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.