Government Operations committee  No, because one of our large sectors is social housing, and another very large sector is school boards, so I would say that those two would be very large portions of our portfolio. The federal projects would probably be in the order of magnitude of 10% of our portfolio for NRC and some of the federal buildings that I showed.

Government Operations committee  I'll add to that just the agency problem. The individual or the group that saves the operating cost is not necessarily the group spending the capital or watching the capital. They don't get together, and that's a problem. Follow the money, and the savings may not get over to pay back that capital that had to be spent to make the savings happen.

Government Operations committee  I'm not sure if “irritating” is the word I'd go with.

Government Operations committee  There's lots to be done, a lot of opportunity. Let's get going; it should be done faster. Again, put the right people in the right place with the right objectives. Give them a clear message. Recognize them and it will happen. I think that's a great message. I think a lot of employees within the federal government would appreciate it and would love to have that kind of opportunity before them.

Government Operations committee  We can all improve. Certainly, working with the federal government has been a worthwhile exercise. As I said in my remarks, I think the projects were successful, they were meaningful, and the results are significant. I think that says a lot about the projects. It's a great opportunity.

Government Operations committee  I think their discussion with the client who has retained them is becoming a lot more specific about the objectives of the design. And I wrote down the integrated designs as well; that's got to be critical. So we need to take action with the clients up front and give them that sales job—if I can use that term—that they need to be looking at a broader picture, not just our fees.

Government Operations committee  In the process that's used, the federal buildings initiative is a completely open-book process. So the performance fee that you're referring to and the financing are shown as separate line items. So anybody entertaining that kind of project would know to the penny what those costs would be.

Government Operations committee  Well, the individual energy service companies bring the various financial institutions to the table as part of their offering. I have to tell you, there's not an overabundance of this business out there. I'm talking about the performance contracting business with the federal government.

Government Operations committee  Sure. The essence of the performance contract is the savings, that is, what savings can be achieved? From there, it really is up to the client in terms of how long they want to have that annual savings stream focused on paying back the capital, the principal, and the interest. If their tolerance is only eight years, the project will be a certain size.

Government Operations committee  The only thing I would add is that people generally want to know where they stand and how they are doing. So if you have a benchmarking system in place, or if you can just do it within your own portfolio to find out if they're all consistent or if you have a couple of buildings that are real problems, there is instant feedback on performance.

Government Operations committee  As a quick comment, if we paid the same price for energy that they pay, we'd be getting there too.

Government Operations committee  When I was listening to your question, the first thing that came to my mind was that there are many departments that have many different buildings in their portfolio, or buildings that they occupy, whether it's a portion of a building or the entire building. The first step is to take a look at all of those buildings, bring the stats to the table in an Excel spreadsheet—it's really simple—and just look within their own portfolio at what they are paying per square foot for energy.

Government Operations committee  Energy performance contracting in those kinds of situations becomes more complicated—there's no way around it—because now you have yet another contract in place: the lease. I think you've had a briefing on green leases. By adopting those, by being forthright and specific about what you will accept in a building as you negotiate the lease with the owner—such that “these are the kinds of conditions we expect to be met”—you get into energy density targets.

Government Operations committee  Personally, I am not familiar with that. It's something else I could look into, but I'm not familiar with any of those examples.

Government Operations committee  I have further information, if you don't mind. Those projects, on average, were an eight-year simple payback—I had to limit what I showed on that slide. Most of those projects earned incentive monies from the utilities that were available, gas or electric. You put those into the equation.