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.