Writing an energy audit into a procurement requirement

A procurement officer at a bank, a university bursar or an accounting officer in a ministry asks for three quotations for an energy audit and receives three documents that cannot be compared. One is a two-day walk-round with a clamp meter. One is a desktop review of twelve months of bills. One involves instrumenting eleven boards for a month. The prices differ by an order of magnitude, which is unsurprising, because they are not offers for the same thing.

This is a specification problem, not a supplier problem. "Energy audit" is not a defined term in Ugandan public or private procurement, so unless the requirement defines it, each bidder defines it for you — in their own favour, and usually downwards.

Below are the six clauses that make bids comparable. They are written so you can lift them into a requirement without naming any supplier, and none of them presuppose that Orijtech wins the work.

1. Define the scope boundary, physically

Not "the head office". Name the electrical assets.

State which transformers, which incomers, which buildings, which floors, which feeders and which major plant are inside the audit, and — this is the clause bidders skip — state what is outside it. A report that quietly excludes the generator, the tenant block or the second transformer is not wrong; it is answering a narrower question than you asked, and you will not discover that until you read the findings.

A workable form of words:

The audit shall cover [named transformers and incomers], [named buildings or floors], and the following plant: [chillers, compressors, boilers, HVAC plant, lifts, UPS, pumps, cold rooms, production lines]. The report shall state explicitly which parts of the electrical installation were not measured and why.

2. Require measurement, and say so in a way that cannot be argued around

This is the single clause that changes what you receive.

Findings shall be derived from instrumented measurement taken at the facility's own distribution boards and feeders during the audit period. Estimates derived from nameplate ratings, assumed operating hours or utility bills alone are not acceptable as the primary basis of a finding.

Without it, a bidder can honestly satisfy an "energy audit" requirement with a walk-round and an equipment schedule, multiplying nameplate kilowatts by assumed run hours. That method produces a number for every load in the building and evidence for none of them. It cannot distinguish a compressor that runs eighteen hours from one that runs six, and after-hours load — the most common avoidable cost we find in Ugandan facilities — is invisible to it entirely.

Specify what must be measured, too. On a three-phase installation the meaningful list is per- phase voltage and current, active power in kW, reactive power in kVAr, apparent power in kVA, energy in kWh by interval, power factor, frequency and load profile. Two of those carry most of the argument: kVA, because maximum demand is billed in kVA and not in kW, and per-phase current, because phase imbalance cannot be seen any other way.

3. State the measurement period, and make it cover a real operating cycle

Three days of data from a Tuesday to a Thursday will not show you a weekend, a month-end close, a night shift or a seasonal peak.

Specify a minimum continuous period and require that it include the facility's full operating cycle: working days and non-working days, and where relevant a full production or occupancy pattern. For a hospital that means a weekend. For a university it means the difference between a teaching week and a vacation week — and for that institution, a single-period audit will mislead you no matter how well it is executed, so consider requiring measurement in both.

4. State the data granularity

Granularity decides which questions the report can answer.

Monthly totals answer none of them. Half-hourly data will show you a demand profile. Data at one-minute resolution will show you which coincident starts set the month's maximum demand, which is the finding that changes how a plant is operated.

Measured data shall be recorded at intervals of no more than [x] minutes and retained for the full audit period.

Ask for the retention and export terms in the same clause. A supplier who can only show you data inside their own dashboard has given you a subscription, not a record.

5. Specify the deliverable by its sections

This is where comparability is actually won. Bids become comparable when every bidder is writing to the same table of contents.

The structure below is the one Orijtech reports follow, and it is a reasonable thing to require of anybody:

1. Executive summary — total consumption, total cost where tariff data is available, the peak, shoulder and off-peak split, the major observations, the risks and the recommended actions, written to be read by a finance or executive audience on its own.
2. Scope of monitoring — exactly what was measured, and what was not.
3. Data sources and assumptions — platform, period, meter names, currency, tariff assumptions, missing data, meter limitations, and every data-cleaning assumption applied.
4. Overall consumption summary — total kWh, average daily consumption, maximum demand, estimated cost, reporting period.
5. Time-of-use analysis — consumption and cost split across off-peak, shoulder and peak bands, against the tariff structure that actually applies to the account.
6. Key observations — what the data shows, including transformer loading against installed capacity, baseload behaviour and power factor trend.
7. Financial impact — cost by period and by load, and the size of each identified opportunity.
8. Operational recommendations — actions tied to specific loads and schedules, written so an engineering team can act without a follow-up meeting.
9. Additional monitoring recommendations — which significant loads remain unmetered and what measuring them would reveal.
10. Conclusion — a clear statement of what the measured data supports.

Section 3 is the one that separates a serious report from a persuasive one. A bidder willing to publish their assumptions is a bidder whose numbers you can check.

6. Require the data, not just the document

All measured data collected during the audit shall be handed over to [the institution] in a machine-readable format, together with an as-installed record identifying each measurement point, the board or feeder it monitored, and its phase mapping.

An audit report is an interpretation. The measurements underneath it are an asset, and they remain useful long after the report is filed — as the baseline against which next year's consumption is compared, as the input to a solar sizing exercise, and as evidence in a billing dispute with the distributor. If the requirement does not ask for the data, you will typically receive a PDF and nothing else.

What not to put in the requirement

Do not ask for a fixed price per metering point before a survey. How many points a facility needs, and which current rating each one takes, depends on conductor sizes, busbar geometry and the space inside your enclosures. Sensible bidders confirm sizing on site. Requiring them to commit beforehand rewards whoever guesses lowest and produces a variation order later.

Do not ask for a guaranteed savings percentage. Any figure quoted before measurement is an invention. A credible bidder will tell you what they will measure and what the report will contain; they cannot tell you what they will find. Treat a pre-measurement savings guarantee as a disqualifying answer rather than a competitive one.

Do not specify a brand of instrument. Specify accuracy class and measured parameters instead — for example, energy metering to IEC 62053 accuracy class 1 or better on incomers. That keeps the field open and still rules out the clamp-meter-and-clipboard bid.

What you should expect to provide

Every bidder will need the same things from you, and stating them in the tender prevents the programme slipping later:

• Safe access to electrical rooms, distribution boards and plant areas.
• Agreed isolation windows. Brief planned isolations, one point at a time, are required to fit current sensors and voltage taps. There is no site-wide shutdown.
• A mounting position with power and cellular coverage for data collection equipment.
• Recent utility bills and the supply agreement, so that measured consumption can be reconciled against what is billed.
• A nominated engineering representative to witness commissioning and sign off the as-installed record.

Why this is worth the drafting time

An audit specified this way costs more than a walk-round and delivers something a walk-round cannot: a defensible record. When the finding is "this transformer runs at 41 percent of installed capacity", the follow-on question — can we add the new wing without a second transformer — has an answer with a reading behind it. When the finding is "an estimated 30 percent saving is available", the follow-on question has an opinion behind it, and an accounting officer cannot spend against an opinion.

That is the whole difference, and it is decided in the requirement document, before anyone quotes.

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Sources: Orijtech Energy standard energy report structure; Orijtech measured parameter specification; Orijtech installation and commissioning schedule. The clause wording above is offered as a drafting aid and is not legal or procurement advice — your own procurement rules and standard conditions govern.

Orijtech Energy scopes energy audits per facility, against the measured data from your own boards. Discuss an audit scope, or read what the energy audit service covers.