Tell us about yourself.
My name is Robert E. Oliver. I’m the energy manager for the Ipsalani Community Schools. I sort of look at I have all the gas, water, sewer and electrical invoices sent directly to me. They’re also sent to the administration building, but I get the copyright from the utility and I sort of go through them.
What would it be like trying to do your job without EnergyCAP?
So I think we have every gas, water, sewer and electric invoice from 2000 until today entered into it. Well, I’m not sure how I would ever be able to do reports that I can do now. One of the things that would be necessary would be I would have to have a fairly large stack of invoices that I would be constantly looking at right now. I get the invoices and I do look at them, but once I get the invoices and I look at them, I clip them together and they’re on the shelf because the information, if I want to know what a particular district building did at a particular time, I can go to EnergyCAP and look it up.
There’s probably many reports that I have not discovered in all my years yet, but every time I do find another report, it’s a reward to have that information and make comparisons from a ten year period and show a graph that shows how we went up or down.
What’s the best part of using EnergyCAP?
Well, it definitely makes my life easier because when somebody asks me a question and it’s not like I get dozens of questions every day, but if somebody wants some information, a question that I’ve got to generate some information, I don’t have to go back through pages of data. I could take enough time to look up that old invoice, but I can go right on ECAP, and it can tell me if I get a question about a particular building in use. I have the invoices, and I can go back through them, but it’s so much easier. I just read over to the computer and I actually can do it from home or from the office. So I just look up and I can give them the answer in five minutes.