are constantly present in commercial buildings.

As a new class of ACC software, SCIwatch is addressing the insidious but persistent problem of “energy drift,” which causes commercial buildings to lose an average of 17 percent in energy efficiency every one to two years. With average electricity costs running $2.00 per square foot, this energy leakage is costing billions of dollars in unnecessary spending each year. Energy drift can be triggered by a wide variety of problems ranging from clogged filters to more complex issues that include electrical, mechanical and HVAC system faults. In addition, anomalies in building tolerances, seasonal climate change, or varying tenant occupancy rates can contribute to the growing problem of energy seepage."

"What is now required is a heuristic and real-time understanding of how buildings truly operate under all conditions. This new approach known as Automated Continuous Commissioning (ACC) proactively identifies pending changes to operational efficiency. By doing so, facilities managers are empowered to sustain maximum operational efficiency while minimizing energy costs.

Mark Boraski, vice president of property management with Neiman Marcus, makes the following observation: “Let’s assume you build a facility and it’s designed correctly to run at optimal efficiency. It’s no different than a new car. As time passes, fuel injectors get clogged, exhaust systems degrade and oil gets dirty. It’s inevitable that you move away from that ideal place that you started because of entropy. After you commission a property for optimum efficiency, it immediately starts to degrade day after day, week after week, month after month. There is drift away from the ideal. ACC allows you to always check against that base to see if there is meaningful change. And it allows you to isolate and pinpoint specific systems that have moved beyond acceptable levels so you can assign first line resources to resolve problems well ahead of outright failures.”

Historically, facilities managers have used a variety of solutions to try to mitigate the risk of system failures, malfunctions or outages. These include:

* Time based maintenance management
* Electrical consumption review as a trigger for reviews of system operations
* The use of building automation system for graphical representations of system operations
* The use of periodic recommissioning and retro-commissioning

All of these solutions leave a lot to be desired. First off, they are all reactive in identifying problems. Second, they are expensive and require a high degree of sophisticated systems understanding. And third and most importantly, they don’t provide any prioritization of the importance of the problems they uncover. That’s the equivalent of treating a patient