Questions to Ask Contractors

Association of Energy Engineers

New York Chapter

February 2010 Newsletter Part 1

Questions to Ask Contractors

[Reprinted by permission from Comfort & Light, Philadelphia, Andrew Rudin, Editor]

ARE YOU SOLICITING BIDS for work on your systems for heating, lighting, cooling, ventilating, cooking or water heating? Here are some suggestions to check the quality of the proposals you receive.

Does the contractor:

Include references for similar recent projects along with the proposal?
List his or her street address and phone numbers, or just a post office box?
Date the proposal?
Clearly describe what will be done?
Include removal and appropriate disposal of existing equipment?
State what work is exempted from the proposal?
State the contractor's insurance(s) needed for your protection, such as workmen's compensation, builders risk, and general liability?
Describe the warrantees and guarantees?
Include a provision for arbitration? (small projects may not need this provision)
State options with prices for better quality equipment than specified?
Do a heat gain/loss study when proposing new heating or cooling equipment?
Train your facility managers in related operation and maintenance?
Promise to submit information from each relevant equipment manufacturer (such as operating manuals)?
Indicate when the work will be done?
State what work will be subcontracted to other contractors?
Indicate that State Sales Tax is not included in the final price?
Who is responsible for pulling permits?
State who is responsible for submitting drawings for approval?
State that all work will conform to applicable codes?
State the time period that the price is valid?
Require an unreasonable down payment? (More than 1/3 down should raise concerns, although purchase of mechanical equipment may require a substantial down payment)
Clearly state the benchmarks for progress and final payments?

Specific to your installation:

What is your approach to a project such as this?
How long will it take for the equipment to be ordered and delivered?
Will the equipment be delivered at this site or at your (the contractor's) facility?
What happens if any of the equipment is damaged before it is actually installed?
How long will the installation process take?
When do you expect to begin and fully complete this project?
What would be your typical daily schedule?
How and when will I be contacted if no one is to show up on a particular day?
Can you finish before [insert major holiday or significant congregation event)?
Who will be assigned as project supervisor for the job?
Who will be working on the project?
Are they employees or subcontractors and are they all insured?
Will a licensed electrician work on any wiring?
Will we need any permits for this project? Who is going to obtain and pay for them?
Will the township (or city) require a structural review of the roof by an architect or professional engineer?
Who will pay for this service?
Will you provide written guarantees on all materials and workmanship?
What happens if you change your mind?
What is the exact schedule of payments to be made?
Besides materials and labor, does your estimate include sales tax (your congregation is tax-exempt), permit fees, structural analysis fees, interconnection fees, and shipping costs?
How soon can you respond to a service call? Would you be the one to repair the system?

About the installer's company:

What is your street address? (if provided with only a post office box number)
Is your company a full service or specialty firm?
How long have you been in business?
How is your firm organized?
How many projects like mine have you completed in the past year? In the past three years?
May I have a list of references for those projects?
Does your company carry workers compensation and liability insurance? Do your subcontractors, if applicable, carry liability insurance?
Can you show me a copy of your policy?
May I have a list of business referrals or suppliers?
What percentage of your business is repeat or referral business?
Are you a member of a national trade association?
Who cleans up after the job is finished?

Overall feelings about the contractor:

Does the contractor appear to be knowledgeable?
Does the contractor appear to have a genuine concern for your needs?
Can you communicate effectively with the contractor?

Smart Meters Save Energy, Water, and Dollars

By Todd Woody, Grist Magazine, Jan 28 19

Flickr via Pink Sherbet Photography

THE OTHER DAY I came home to find a colorful flyer on my front door proclaiming, “Your meter just got smarter.”

While I was out and about in Berkeley, a worker from my utility, PG&E, slipped in the side gate and gave my old gas and electric meter a digital upgrade. So-called smart meters allow the two-way transmission of electricity data and will eventually let me monitor and alter my energy consumption in near real-time. I’ll be able to fire up an app on my iPhone and see, for instance, a spike in watts because my son has left the lights on in his room and a laptop plugged in.

Now I only learn of my electricity use when I get my monthly utility bill, long after all that carbon has escaped into the atmosphere. The situation is even worse when it comes to water consumption; my bill and details of my water use arrive every other month.

“When you tell people what total bucket of water they used in the past 60 days, the barn door is open and the animals are long gone,” says Richard Harris, water conservation manager for the East Bay Municipal Utility District (EBMUD), my local water agency.

EBMUD is currently testing smart water meters in 30 households and plans to expand the pilot program to 4,000 homes and businesses later this year.

“It’ll give us better knowledge of where our water is going,” says Harris. “We also thought if we’re going to ask people to use water more efficiently, especially when we’re coming out of a drought and have imposed water restrictions, customers need to have an idea of what their current use is.”

EBMUD’s smart meters take readings every hour and participants in the pilot program will be able to go online to check their consumption and set up an email alert if their water use rises above a certain level. The agency also plans to offer a social networking feature to allow people to compare their water consumption with other households in the area. Nothing like a little peer pressure to get you to turn off the tap.

Given that many states expect to face water shortages in the coming years, one would think we’d be seeing a roll out of smart water meters akin to the national effort being made to smarten up the power grid.

The payoff could be enormous. Water agencies and consumers would be able to detect leaking pipes and toilets in real-time and fix the problem before the water literally goes down the drain.

Imagine a video screen in your shower that displays how many gallons that long hot shower is consuming. Smart water meters would also open the door to financial incentives to get people to use less water and penalize water hogs. (That said, politically powerful agribusiness remains by far the biggest water user.)

“You don’t need to send someone out to read the meter or roll a truck to connect or disconnect a meter,” says Guerry Waters, vice president for industry strategy at Oracle Utilities, a division of the Silicon Valley software giant. “Smart water meters can help you manage assets and detect leaks. There’s a staggering amount of water lost to leaks.”

Yet, according to a recent report by Oracle, while 68 percent of 300 American and Canadian water managers surveyed said they believe that smart water meters are crucial, 64 percent of them have no plans to install them.

Why? Money

Nearly all water providers are public agencies, which means they’re strapped for cash and already facing a long list of capital improvement projects. The electric utility industry, on the other hand, is largely private and can either make the capital investments necessary for, say, a smart meter roll out, or can obtain regulators’ approval to raise rates to cover the costs.

In fact, 75 percent of the water managers surveyed said the capital costs of smart water meters was their main roadblock to rolling out such a program.

That presents a conundrum to companies like Oracle, which already sells software and services to water districts, hoping to tap a potentially vast smart water meter market.

IBM, meanwhile, has developed sensor networks and software it hopes to market to water districts to give them real-time data on water quality and to help manage their pipelines and infrastructure.

“Water districts don’t have the funding and have to find a way to pay for these systems,” Drew Clark, director of strategy for IBM’s Venture Capital Group, told me last year. “There’s this whole issue of how do we put this intelligence in water systems in a way that’s affordable for the ratepayers.”

One solution would be to devote some stimulus money or other federal largesse to underwrite a rollout of smart meters.

But Tom Blaisdel, a venture capitalist with DCM in Silicon Valley, thinks markets are the answer. “The problem in water is usually not a lack of technology but a lack of economic drivers to get people to adopt the technology,” he says. “Until you have market pricing you won’t have innovation and investment.”

Putting aside agricultural use—which in California is a political minefield—residential water pricing tends to be driven by drought and conservation mandates. As California’s drought dragged on, EBMUD and other water agencies imposed a tiered pricing structure that bumped up rates for water hogs.

For Harris, the future of water conservation lies more in providing data to customers rather than such things as rebates for water-efficient toilets.

“It’s all about giving customers a smart water toolbox,” he says.

Todd Woody covers green technology and the environment from Berkeley, where he’s a contributing editor at Fortune Magazine and writes his Green Wombat blog. He’s one of the few people on the planet who has seen the rare northern hairy-nosed wombat in the wild.

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Permits, Plans, and As-Builts, or, to Fix the City, First Fix the Agencies

Both the recently superseded 1968 Building Code and the current ICC-based document

include virtually identical language limiting the type and amount of work that may be

performed without first obtaining a building permit. Thus, plans almost always have to

be filed and approved for a permit to be issued prior to the start of any work. The

completed work is then inspected to confirm that it conforms to the approved plans.

Pretty straightforward, isn’t it?

If only.

A couple of months back, I went to a NYC Department of Buildings information session on changes in the filing process for plumbing permits and inspections, where I got the distinct impression that the inspector doing the presentation viewed himself as a police

officer, and the attendees as potential criminals.

Then, about a week ago I was on-site for the final plumbing inspection on one of my projects, where there was some concern the inspector would ask for an existing 17 story dedicated gas cooking riser to be pressure tested, notwithstanding the fact that all the new work was downstream of the existing gas cock on that floor.

The Plumbing Division’s “Guide to Successful Plumbing Inspections”, in fact, calls for a successful piping pressure test (3 psig) to have been performed within the past year. The Architect on the project in question told me of a client of his who had an existing riser fail such a test, with the latter then having to run a new riser at a cost of well over a hundred thousand dollars.

What is going on here? Why would anyone need to put a 3-pound test on a 75 to 100 year-old riser which carries no more than four ounces of pressure when: a.) There has been no work done to the riser. b.) There have been no complaints of a smell of gas.

It is one thing to be concerned with work being carried out in a manner which protects

the public’s safety, but it’s quite another to believe that the way to ensure such is to become so fixated upon process that safety becomes diminished rather than enhanced.

On my recently inspected job, the inspector seemed to be concerned with Con Edison’s

responsibilities in addition to those of the Department of Buildings. I’ve also had a Con Edison Inspector take it upon himself to have the Electrical Contractor on another of my projects rip out a service cable installation because the cables were bent “too sharply” after I showed that a City Electrical Inspector’s violating the installation for improperly rated lugs was in error.

On that last one, a meeting with a pair of Con Ed VP’s, after a letter from me to the

Chairman of the Board, had them assure me Gee, I wonder why?

But, not to worry, persons who have been licensed by the State as competent to design

something that affects the public safety, may, if the Special Inspection process is not ationalized, be found to be unqualified to inspect the construct realized from that design, and such will certainly negate all the problems discussed earlier, and, even more importantly, will finally ensure that the public safety is enhanced to the maximum extent humanly possible.

Don’t you find this just a wee bit Kafkaesque? If not, perhaps you should read Henrik

Ibsen’s “An Enemy of the People.”

But to continue with the fixation on process. Why the requirement to show a gas riser

diagram or sprinkler riser diagram when the proposed work is for a tenant occupying a small part of one floor in an existing building, where the riser has been in place for generations? I had one plans examiner tell me “We need to know where it comes from.”

This can’t be done be via a callout note on the floor plan? Why do both the 1968 and current Building Codes have virtually identical language permitting composite drawings showing the work of more than one trade while I’ve had design professionals refuse to file my drawings when so presented, telling me plans examiners would refuse to accept such?

This was particularly perplexing for the project in question, where residential sprinklers are fed from a combination domestic/sprinkler service and my drawings originally showed both plumbing and sprinkler work. Is it too difficult to file the same set of drawings under two different sets of DOB forms, particularly with the disclaimer the Department has made us put on our drawings over the past decade or so, limiting their approval to the items listed in the application?

When I first got into the technical side of building construction, I worked for a manufacturer of emergency lighting, stage lighting, and fire alarm systems, as an estimator, and as such I got to look at the plans and specifications of a lot of Architects and Engineers, as in those depicting hundreds of projects, every year.

I would expect that plans examiners have had a similar breadth of exposure, and as such, I

remain absolutely flabbergasted that my getting back objections where more than half could be answered by a bit of a closer look at my drawings, is the rule rather than the exception.

And then, to add insult to injury, certain plans examiners insist upon things which appear to

be made up out of whole cloth, where the very nature of the requirement has nothing whatsoever to do with prospective examination to assure Code compliance, like as built-drawings showing catalogue numbers of approved substituted installed equipment. What’s wrong with text on an AI-1 form? There would be no more such actions absent a phone call to me first. On the previous, the Contractor had to remind the Plumbing Inspector that Con Edison was for him to