2018 EnergyLogic Year in Review
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Does getting older mean that time goes by faster? Well that seems to be the case as I reflect on 2018. Last year was very successful for EnergyLogic and our building partners. The jurisdictions we work in all report that building was booming, and the Builders we work with have mirrored that assessment. You can see in “By the Numbers” that we agree.
I am hearing conflicting projections, however, for 2019. Although this is not a true Metro Study analysis, my assessment is that although we are seeing a slow start to the year things will pick up. I believe 2019 will be on par with the results from 2018--not better; not worse. As you know, I am not an economist so take that as you will from someone whose ear is on the street.
Coming out of 2018, EnergyLogic launched many internal initiatives that will come to fruition in 2019 or will continue in development to ensure that we remain innovators in our industry and do the best job possible for, and with, our partners.
Let me tell you about three:
"The EnergyLogic Way"
The bulk of our work is focused on compliance inspections. We have realized over the years that it is extremely difficult to ensure consistency of inspection in a primarily subjective industry like ours. Code and program compliance is black and white and red all over. There are rules and mandates for how components go together that are overlaid on any number of situations. So humanity, subjectivity, and flexibility come into play to help guide the construction of a house to meet the intent of a code, program, or builder’s objective. EnergyLogic realized that if we have 20 Raters in the field, there can’t be 20 different ways to do our work. So in 2018 we launched an ongoing initiative that we call the “EL Way”.
Not to be confused with that famous quarterback, the EL Way is an initiative to break down our processes in order to determine the most efficient, accurate, and sustainable way to perform our work. An example of how this effort directly impacts you and our field inspection work can be found in our new reporting categories. Inspected items are categorized as either passing, fix and proceed, photo re-inspect, or correct and re-inspect. It is not possible to completely take out discretion and subjectivity when evaluating compliance. But each of the thousands of items we evaluate in a home have been reviewed and categorized in terms of the overall impact it will likely have on the performance and compliance of the home so that they can be more uniformly evaluated by the different Raters that come to your building site. Thus, achieving better consistency of inspection from Rater to Rater.
DASH℠ - New, Intuitive Design & Features!
DASH is our proprietary data and business management system. We are proud to be launching a huge upgrade to the system in 2019. DASH will help us do our jobs more efficiently while helping us get information back to you more quickly. We understand that our primary deliverable is our reports, and we are continuing to review and revise them to make them easy to understand and act upon. In addition, new DASH features are able to better organize the data we collect. Therefore, in the era of big data, we are better able to bring forward actionable data that you can use to improve your processes, cycle times, and ultimately the homes you build. We look forward to sharing more as we progress into 2019.
2021 IECC® Code Proposals
Almost every house EnergyLogic touches incorporates energy code compliance with generating a HERS index score for marketing. EnergyLogic truly is a third-party extension for the code jurisdiction in which the house is built. Our submittal documents are needed for permitting, and our inspections and final reporting are needed as part of the documentation to obtain the certificate of occupancy. Therefore, I am continuing my work to make the IECC a more useful document for those of us who build according to it and use it on a daily basis. I have submitted just over 50 proposals to the 2021 IECC in an effort to make the code more understandable and usable for all of us. There is no assurance that any of the proposals will be adopted, but EnergyLogic’s commitment to code development is making an impact on the code lobbyists’ understanding that code language needs to be more understandable, and black and white.
We look forward to all of us meeting our goals in 2019 as we continue to build high performance homes that truly meet the needs of our home buyers and comply with the programs and codes that we work with. If there is anything more that you believe that we can do to help you be successful, please let me know.
Happy new year from all of us at EnergyLogic!