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STEP Up on the Hill

Washington, May 17, 2012…This morning, less than a year after its official announcement at InfoComm 2011, STEP made its debut on Capitol Hill in a presentation to the U.S. House of Representatives’ High-Performance Building Congressional Caucus Coalition (www.hpbccc.org).  The caucus, co-chaired by Reps. Russ Carnahan (D-Mo.) and Judy Biggert (R-Ill.), was formed in 2008 and is intended to heighten awareness and inform policymakers of the opportunities to design, construct and operate buildings to be more energy efficient. STEP, as we all know by now, addresses the role that electronic systems such as AV, IT and integrated building technologies (IBT) can play to make buildings smarter and more energy efficient from earliest planning through day-to-day operations.

Wild horses couldn’t have kept me away.

The presentation, part of High-Performance Building Week up on Capitol Hill, was arranged by our fellow STEP sustaining member, the Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA). From its inception, the STEP rating system was always intended to be more than just a GreenAV thing and certainly more than just a set of best practices. It needed to embrace all low-voltage building technologies and attract other like-minded industry associations who could broaden its mission and message. Today was an example of the power of good partnerships. If STEP were just an AV thing, no way would we get a meeting on Capitol Hill within a year (or maybe ever). However, as a coalition of four major trade associations representing AV, IT, structured cabling and telecommunications, we get a swing at the plate.
The presentation was attended by congressional caucus staff plus industry representatives from ASHRAE, APPA, NFPA, UL and other groups. Cisco’s Gary Hall was first up to bat with a presentation highlighting Cisco’s efforts to imbue sustainable thinking into every aspect of their corporate culture. Having served on InfoComm’s STEP task force, Gary was in the room as STEP was being molded. (In fact, he was the one who came up with the name STEP.) Cisco’s clout combined with Gary’s familiarity with STEP and his passion for sustainability (he makes me look like Mr. Burns from “The Simpsons”) made him a great leadoff hitter.

STEP executive director, Allen Weidman, followed with an overview of STEP’s evolution and a run-through of the rating system itself. With more than 30 years of association experience working with the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Energy and other governmental bodies, Allen could speak to the niche that STEP fills in the high-performance building landscape. The final presenter was Herb Congdon, TIA’s Associate Vice President of Technology and Standards. Herb talked about STEP’s pathway to becoming a consensus-driven ANSI standard with broad industry input and acceptance.

The presentations were very well received and the question and answer session at the end highlighted where STEP needed to go next. In fact, Mae Stevens, legislative assistant to Representative Carnahan, stunned us all by asking the $64,000 question: Did we have a bill we wanted the caucus to present to the House? Shwing!

Speaking for myself, I felt a little like Jimmy Stewart’s Jefferson Smith from Frank Capra’s “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.” Oh, we get to actually propose legislation? Just like that? We don’t have to wander in the wilderness for millennia like the USGBC wanted us to do? Being my first time on Capitol Hill (other than as a kid visiting D.C. during the Bicentennial), it hadn’t crossed my mind that there was an “ask” we should have embedded on the last slide.

Ms. Stevens added that while Congress was stuck in gridlock these days over almost everything, her boss and his Republican co-chair believed that there was broad bipartisan support for legislation to promote energy independence through smart building technologies. Indeed, the Energy Policy Act of 2005 and the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, along with a series of executive orders and agency-specific rules, paved the way for STEP. In 2010 the General Services Administration (GSA) upgraded its green building requirements to mandate that all new federal building construction and major renovation projects obtain LEED Gold certification. I suggested to Ms. Stevens that adding STEP alongside these LEED requirements might be the logical bill that would eventually emanate from our efforts.

In all honesty we are probably a year or more away from being ready for the deluge that would follow if such legislation were passed. With more than 350 million square feet of space under its purview, the GSA is the single largest real estate organization in the U.S. If they were to adopt STEP, we’d “need a bigger boat” as Chief Brody famously proclaimed in “Jaws.” However, as a first date with Congress, I would call today’s meeting a huge success and a promising path for STEP to follow once we’re ready. If you’ve been sitting on the fence about STEP, now might be a good time to get your business aligned with STEP’s goals and credits. We just might be on to something…

Scott Walker, CTS-D, LEED® AP, is president and CEO of Waveguide Consulting, a leading AV, IT and acoustical consulting firm. He is also a past president of InfoComm International. Scott is recognized as being one of the primary forces behind the founding of the Sustainable Technology Environments Program (STEP) rating system and currently is a member of the STEP Foundation board, which is responsible for managing the STEP program. Scott can be reached at swalker@waveguide.com

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