RIA-JMTC earns Secretary of the Army Energy and Water Management Award

By Ms. Kimberly A Conrad (Rock Island Arsenal)September 19, 2016

Plating shop ESPC improvements
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Secretary of the Army Energy and Water Management Award
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The Rock Island Arsenal Joint Manufacturing and Technology Center (RIA-JMTC) was recognized at this year's Secretary of the Army Energy and Water Management Awards, held Aug. 11 in Providence, Rhode Island.

The annual awards are designed to recognize the energy and water conservation achievements and programs of individuals, installations, and small groups, and also for exceptional performance.

Edward Flinn, director of industrial engineering at RIA-JMTC, along with his team Bradley Niles, chief of plant engineering, Raymond Gebhart, mechanical engineer, and Joseph Carpentier, industrial engineering technician, accepted an award for RIA-JMTC for exceptional performance from the Honorable Katherine Hammack, assistant secretary of the Army for Installations, Energy and Environment, and Lt. Gen. Gwen Bingham, assistant chief of Staff for Installation Management.

RIA-JMTC was recognized for its achievements in exceptional performance for the utilization of an Energy Savings Performance Contract (ESPC) project, leveraging that project to maximize energy savings and critical industrial process equipment upgrades.

In early 2013, RIA-JMTC embarked on the ambitious multi-year energy savings project under the support of an ESPC. Early in the investigation and development phase, it became apparent that there were many "targets of opportunity", but also that the project could be used to perform life cycle replacement of critical process equipment. As an example, by leveraging private sector financing streams included within the ESPC model, the factory was able to perform a cohesive replacement of the plating capability vs. a piecemeal replacement that likely would have been dictated by highly constrained public funding resources.

The uniqueness of the focus of this ESPC being on the industrial components places RIA-JMTC as the largest ESPC among Army Materiel Command (AMC) Installations and Army Industrial Installations. RIA-JMTC is also one-of-a-kind within AMC in regards to their process improvement task order; industrial modernization projects have been separated from the facilities oriented projects. The RIA-JMTC's highly innovative approach of utilizing ESPC funding mechanisms to replace critical process equipment based upon energy savings is starting to be recognized by other Army installations and energy service companies.

As a result of the RIA-JMTC ESPC effort, the Rock Island Arsenal Garrison has been able to "piggy-back" on that over-arching contract to develop or expand energy savings efforts of their own. The energy and environmental benefits of the combined efforts will enable compliance with the Executive Order for Installation Energy Reduction.

The ESPC project at RIA-JMTC consists of five Energy Conservation Measures (ECMs), three of which were completed in 2015, one that is nearly complete, and the largest is approximately 20% complete. RIA-JMTC has already seen a reduction of $2.6M in energy costs. Additional savings will be realized once the projects are completed and the yearly measurement and verification of the ESPC can be performed.