From lighting and heating office spaces to necessary equipment testing, energy use is a part of regular operations at any installation. Helping to make sure energy is being used efficiently is a dedicated group of personnel tasked as building energy monitors, or BEMs.

The job of the BEM is to disseminate information about responsible energy usage to their coworkers, and to look for energy conservation opportunities in their respective buildings. They work with facility coordinators and their coworkers to take corrective actions regarding energy.

"The whole purpose of the BEMs is that they are our boots on the ground approach to each and every building," said Karl Bryan, Naval Air Station Patuxent River installation energy manager. "And what we're trying do is drive a behavioral change in the offices and labs and places like that."

To better facilitate that change, and to simplify the job for BEMs, the command hosts training twice a year to help BEMs better understand their position and how to promote better energy usage in their respective workspaces.

Bryan admitted, when a person first assumes the role of BEM for their building their level of knowledge on the subject may be fairly basic.

"That's the aim of the training, though; what we want to do is slowly bring that level of understanding up," said Bryan.

The training, held in April and October, covers a wide array of topics aimed at explaining the responsibility of the BEM, what to look for in their buildings regarding unnecessary energy use, the impact of energy waste, and corrective actions to be taken when necessary.

"When you start showing people things like this - understanding how a light works, how wattage works, what plug loads are - they might be able to pick it up right off the bat," said Bryan. "More intricate things would be air conditioning systems. We'd like to get it to where our BEMs go in and know the difference between a diffuser and a return, and understand how they work together. We need to bring [BEMs] up to that level of knowledge, and we're hoping to expand our program of training to hopefully make it so that they understand what the facility managers understand. At the present time, doing graphical layouts, and showing examples is one the best ways."

Another part of the training is explaining the BEM check list, a step-by-step, yes/no guide that explains what they should be looking for and doing in their building.

"We have a checklist, and the focus of our next training session will be to go through each of the questions, and if it says something like 'Are there incandescent bulbs in the building,' we're going to have a picture of an incandescent bulb and make sure that people know what that is," said Paul Waxman, NAWC-AD site energy manager, who works closely with Bryan to facilitate the training for his command. "We're going to do that for each one of those questions, and as we're getting everybody trained to that level and understanding how to answer them, we'll go through the results and how to fix those issues. For example, if there are incandescent bulbs, we'll take those out and replace them with another bulb. We might get to things like it's an HVAC issue. Well, that's not as simple 'as change this, do this,' it might take some more work. But by training the BEMs to be aware of these items we can start the process of understanding where to focus our energy efforts."

Bryan added, the goal of the training is not to penalize the BEM for the energy being used in their buildings, but to be active in changing the culture of smart energy use.

"We want our BEMs to be more active, but we don't want people to feel stigmatized that they're there to be the energy police," said Bryan. "They're there to help, to take ideas and suggestions, to look for improvement, to drive behavioral change. There are things that are above and beyond what our energy managers are doing, and when people start thinking of energy as a culture they come up with these types of solutions which are additional benefits."

For more information on the Installation Energy Management Program or how to receive building energy monitor training, contact Bryan at karl.bryan@navy.mil.

For more news from Naval Air Station Patuxent River, visit www.navy.mil/.