Led by Croton-on-Hudson, the Northern Westchester Energy Action Consortium’s project team for joint municipal sustainability services has awarded the contract for $279,800 to the vendor team of Ecology and Environment, Inc./Blue Springs Energy, LLC. (EEI/BSE). The seven municipalities who will receive assistance with greenhouse gas inventories and climate action plans under a federally funded NYSERDA/ARRA grant include Bedford, Cortlandt, Croton-on-Hudson, North Salem, Peekskill, Pound Ridge, and Somers.
The funding for this work derives from a grant awarded to the Consortium under the competitive federal Energy Efficiency Community Block Grant program administered by the New York State Energy Research Development Authority, under its RFP10 program for Energy Management Personnel. Several individual Westchester municipalities landed grant assistance under this program. But this Croton-led grant is the largest joint effort in which diverse communities share the costs and benefits of pooling resources to identify and work with a vendor team to provide a similar scope of work. The seven municipalities have a combined population of 121, 000, representing over half of the entire consortium’s residents.
The NWEAC team conducted its process in an open competition model, in which as much information has been shared across all vendors as possible. The project team, comprised of representatives from each of the seven partner municipalities, held a dozen meetings, either in person or via conference call, to conduct this process. For example, the project team revealed all vendor identities to each other at each stage in selection cycle. The fact that the winning bidder team of EEI and BSE decided to join forces midway through the process, after the request for qualifications round narrowed the pool from 11 to 5 potential vendors, is direct evidence of the open competition approach working. More details
