Massachusetts Department of Transportation – Andrea Mengual – 2015

Goals

The Massachusetts Department of Transportation’s (MassDOT) Highway Division is the segment of this public agency tasked with the construction and oversight of state roads and highways. In 2012, MassDOT Highway joined the Accelerated Energy Program (AEP), a three-year initiative aimed at auditing and retrofitting a total of 700 sites across the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. As a result of this program, 100 Highway facilities were audited, and nearly 40 were retrofitted with upgraded lighting and energy management systems. The remaining facilities are expected to have their upgrades completed by Spring 2016. To ensure the sustainability of the energy savings resulting from the AEP efforts, the Highway Division enlisted Andrea Mengual to develop an electronic tool that would help them track and quantify the impact of the upgrades on their facilities portfolio.

Solutions

After reviewing the data sources available and cross-checking the information to ensure data integrity, Mengual designed and programmed a tool that, with limited manual input from the user, tracks and quantifies energy use, cost and greenhouse gas emissions savings over time for the entire portfolio of facilities. During the tool development process, Mengual identified gaps in the data and worked with MassDOT to find ways to improve data management in the organization. Furthermore, by analyzing the reports generated with the tool, Mengual was able to gain insight into which types of measures, geographical regions and building types were benefitted most by the upgrades, and she was also able to make recommendations to guide future projects.

Potential Impact

MassDOT understands that monitoring and evaluation is essential to the long-term success of energy management. The improved understanding of the state of energy and data management at their organization should enable MassDOT to make informed decisions as they continue retrofitting their facilities, and the added visibility should help them take corrective actions to sustain the impact of their efforts.