Below is the text version of the webinar DOE Building Energy Asset Score: Energy Efficiency Services Companies, presented in March 2015.

Andrew Burr:
Cover slide of presentation:

I'm Andrew Burr with the Department of Energy. I work both in the Building Technologies Office here and with the deputy assistant secretary. Thank-you all for joining. I'm sorry again for the technical difficulties. We've been doing this all week, and somehow we've had these technical difficulties at the beginning of basically all of them. So we apologize for that. Anyway, so we're going to run this presentation in two parts. I will give an overview of the Asset Score, and I'll be pretty brief. And I'm going to turn it over to my colleague, Supriya Goel at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. She's one of the lead developers on this tool. And she's going to show you how it works on the inside.

First slide:
So with that, for the overview, this is an outstanding tool. We're very happy to be where we are right now, which is rolling this tool out. It's been under development by DOE and the Pacific Northwest National Lab for about three years. It is up and running and ready to use today. So if you go online to the Asset Score website, you can create a user profile and get going. And there are already about 500 buildings nationally that have earned an Asset Score. That said, we are doing a formal announcement and other launch type activities this spring, to make sure that everybody is aware that the tool is up and running. So what is the Asset Score? It's a national, free, standardized, online software tool for assessing the physical and structural energy efficiency of commercial and multifamily residential buildings. Our goal in developing this was to put a tool out there that got rid of some of the cost barriers to doing this type of analysis and could really help users identify opportunities to invest in the energy efficiency of buildings. So I think many of you are familiar or already users of the EPA's ENERGY STAR® Portfolio Manager tool. That's a terrific tool. But for users, as you know, that's a tool that looks at operation, energy bills, and structural aspects of the building. That's not what the Asset Score is doing. The Asset Score is only looking at the physical building and the major energy-related systems, and then it's asking how efficient was this building constructed, and how can I improve it. So in many ways, when you look at the two tools next to each other, they are complementary. The Asset Score is going one level deeper than Portfolio Manager, and it's going to tell you what you can do, again, if you actually want to invest in the efficiency of this building.

Next slide:
A little bit about how it works. So the Asset Score is built on top of an energy modeling platform called EnergyPlus. The Asset Score is running a full EnergyPlus simulation for each building that gets scored. And on top of EnergyPlus what we've done is basically build a pretty intuitive, pretty simple user interface and plugged in a lot of different inferences to make this tool relatively easy to use for users at all different types of levels. Like any model, the simulation normalizes for operations, occupancy, and tenant behavior within the building. Like Portfolio Manager, it does ask users to gather information about the building and input that in themselves. The type of information the users are asked to gather and put in are on the bottom of the screen. This is what Supriya will be going over in much more detail in the second part of the presentation. Two things are worth noting. The first is that this tool does not require any information about the energy bills or the operation of the building. The second is that this tool is more sophisticated than Portfolio Manager. It's not something that we think, say, an intern will be able to do with a lot of ease. It is a tool that to gather the information and use, it's helpful for somebody to have some familiarity with the building and its systems and other aspects.

Next slide:
These are a couple screenshots from within the tool. So there are two parts to the actual tool. The first is a data entry. And then the second, in the bottom left-hand corner, is you actually build a very simple model of the building in the tool and assign all the data to the different blocks that you're building, that you did in the first section. So it's a very cool tool. Again, Supriya will be going over this in more detail.

Next slide:
Types of buildings that can be used for the Asset Score. New and existing buildings, commercial multifamily, which includes office, includes retail. A full list is on this slide. What you'll notice, it does include a lot of building types that are typically found in states and cities and counties. It does also do warehouse. The tool does do mixed use and gives separate scores and information for each building use, of any of these use types that are on this list. What the tool does not yet do are buildings with very complex energy systems or needs. So like a freestanding data center or a hospital. The tool does not yet do those building types. But we do have plans to add those over the next few years.

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And then, what do you get out of this tool? So you get first an Asset Score report. And let me go into more detail about a few of these.

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The first thing you get is an energy efficiency score, based on predicted EUI from the EnergyPlus model. This is a 10-point scale. For those of you that are familiar with this tool, this was previously a 100-point scale, but it was causing a tremendous amount of confusion with Portfolio Manager, which of course is not our intent. So we recently changed it to 10 points. It did very little to actually change how buildings are being scored. We just chopped off a zero. You actually get two scores from this tool. So you get what we call a current score, based on how your building is rated. And then you get a potential score, based on the implementation of recommendations that this tool gives you. And I'll talk more about that in a moment. A 10 is the most energy efficient on this scale, and it represents the lowest expected energy use, using current EE technologies. So this scale is not the same scale that's used by ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager. This is not a percentile scale. It's not ranking buildings relative to the performance of other existing buildings today.

Next slide:
And a little more about this score. Like I said, we have several hundred buildings in the tool already, and a couple weeks ago, we pulled some information out to take a look at this. So these are office buildings, and the blue bar represents the current score, and the green triangles represent the potential score. And what you see here is that we do have a good distribution across the scale from 1 to 10, which is basically telling us that the scale and the tool are doing what they're intended to do. Which means, very efficient buildings are showing up as very efficient, and inefficient buildings are showing up as very inefficient. Little bit more on this. This is just showing you some other use types. This is not all the use types in the Asset Score. But from left to right: assisted living, city hall, courthouses, educational facilities, libraries, hotels / motels, medical office, and multifamily. And again, we're very pleased with how these distributions came out.

Next slide:
Back to the Asset Score report. It gives you a couple other pieces of information. A very high-level ranking for the efficiency of individual building systems and different elements of the building envelope. That's what you see at the top of the screen. On the bottom, it also gives you predicted EUI by end use.

Next slide:
And then lastly, I had mentioned recommendations. The tool does give custom recommendations based on the information that users put in on cost-effective opportunities to actually upgrade the physical building or the systems. Again, these aren't stock recommendations. But I do want to stress this. These are not obviously to the level of, say, an ASHRAE 2 audit. This is not intended to replace an engineer walking through your building. This is a cut above that in detail. So we think it can be very helpful, say, for building owners who maybe have a Portfolio Manager score but want to know, do I focus on operations or do I focus on physical upgrades or actual capital investments? This tool will tell you that, and these recommendations will tell you that.

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And then, a couple words about value. So this is a tool that we feel very strongly can be integrated into the services and software and different offerings by energy efficiency service providers, by engineering companies, by those who are doing LEED consulting, in the same way we know many of you have integrated Portfolio Manager into your offerings. Again, it's a free tool. There's very little investment, I think, on the part of businesses to offer this. And it is, like I said, a little more sophisticated than Portfolio Manager. So we do anticipate, as the Asset Score rolls out, that there will be demand by real estate owners to have an Asset Score, and we feel like in many ways, the energy efficiency service providers are very well-postiioned to provide that. For your clients that come out with not very good scores, obviously, this is a tool that can help them figure out what types of measures they should be looking at to improve. For clients of yours that come out with a very good score, we believe that the 1 to 10 score is a metric that your clients can communicate to the market to get recognition with DOE validation, that their assets are very efficient or performing very well. Particularly what we found is there may be instances where a building cannot get a Portfolio Manager score, because they can't get access to the energy bills. Or you have an instance where a building owner has done a lot to improve the actual facility, but their ENERGY STAR score is very low, perhaps because of the way that their tenants are using the building, or other operational aspects. This is a tool that will recognize those owners or other clients of yours for making those assessments. One feature that we recently added: For those of you who are familiar with EnergyPlus and Open Studio, in addition to the Asset Score report, you can now download the EnergyPlus model or the Open Studio file, and put that back into Open Studio and do calibrations and do further analysis. For any of you that work with utilities, we have been in discussions with several utilities across the country. Because this is a tool that focuses on building systems and envelope, we feel like it lines up very well with the types of information that utilities are looking for to target and market DSM programs.

Next slide:
And then last before I hand it over to Supriya, we do have a call for users out right now. So we're going to be recognizing companies that are either using the Asset Score now or can commit to us to use it by the end of the year. Right now we're planning, at a minimum, a media release that recognizes those companies in May '15. And that would be right around the time of our Better Buildings Summit here in Washington. We're also able to provide, at least for the next couple months, some technical assistance from the Pacific Northwest National Lab to help people get started using the tool. So again, there's a little bit of a learning curve here. But we're making a commitment to help those of you who do want to use it and get familiar with it. Lastly, we don't want to just recognize building owners here. So any, again, service provider, design firm, LEED consultant, that wants to use this on behalf of clients, we would love to recognize you, as well.

Next slide:
My contact information is on the screen. We'll put this back up after Supriya's presentation. We can't recognize you if we don't know who you are. So if you're interested in this, if you're already using it, if you want to use it and want some help, please get in touch with me. So thank- you all very much, and I'm going to hand it over to Supriya now to walk you through the tool. We're going to hold questions until the end. But we should be ready for questions by about 2:30. Supriya?

Supriya Goel:
Next slide (inside the tool):

Thanks, Andrew. I'm sharing my screen now. I'm going to walk all the attendees through a demo of the tool. We'll go through the process of creating a building, generating a score, and going through the Asset Score report to see the information it provides us.

Next slide (Asset Score home page):
Before we get started, I'd also like to show some helpful documents we have on the tool home page that can help any new users get started, provide you additional information, and kind of give you some guidance on the easiest way of understanding this tool. So on the home page -- it is buildingenergyscore.energy.gov -- and for new users who do not have an Asset Score account, this would usually have a log-in box, and you can click on the "Register" button and go ahead and create a user name and password. The tool does an email verification, so you would receive an email with a link to verify your account. A few helpful resources that we have is a quick-start guide, which has a five-step process to the basic rules and guidance of the Asset Score tool and would be an excellent document to quickly glance through before you start using the tool. We also have a data collection form, and we have two versions, the lite and the full version.

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The difference between the two being that the lite version summarizes all the inputs in the tool which are the mandatory requirements to creating a complete Asset Score model, and the full version has all the inputs present in the Asset Score tool, along with the optional inputs that can be either inferred or defaulted to a certain value.

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We also have a data collection priority map. This document would tell you all the present variables in a particular climate zone, based on building use type. So for a building owner who's planning to do a walk-through audit of the building and wants to use the Asset Score tool to generate an Asset Score report, this would be a helpful document to look at, so that you can focus your time and budget on these inputs that have the highest impact on building Asset Score.

Next screen:
We also have an Asset Score API. This is a RESTful API, and it's current with all the current capabilities that are present in the user interface. So for any organization looking to use the API and link to their own tools or develop a web interface, we can definitely help them get started.

Next screen:
I'll go on to the My Buildings page. Once you log in to the tool, the tool takes you to the My Buildings page, where you can click on "New Building" and get started with creating a building to generate a score. Other helpful documents, other helpful features that we have is a Manage Buildings section. And we'll go through the capabilities of the Manage Buildings section, too, as part of the demo. There is also a feedback button. You can click on the feedback button and contact the Asset Score team directly if you have any questions. The feedback capability is also available from the tool homepage, so you don't need to be necessarily just there to contact us. And this question mark opens up our help documentation, and it provides detail on the inputs in the Asset Score tool, as well as gives you examples of a typical input for those Asset Score questions. So to move on, I've started creating a building, and we'll go ahead and complete the data entry process.

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So clicking on "New Building" is going to bring you to the building info page, where you need to specify a building name, the year completed, a floor area, and the building location. So here the tool uses the year completed and the building location to make inferences or define defaults for any inputs that are not provided by the user. So the year completed should be as accurate as possible. And if the building has gone through a major retrofit, then this input should be the year of major retrofit.

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Moving to the next screen, this page of data entry in Asset Score, we'll go through a series of, I think, six screens where we define all the assets present in a building. We're creating an inventory of all components in a building, and then in the second stage of data entry, we create the building geometry and assign all the assets we defined in stage 1. So in this screen, a user is required to specify the use type in a building. And we have a dropdown list of all the use types supported by the tool. You can define multiple use types to represent a mixed-use building. There are some basic rules that define that maximum number of use types that can be present in a building, and summarized over here. And also the tool would prompt you if you end up breaking any of these rules. This is to prevent a user from going to the detail of creating a space-by-space definition for use type. That is not the intent of the tool. We use high-level building area types to define the building use types.

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The next screen deals with building construction assemblies. Here we're required to specify the roof, skylight, wall, window, and floor properties. Each input is a very simple selection that can be made through a dropdown list. And the roof properties can be defined through several options. We take in the assembly U-value, insulation R-value, insulation thickness, or "I don't know," which then uses the inference engine to infer the typical assembly U-value based on the building location, the year of construction, and the roof type.

Next screen:
You can also create multiple roof types if portions of your building have a different roof construction, or if a certain portion has been through a retrofit and has different thermal properties. The same feature for wall types. We can specify the wall construction, as well as the thermal properties. And there'll always be easy default of "I don't know" if that information is not available. Windows in the tool expect some input of frame type, glass type. This can be single-pane, double-pane, triple-pane, and a gas-fill type. The optional properties of U-value, solar heat gain coefficient, and visible transmittance can be defined if that's available. In each input box you will see these red asterisks. These define all the required data points, and these need to be filled out for the data entry process to be complete. All of these required data points also correspond to the lite data collection form, which summarizes only the mandatory inputs in the tool. Floor has a similar dropdown list of steel joist, wood-framed, concrete, and slab on grade. We'll go ahead to find the floor. Again, this section can be accessed during stage 2 of data entry, as well. So anything that -- you can edit, add, or modify any of the previously defined inputs.

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The next screen of data entry is lighting. Here the tool expects you to create an inventory of detailed lighting count and the fixture type present in a building. So to add a fixture, you click on the "Add Fixture" button. You select the lighting mounting type, and the lighting fixture type. The lighting fixture type is -- again, there's a list of all the fixture types supported by the tool. These can be compact fluorescent, lamp fluorescent, LED, incandescent. You can select the most appropriate fixture type, specify lamp, wattage, and number of lamps per fixture. Multiple fixture types can be defined for a building with several lighting types. So I've defined fluorescent T8. I would also like to specify some LED lamps in the building. And maybe some compact fluorescents, as well. Here the tool is taking in the different fixture types and the details for the lamp configuration. In stage 2 of data entry, we would go ahead, assign this to the building blocks, and then define a lighting count.

Next screen:
We go on to the next screen. The next screen deals with HVAC systems present in the building. And Asset Score defines these in three categories. We have central plants, air-handling units, and zone equipment. Central plants can be central building chillers, boilers, district hot water, or chilled water. Air-handling units would be secondary systems that can be using chilled water or hot water from a central plant or could be a single-zone rooftop unit that's out on the building. Zone equipment would be smaller systems. These would be zone systems like packaged or air conditioners, unit 3 heaters, or window air conditioners. And at each page, if this information is confusing and you need some help on defining the Asset Score input for your particular system type, you can always access the Asset Score help through this question mark.

Next screen:
And this will open up the HVAC section within the Asset Score help document, where we would go to the HVAC system examples and configuration. This has some helpful images, as well as the corresponding Asset Score inputs for different types of systems. If you have a rooftop unit or a rooftop heat pump, a chiller or boiler, or window air conditioners, this documentation can help you define what needs to be the corresponding Asset Score input. I'm going back to the tool.

Next screen:
We go ahead and create a central building boiler, which is gas-fired, it's mechanical draft, and I have the optional input for the thermal efficiency of the boiler. I can enter this, or the tool can infer it based on the year of construction of the building. I'll go ahead, create a boiler. And also create a cooling plant. So I have an air- cooled chiller. I can go ahead and specify all the mandatory inputs. The tool also has some advanced building controls. These are optional inputs; if you have information available on these controls, then you should go ahead, enter these. If you do not, the tool has defaults built in and will take the most typical value to specify these building controls. Again, if you see an input for the chiller is an optional property, you can enter it if you have the information. Go ahead, create the plant. Now I'd like to create a secondary system with a cooling source and a heating source that links to my central plant. I can also use the other options of no cooling or central DX, which are the other system types present here. And for heating, again, I have central furnace, which can be gas-fired or electric resistance, and heat pumps. I go ahead, define with the plant I previously defined. Distribution and fan systems. We set the other two levels of detail that we required. Distribution, we specified multiple-zone distribution. So this building has reheat and VAV fan control. Again, there are some advanced control options. For demand control ventilation, economizer, supply air temperature reset, and fan static pressure reset. If those are not available, you can leave it be, and the tool would default to -- would give you the defaults of these properties.

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On zone equipment, since these are smaller, these systems we do not require as much level of information. So these equipment types, you can just select cooling source and the heating source. They both have similar options in the dropdown list as compared to air handlers. The difference is in the modeling assumptions we make for fan properties -- the fans have pressure for that level of detail. So we go ahead, create zone equipment. Now we're done with defining HVAC section for a building, and we'll move to the next screen.

Next screen:
The next screen deals with water heaters present in a building. The required inputs in the water heater section are fuel type and distribution type. We can select those. I will let the other inputs be blank, and the tool can default the values, can infer the values to be present for that water heater.

Next screen:
Move to the next section. Next section is operations. So since this is an Asset Score tool, we use standard building operations for defining the score of a building. So our schedules of operation, the occupant density, thermostat set point, all of these are standard. These are based on ASHRAE 90.1 2013 Appendix C. These are also documented in our tool home page. You can access it over there. We do provide an optional input for the actual building operation. These are not used for the EnergyPlus simulation, however, these are used during the lifecycle cost analysis for identifying cost-effective recommendations. If you have a building that has operations significantly different from the standard operations being used by the building, it is a good idea to provide these operations so that we use the actual building operation while making recommendations. So for a building that is operated 24 hours a day versus a standard office building that is operated eight to 10 hours a day, we might have some recommendations that prove to be cost-effective, which might not have been cost-effective with standard operations. So this is always a good idea to provide, if you want more appropriate recommendations. We go ahead, define the operating hours. And the heating and cooling set point. Can let the other inputs be blank. And let's say this building is also operated on Saturday. And create operation. Now moving to the next screen, we are now complete with stage 1 of data entry, where we defined building assets and created an inventory of all components present in the building. And in the next stage, we're going to define the building geometry and assign all the properties we have just defined.

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So here this opens up the geometry section of the building. We have these prompts that tell us the information that's missing. And we can go ahead, create a block. Asset Score uses these custom shapes that you can see over here: an H- shape, L-shape, T-shape, and a U-shape. And multiple of these shapes can be used to create a geometric representation of your building. The basic rules to keep in mind while creating the number of blocks: Each block can have only a single use type. So if you have a building with retail on the lower floors and office on the upper floors, you would want to create two blocks so that you can assign the appropriate use types. Also, each block can only have one mechanical system. So if you have portions of the building being served by different systems that have significantly different properties, then you would want to create different blocks to assign your systems accurately. So we go ahead, use an L-shaped building for the first block. Specify dimensions for each side. This is four floors. Create a block, and here you see the block's been created. We also create another block for our office use type. And it's L-shaped type orientation. ... So once this is created, it shows up on your screen. And you can use some of the geometry features we have to modify building geometry, like the toggle guide, to move this block around and save it as a specified distance. We also have the camera rotation level that we use to view the building from different angles. So this looks like the building I have, so I can move on. Now you see additional prompts that have been displayed on different tasks of the tool. And this will guide you on the missing information. So every block must have an assigned use type. In stage 1 we had defined the two use types present in the building. Now we can drag and drop those use types onto the building. And the prompt then disappears once the information has been provided. On the construction tab, we have all the envelope properties we previously defined, and now we need to assign it to the building. And as we assign a property to a block, the block gets highlighted. That's your way of knowing that the property has been assigned. The other way is to click on the block, and everything that has been defined is displayed. This property is then defined for the entire block.

Now we assigned the window construction to a block, and we need to specify a window-wall ratio. Asset Score tool takes in window information through two inputs. You could have a continuous input, which is a basic window-wall ratio, or a discrete input, where you can specify the number of windows, the width and the height of the windows. We also have the capability to modify these properties for each vertical surface. So walls and window construction and window-wall ratio properties can be modified for different orientations, different surfaces. So if I have a particular surface that has higher window-wall ratio than the remaining surfaces, I can modify that. And the fact that you can specify this property at a block level and then modify it at a surface level makes it much easier and quicker to define all of the properties. Now we're done with all the geometry information. The validation prompt has disappeared. So we go to the next one. Here the tool prompts us that every block must have at least one lighting fixture assigned. So we go ahead, drag and drop the lighting fixtures we previously defined. And a block can have one to many fixtures. So the next prompt that we receive is that a block must have either a percentage served value or number of fixtures. So here is where we have the fixtures assigned, and we tell the tool the total number of fixtures or the percentage area served. We do the same for the second block. The lighting entry process is complete. We can move to the next screen, which is heating and cooling.

The heating and cooling section displays the systems we previously defined. And the tool gives us a prompt that a block needs to have an assigned HVAC system. We can drag and drop the systems we have defined on the block, verify that the system's been assigned. We move to the next section, for water heaters. And we can assign the water heater to a block. For operations, the same process. And every time, you can click on the block, verify that the operation has been assigned.

Next screen:
We've addressed all the validation prompts that the tool was prompting us for. So we go to the information screen and at one quick glance we can see all the information we entered. There are no other prompts telling us -- informing us of missing information. So this building is ready to be scored now. Go ahead, click on "Score Building." The tool prompts us that the simulation can take upwards of an hour. We're running four EnergyPlus models on the server, so depending on the site and the complexity of the building, relation can take from 20 minutes to about 60 minutes. And a user is notified by email when the simulation is complete, and the email notification has a link to the Asset Score report. So while the simulation is running, it will show up under the "Waiting for Score" section on your My Buildings page. To demonstrate what an Asset Score report is going to look like, I'm going to just open up an already scored building.

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A building that is scored has a white circle with a number, which is the current score of the building with data in it. This is the building we had created during the demo yesterday. So I'll click on that. And this has the current score, potential score, as well as the estimated source energy savings. You have the capability to download the Asset Score report from this page, or download the Open Studio model from this page.

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Clicking on the Asset Score report would open up a PDF, which has the current score, potential score of the entire building. It tells you that the building type is mixed-use, and the use types that are present in the building. Energy use intensity by fuel type is displayed for the entire building, as well as for the different use types. So for the office portion, we also get the current and the potential score, the standard operating assumptions, as well as the energy use by fuel type. And same for the retail portion. The tool gives us high-level recommendations for improvements to the building. This building has several envelope mechanical system recommendations. These are very high-level with energy savings and cost investment being identified as low, medium, and high. And the "Learn More" tab here will open up a recommendation guide, which gives you a little more detail on the intent of this recommendation. We have another page section, which is the structure and systems section, and that gives you the energy use by end use, straight down to the current and upgraded building, as well as ranking by each building component. That is the Asset Score report.

Next screen:
I'd like to quickly show you the Manage Buildings capability present in the tool. Clicking on the Manage Buildings page opens up a list of all the buildings that you have defined, as well as some buildings that have been shared with you. There are some helpful features over here, like duplicating, share, or deleting the building. You can also click on "Checked Buildings" and open up simulation results.

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Simulation results is a simple CSV download of the energy use by end use, and the current and potential score of rated buildings. I have that up on my screen right now, and what you see is for the rated buildings, I downloaded the current / potential score and the energy use by end use for current and optimized building. So this can be helpful for people looking to do more detailed analysis and maybe looking at a portfolio of buildings or comparing different design options for different buildings.

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You can also share a building with another Asset Score user. For that purpose, you would first need to add them as a contact. And you can share for an existing Asset Score user by their last name or by their email address. So that's a quick overview of Manage Buildings. I would now hand it over to Evan for questions, and also to Andrew to share his screen.