Would you paint yourself green and walk around dressed up like “Buzz” the energy bee to convey an environmental message to your employees? That is exactly what Bob Holesko, vice president of facilities for HEI Hotels & Resorts did as part of his company’s CARE program (“C” stands for Community, “E” stands for Environment, “A” stands for Associates, and “R” stands for Relationships). I interviewed Bob this past week for an article I posted on Green Lodging News.
I had been reading a lot of good things HEI Hotels & Resorts over the years and now I know why. The Norwalk, Conn.-based company, with the 34 hotels that it owns and manages and the nine properties that it just manages, is one of the most dedicated companies in the United States when it comes to energy conservation. HEI was recently recognized as an Energy Star Partner of the Year for the fourth consecutive year and has committed to reduce energy consumption at all of its properties by 20 percent by 2020 (baseline year 2008). In 2012, HEI reduced energy consumption by 2.7 percent when compared to 2011.
HEI has its own custom energy monitoring dashboard called the Energy Looking Glass. It takes into account electricity, water and gas consumption, as well as factors such as weather, capital projects, and occupancy to determine how a hotel is doing on a daily basis in terms of environmental performance. HEI also has an Energy Set-Point program which defines optimum settings for key systems (domestic hot water, chilled water, etc.). This was introduced to make sure all of the chief engineers keep set points at comfortable, yet efficient levels.
‘Relentless’ & ‘Methodical’
Once HEI has a property under its wings, it is, as described in my article headline, “relentless” and “methodical” about weeding out energy inefficiency. For those properties large enough, a retrocommissioning survey is done. Seventeen HEI hotels have gotten retrocommissioning surveys. In some situations, a new chiller may be purchased.
Within the first two years of a hotel being owned and/or managed, lighting is upgraded inside and outside of a property, and kitchen exhaust hoods are switched over to ones that automatically adjust the speed of the fan by measuring the temperature, steam and smoke in the hood. Every room gets programmable thermostats as part of a larger sensor-based energy management system. Where appropriate, inefficient motors are replaced with variable frequency drive versions. These are just a few investment examples.
Once the capital improvements are made, HEI starts shifting the operational culture of a property—training employees to turn off the lights and other energy eaters, for example. The chief engineer is the energy champion at each hotel and participates as part of a “Fab Four” along with the executive chef, executive housekeeper, and banquet manager. Managers are incentivized and awarded for their green accomplishments. Managers also must take part in a Managers-In-Training Program that requires them to complete a project focusing on one of the key areas of HEI’s corporate social responsibility platform—the environment being one of the key areas.
HEI is smart in purchasing and managing hotels that are aligned with brands that already take aggressive approaches toward energy management—Hilton, Marriott, Starwood.
As you will see in my article, HEI is also making progress in the area of waste management. To encourage recycling, HEI developed a “Reese Cycle” bee image that now appears on signage in back-of-house areas at its hotels. No word yet on whether or not Bob Holesko plans to don a Reese Cycle costume.
To learn more about HEI’s green efforts, search on “HEI Hotels” on the Green Lodging News website. You may also click here.
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