Technical Support for Real Property

Technical expertise is available for federal organizations seeking support to reduce energy use and greenhouse gas emissions throughout their real property portfolios.

Contact us to complete a free greening assessment

A greening assessment offers a holistic approach to energy and GHG management within operations through addressing key topics across each of the four steps: Plan, Do, Check and Update. Adopting this approach can help you to identify opportunities and challenges, and to prioritize actions.

Plan

Governance and strategy

Position real property management activities for success by formalizing an internal governance structure comprised of interdisciplinary members at different levels, and solidifying a portfolio-level strategy.

• Departmental steering committee on greening
• Regional and aspect-specific working groups
• Ongoing reporting processes
• Staffing of key positions
• Internal strategies, directives and policies
• Consistent outreach and communication
• Energy management best practices guide

Organizational planning and commitment

Prioritizing organization-wide strategies and planning processes ensures a holistic approach to real property management, and helps to identify project opportunities and the resources needed for project implementation.

• Real Property Portfolio Strategy
• Net-Zero Carbon Real Property Plan
• Implementation Plan
• Cyclical recommissioning plans
• Energy audits
• Feasibility studies
• Existing Building Commissioning Portfolio Pre-screen and Plan 
• Project-specific greenhouse gas (GHG) lifecycle analysis
• Lifecycle cost analysis
• Energy management systems, including ISO 50001
• Energy metering, monitoring, and reporting
• Energy management and information systems (EMIS)
• Energy modelling and simulation
• Energy and greenhouse gas benchmarking

Do

Project implementation

New projects enable energy and GHG emissions performance improvements through implementing measures across all aspects of the buildings or campus.

• Energy Performance Contracts
• Deep retrofits
• New constructions
• Clean and emerging technology
• Building Automation Systems: specifications, implementation, upgrades, control sequences, and data-acquisition and trending
• Commissioning for new buildings
• Recommissioning and Existing Building Commissioning
  • Recommissioning pre-screening tool
  • Recommissioning guide
  • Trends guide
• Ongoing commissioning

Capacity building

Building internal capacity to support greening objectives may be done through ensuring that key positions are staffed, and that professional development activities are available to the right people for the right topics. NRCan provides specialized training to support internal capacity building.

• E-training, advanced training and professional certification
• RFP, RFQ and contract templates

Check

Tracking and reporting

Benchmarking, tracking and reporting are important for understanding the current state of energy and GHG emissions performance, how performance has improved, and the future progress required to meet greening objectives.

• EMIS, advanced/smart building technologies, including fault detection and diagnostics
• Measurement and verification
• Key Performance Indicator (KPI) development
• Customization of benchmarking, tracking and reporting tools:
  • ENERGY STAR® Portfolio Manager
  • RETScreen®

Update

Inform actions with results

Through applying a methodology that embraces continual improvement, there is an opportunity to update planned activities, goals, and objectives with the results from past and ongoing actions. 

• Continual improvement through adjustments to strategic plans
• Apply results from key studies, such as the Horizontal Fixed Asset Review
• Knowledge sharing
• Case studies
• Community of Practice
• Review and update of real property policy and energy management plans