Week Eleven

This week was the final week of my internship in which I finalized the working parts of the survey to make sure all of the skip logic aligned with the different parts of the survey. Later in the week, I began to say my goodbyes to the wonderful people that I had met in the Office of Sustainability and the Environment. They shared some last goodbyes and wishes for my future. Over the duration of this internship, I had shared the office with two other interns who helped me various times throughout my time there. They had been working on different projects within the office. On my last day, we ventured to the area around city hall to have lunch at a local restaurant.

When I came back from our lunch, I then had my final meeting with Mr. Bruskotter. We reviewed and revised the various parts of the survey ensuring the language was more appropriate for the different professional service providers. He asked questions of me such as, "How do I add and subtract questions?", and, "How do I use the different parts of skip logic throughout the survey?" I changed the account into his name and left the survey to his own devices. He thanked me for all of my insight and the work that I put in. We promised to catch up after my fall semester and that he would keep me in the loop about our work together.

Week Ten

Our expert on the Living Building Challenge, Joel, met with us early in the week to discuss some of the similar topics my supervisor and I used during our conference call with Shawn. We wanted to now if there was any existing thought regarding questions already being asked of the sustainability of professional services previously purchased by the city. In the meeting, Joel shared some of his frustration in the contracted services prior to his employment. Joel informed us that the city was now requiring all new buildings being drafted for construction must undergo LEED certification at the gold level. However, nothing was being asked about how these services carry out their internal operations. From our meeting, I established some questions to directly use for the architectural, engineering, construction, and landscaping services. I then began to work on the survey in which was the end goal for this project. I created an account on survey monkey to make a draft that could be sent to potential professional services. 

I utilized skip logic so these services would not undergo survey fatigue. This topic of survey fatigue was used over and over again in the Sustainable Purchasing Leadership Council's Summer Summit that my supervisor attended prior to my internship. By using this type of logic, service providers taking the survey would only answer the questions that pertained to them. By doing so, I hoped to avert any reluctance to answering the survey in full. 

Week Nine

This week we received some more feedback about the vendor surveys that were listed on the Sustainable Purchasing Leadership Council's website. One of the procurement officials who wished to hold a meeting with Mr. Bruskotter and I, decided on a time this week to discuss some of her personal experiences with the survey. Upon calling, I drafted several questions concerning the type of feedback the survey received, the qualifying and evaluation criteria, and several others of that nature. Our discussion was beneficial as Shawn, the procurement official from Multnomah County, gave us insight into their advanced policies regarding sustainability. Unlike the City of Santa Monica, the procurement office in Multnomah is deeply invested in sustainability.

After the conversation, we then established our next plans of action. We would use some of the insight about her trials and tribulations of working with people who do not have a background in sustainability and how they encouraged their professional services to hold high expectations when considering a particular vendor. From this, we determined that we should meet internally with one our experts who has been assigned the project of integrating the Living Building Challenge into the City of Santa Monica. The Living Building Challenge integrates making all new building projects to live up to the expectations of different levels of LEED certifications.

Week Eight

This week I was assigned the task of going through the list of services from the list I composed on planet bids and picking out the reoccurring contact information from the different services. By doing so, I was able to create a contact list of department officials that the Office of Sustainability should meet with to discuss the sustainability of our professional services throughout the different departments. Aside from this, I was then directed to see if there was best management practices within the various fields of sustainability. Some of the major services provided by the city in the past several years revolved around the services related to architecture, construction, engineering, and landscaping. Because the city has placed a high emphasis on making their supply chain more sustainable, it was important to research these services to ensure there was a best practice in these fields.

Upon research, I found some brief descriptions of the best management practices. While there was less information for some, there was enough information to start a conversation between the contacts and my supervisor about where we can require certain sustainable elements. The City of Santa Monica procures goods and services based on, "best values," as opposed to the lowest bidder. This allows these discussions to take place without the fear of immediate rejection from the purchasing and public works department.

Week Seven

This week consisted of looking at the professional service section under the new guidance on the Sustainable Purchasing Leadership Council. On the website of the SPLC Community, there were example surveys presented by cities in Oregon and Nova Scotia. I composed a list of pros and cons for each of the surveys in which Mr. Bruskotter and I were aiming to eventually hand out to the vendors to collect more data regarding the sustainable practices which they engage in. From analyzing these charts and the responses we received from the week prior, I started to look into some of the options for carrying out the survey.

Later on in the week, the Office of Sustainability offered for me to take part in the City's summer Olympics and represent their team. It was a nice break from the many hours of research that I had been putting in to create a prototype of the survey. My supervisor and I met up afterwards in our local coffee shop to discuss some of the charts that I had made from the Planet Bids website. From this we established priority lists for the city in terms of which professional service could have a significant environmental impact. We then planned to make a list of contact information for the members within the different departments that the city was going out to bid on for these specific services.

Week Six

This week was composed of looking into some of the templates presented in the Guidance 2.0 on the SPLC website. I compared the benefits and drawbacks of the three different types of surveys and found some similarities between the two. The City of Santa Monica has looked into various parts of the risks and emissions of some of their goods but has put less emphasis on their professional services. Mr. Bruskotter and I composed several emails to the procurement officers that composed the sample survey types. We asked them about their strategy in composing these surveys and other questions about the feedback in which they received from these surveys.

From these emails, we got responses from the procurement officers within Nova Scotia as well as Multnomah County in Oregon. The procurement officer in Nova Scotia explained some of the benefits as well as some of the negative responses that they received from the surveys. The procurement officer from Multnomah County had sent us an email wishing to set up a conference call to explain her experience with the survey. She mentioned that in the weeks to come she would be on vacation, but would hope to set this up sometime in the future. We took notes on some of the emails and decided to deeply analyze the surveys for their assets and areas on uncertainty.

Week Five

This week was focused on the relevant case studies presented at the SPLC's Summer Summit. We met briefly to discuss the ones that may be interesting for us to learn from in proceeding in our project. From this, I read over some of the case studies that we had decided upon. I made notes on these topics as well as picking out highlights from them. There were case studies ranging from ways to consume less paper up and down the supply chain as well as how to integrate responsible mining into procurement agendas. I also attended a webinar with Mr. Bruskotter regarding Green Peace's work on sustainable palm oil. From the webinar, I learned that they work in engaging collaboration with their suppliers to carry out best practices during the extraction process.

This week also marked the first staff meeting that I was invited to attend. The meeting started off with brief snippits of what was going on in our personal lives before we attended to the business side of things. Garrett and Mikael, two of the members of the climate action team, presented the almost final version the city's Climate Action Plan. They found that they reduced overall emissions of 19.8 percent from the previous action plan. One of their largest setbacks was in the city's Big Blue Bus program as there was an increase in use of single-mode transportation due to lower gas prices. While gas has been reached an all-time low in recent years, the city hopes that pushing for reductions in emissions across the board will encourage residents to become a part of their reduction goals. We went around the table discussing our various projects. The meeting ended with the update from our Chief Sustainability Officer, Dean Kubani, who discussed his meeting with the City Manager and his desire to make major changes regarding impact of the city's offices across the board.

Week Four

This week consisted of more work regarding the professional services and goods excel sheet. While doing so, Mr. Bruskotter went through some of the services with me and helping me get a better understanding of where the city was looking to grow in terms of becoming greener along the supply chain. From our discussion, I learned that the city was looking to grow in one of the sectors that is generally not accounted for when doing their greenhouse gas emission inventory, scope 3 emissions. Scope 3 emissions are defined as indirect emissions not included in the consumption of electricity of Scope 2 emissions. This can include activities such as the extraction of production materials and transportation of services not determined by the reporting agency.

Mr. Bruskotter then sent me to the links of the case studies from the summit he attended in Washington D.C. for the Sustainable Purchasing Leadership Council. He told me to take notes on the ones that seemed interesting to me. From the studies, one of the ones that stuck out to me was the Greening the Fleet study by the City of Portland. When I was combing through the professional services and goods of the city's purchases, I found that a large sector was dedicated to the transportation sector. I found that the City of Portland was able to successfully reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by implementing hybrid technology into their vehicles as well as complementing these changes with electric vehicles. The City of Santa Monica has similarly implemented some of these changes and are looking to go even further by instituting the improvements set forth by the EPA in regards to their SmartWay transit program. The SmartWay transit program looks to reduce transportation-related emissions which have harmful effects on the planet's climate and an environment.

Week Three

This week revolved around similar tasks as the week prior, combing through the various goods and services purchased by the city in order to make an account of areas in which they could improve. By logging the data in an excel sheet I was able to organize the chart by category. I extracted the important information from the bidding site such as the contact information for the city, the project title, the scope of the services provided, as well as the various tags of the categories pertaining to the project. Professional services has shown to be a significant contributor to greenhouse gas emissions amongst public agencies. However because these professional services are specific to their given sector, I went back through the various bids in order to look at some of the goods associated with these services. From there, Mr. Bruskotter instructed me to make some quick mental notes on how we could make this product greener for the city.

While working on the project, Mr. Bruskotter invited me to sit in on a call with him with the Sustainability Department in Orange County. The City of Santa Monica has been one of Southern California’s leaders in sustainability in which has inspired many of the surrounding cities and counties to follow in their footsteps. The call consisted of Mr. Bruskotter sharing his knowledge with his colleagues from Orange County regarding the presentation he would be giving their department within the next week. From this call I learned more about some of the practices in which the Santa Monica implements into their purchasing decisions. By promoting the, “best value,” mindset, the city takes the green approach when economically feasible. By benchmarking these goods and services, Santa Monica looks to stay on the forefront of sustainability. 

Week Two

This week began the works. I came into the office knowing the baseline of the project, but I soon became aware of the operation of the office. He introduced me to the others in the office, working diligently on their own tasks. I worked alongside a fellow who was helping to draft the City's new Climate Action Plan, alongside the city's climate expert. While I met the other team members, I worked alongside Karl for the remainder of the day. I sat in on a call in which a team member from the Southern California Association of Governments inquired about greening their supply chain. From the conversation, it was easy to see that the office was following many of the green building standards, but they wanted to know more about the green business certification program that the city had recently installed.

After the phone call, we headed back to the office to discuss some of the starting points for the project. Mr. Bruskotter showed me a website called Planet Bids, where I then was assigned my first task of picking through the city's purchases in order to determine the professional services. From the summit, it became very clear to the people on the Sustainability Purchase Leadership Council that the public sector had particularly high greenhouse gas emissions in both the categories of construction services and professional services. Professional services are defined, "by low capital intensity, high knowledge intensity and a professionalized workforce." Some of these examples include legal, consulting, architectural, and financial firms. The city has looked into many of the other direct impacts of their purchases, but has not invested all of its research efforts into this particular sector. This is in part due to the fact that there was an up and coming framework to the new standards brought forth by National Science Foundation. I was delegated with the task of selecting relevant professional services for the project.

Week One

This week began the project for the summer. It was more of an informal meeting with Mr. Bruskotter at a local coffee shop in which we discussed the details of the project as well as some of the new knowledge he gained at Sustainable Purchasing Leadership Council's Summit of 2016. He used the details of the summit to tie into the main objectives of the project. One of these objectives was to find green versions of the city's purchases. This would be done through the process of benchmarking. Benchmarking is the process comparing business procedures alongside the industry's best standards. Most of this research will be conducted through the program of Planet Bids. This takes into consideration the entirety of the supply chain from manufacturing to purchasing and all the processes in between.

At the conference, Mr. Bruskotter was informed about the new standards in which the USEPA is trying to encourage amongst the business sector. Upon further research, I found that these new recommendations only pertain to the purchasing categories of construction, custodial, electronics, grounds and landscaping, office and operations regarding fleet, shipping, and shop. Mr. Bruskotter also shared relevant information regarding the new sustainability standard presented by NSF. This sector specific solution regards the acronym of SEE and the 3C's. SEE stands for Social, Environmental, and Economic while the three C's are convergence, commitment and collaboration, and consensus. These sections have various types of prerequisites which take different factors of the business's key performance indicators. These are the measurement of a business' success.