Centre For Local Research into Public Space (CELOS)


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Case Study: The Cinergy Energy Retrofit Project

An investigation into the mechanics of City of Toronto contract administration

See also Working notes for this study, and Access to Information requests that we would like to pursue.

This research project began in 2005, is ongoing, and will probably continue for quite some time as resources allow.

posted January 20, 2009

Mandate

One of the key aspects of Municipal governance is program administration. As a research organization, CELOS is interested in the functionality of public administration, and its effect on public space.

In 2004 CELOS became aware of a $10M contract that had been let to Cinergy Canada, to implement energy savings in Arenas (including outdoor rinks) under Toronto's Energy Retrofit Program. CELOS began accumulating information about it. Now that the implementation phase of the contract is over, we are interested in seeing how it went. By that we mean we are interested in investigating how the mechanics of the contract were implemented.

Fortunately, this should be straightforward, as there are two relatively precise documents governing the implementation of this contract. At the same time there is a substantial amount of money involved and therefore responsibility involved. These realities make the project an ideal candidate for investigation. The two documents are

One of the key Energy Retrofit Program requirements is that retrofits be financed out of energy savings over no more than a ten year period. We therefore propose to pay particular attention to the monitoring and verification of this requirement by City administrators.

At core, we are interested in the capacity of City administrators to pursue due diligence in this type of circumstance - the oversight of a complex contract. We hope to apply insights from this investigation to the formulation of subsequent research.

Objectives

To be more specific, we propose to

  • list the contractual and administrative obligations undertaken by Cinergy and Toronto's Parks Forestry and Recreation department, particularly in the form of generation and review of program reports
  • evaluate the compliance of the City and Cinergy by obtaining these reports, and comparing report contents to report requirements.
  • identify verifiable contents of these reports (energy usage, energy costs, and energy cost savings), and go through the exercise of obtaining sufficient documentation to verify those contents
  • analyze and interpret the results, within the confines of the available data
  • report the results of our investigation on the CELOS website (celos.ca) for public review and discussion

Methods

There are a number of challenges in conducting this research.

  • The material is technical
  • The source data material is not readily available, and at times poorly defined. Instead material must typically be assembled through laborious and iterative interactions with City personnel, through email requests and the more formal Access to Information requests. These formal requests are not allowed to be objective-driven (ie attempts at collaboration are not accepted), but rather must refer to requests for specifically identified or described "records".
  • Source data material often has implicit precursors, which are difficult to identify and obtain.

To date, CELOS has obtained source data through a survey of Toronto website material (see review), many email requests, Access to Information Requests, and one formal appeal to the Province of Ontario's Information and Privacy Commissioner. This information has been accumulated in paper folders, stacking about 4 inches high. The data is organized into four dossiers:

  • Correspondence
  • Working notes and documents
  • Specification documents
  • Implementation documents

Most of the information is general or descriptive in nature, and not specifically helpful to our purpose - there is a lot of "noise".

Our method for this stage of the research is to

  1. review the assembled material
  2. create a prototype series of spreadsheets to collect and derive concrete numerical measurements (see the prototype - xls document)
  3. identify possible additional sources of data through the review, particularly from the Cinergy contract and from the general A Framework for Establishing an Energy Retrofit Program and Financing Strategy
  4. assemble data that is currently available in our records, into the spreadsheets
  5. identify possible sources of missing information from 3 above
  6. attempt to obtain information from 5 through Access to Information requests to the City
  7. resolve disputes through appeals to the Ontario Information and Privacy Commission
  8. complete as much as possible the collection of numerical data into the prototype
  9. attempt to generate reasonable estimates for missing information
  10. generate an analysis of the contract with the available information

Content last modified on May 31, 2009, at 01:48 PM EST