RESUME
Bryan Accra
Authenticity is the basis of quality work, results, and relations.
contact@bryanaccra.com
My Career in a Nutshell
Throughout my youth, I had been involved in local environmental initiatives from preventing waste being dumped into the Rouge River to campaigning against garbage being exported from Canada to be landfilled in Michigan. I always believed it was important to take care of the local environment I was in, similar to how one might keep their house. This led me to a summer internship with the University of Michigan Plant Operation Department, where I would create utility profiles for all the campus buildings and identify where we could save energy through scheduling HVAC units. I realized there I had a knack for data collection, management, visualization, and analysis which would launch me onto my career path. At successive career stops, I would build databases, visual tools, and calculation tools that would allow me to rapidly analyze big data, take corrective action, and prioritize and develop projects.
For the last thirteen years, I have been dedicated to working with businesses and households to eliminate waste and pollution using various strategies. I am passionate about helping businesses and households become self-sufficient from a utility standpoint while also minimizing their impacts on the environment. I have also expanded my data collection and analytics system to the fintech sector yielding great results.
Education and Credentials
B.S.Eng. Civil and Environmental Engineering
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 2004 – 2008
Professional Experiences and Outcomes
Manager of Resource Conservation and Facilities Operations
Seattle University, 2015 –2019
- How It Started: I started this position inheriting an external outdated utility database filled with errors due to manual entry by various interns. The program used was not intuitive and I do not blame the interns. It was virtually impossible to properly collect and analyze the utility data using the existing program and a new 3rd party vendor was being considered at the time since the problems were well known.
- How It Ended: I created a database and visualization tool internally and automated most data imports and validation. This allowed me to easily identify energy waste, water leaks, unnecessary waste pickups, and billing errors. By my third year, with a minimal budget and deploying simple maintenance and minor projects, we had avoided $500,000 in annual utility costs, and even netted a $200,000 reduction per year despite increasing utility rates for the first time since our new data records began (6 years). I was told due to the savings achieved, two jobs were saved that were going to be cut. In my final year, I would train interns and my eventual replacement on how to use and leverage the database and tools in a consulting role for the university as I moved on to work independently.
Senior Associate
ICF International, 2014 – 2015
- How It Started: When I started at ICF International, I was tasked with managing Toronto Hydro’s Commercial and Industrial Energy Efficiency Program with a senior consultant. This included analyzing customer utility data, performing energy audits, developing ECMs based on site findings, soliciting bids from contractors for projects, and applying for incentives on the customers’ behalf. I was told by the senior consultant there was a bottleneck in analyzing the data which took a minimum of one hour per project.
- How It Ended: I resolved the bottleneck shortly after starting by creating a batch file to compile customer data and creating standardized report and email templates. The one hour process was now a 2 minute process. In turn, this allowed us to increase the volume of projects we could take on and leading to Toronto Hydro renewing our contract. It even allowing me to take on extra work in other areas, like evaluating the cost-effectiveness of a ground-source heat pump system for a shopping mall for the Retail Council of Canada Energy Bright Program.
Project Consultant
Navigant Consulting, 2012 – 2014
- How It Started: Opening a new office in Ann Arbor to evaluate the DTE Your Energy Savings business and commercial energy efficiency program.
- How It Ended: I eventually moved into my first remote work role where I developed tools to be used in the analysis of energy efficiency projects companywide and trained junior staff on how to use such tools. The tools in turn increased productivity by reducing time spent to review each project and minimizing input errors through automation. I was also tasked with evaluating the claimed energy savings for new technologies and writing reports for our stakeholders verifying our findings.
Energy Efficiency Engineer
DNV KEMA, 2010 – 2012
- How It Started: I was brought on to join a team of engineers performing technical reviews on incentive applications for commercial and industrial efficiency projects through the ComEd Smart Ideas for Your Business Program. I initially began with reviewing prescriptive applications and performing site visits to verify customer installs.
- How It Ended: Shortly after beginning, I was able to automate the existing review tool to minimize time required per review. This allowed the engineering group to increase volume while reducing turn around time. I was promoted to review custom applications previously reserved for senior engineers, developing new calculation tools for various projects like window film installs, air compressor upgrades, humidification systems, and energy management installs. I also trained and tasked with installing data loggers at various commercial and industrial facilities, and performing pre- and post-measurement verification analysis and assigned to other offices to help with their programs.
Various Roles
2008 – 2010
- How It Started: It was a turbulent start to my new career hampered by rare health issues that saw me miss time combined with the 2008-2009 economic crash. I would take on various professional and retail roles in renewables and wastewater engineering.
- How It Ended:It culminated with me taking on a part-time role as a technical sales representative for a solar photovoltaic company in Chicago, a role which I really enjoyed. My key accomplishment was building a relationship with a distributor to increase product offerings, negotiating lower prices, and decreasing lead time on deliveries. Though it was beyond the scope of my work, it came naturally to me since I dealt directly with customers gaining valuable insights to their needs.
Skills and Abilities
- Extracting, visualizing, and analyzing data
- Developing tools and automating processes
- Calm under high pressure situations
- Strong leadership and training abilities
- Solution oriented and creative thinker
- Psychological resilience
- Advanced Excel and Office skills
- Microsoft PowerBI
- Attention to detail
- Superb presentation skills
- Interviewing and hiring employees
- Building computers, installing OS, troubleshooting
- Website design and development
- Languages: Native English; Intermediate Spanish; Basic German, Turkish, and Arabic
Portfolio
Utility Dashboards
Below is a simple cost dashboard I created for Utility Managers who manage many sites across many utilities. Since I also built the database, I am able to create extremely customizable dashboards and views to measure any metric. This is a sample of aggregate costs for various site buildings in various months for each building over several years. In the example below there are over 5 billion possible combinations for viewing the data.
Energy Calculators and Reports
One of my specialties has been creating energy calculators for over a decade and automating calculation through coding in Excel. I have lost track of all the applications I have created them for, but it includes: EMS system installs, window film on high rise office buildings, compressed air upgrades, spray mist humidification systems, HVAC and refrigeration upgrades, lighting, new construction baselines, and so on. My objective in creating such calculators was not only to create accurate calculators, but also to minimize review time to process a large volume of incentive applications. I was able to process twice as many applications as the next leading engineers, despite handling many custom applications, thank to my ability to standardize and automate my calculations.
Interval Data
I have also performed measurement and verification work in accordance with the IPMV Protocol, but currently offer these services in limited locales. I really enjoy data logging and conducting ex-ante and ex-post analyses. In cases where clients are already collecting interval data and want to identify any issues in operations, I have also performed analyses to determine underlying causes for high consumption on completed projects, whether it is a geothermal system whose pumps are operating 24/7 because they did not have backup heating systems to handle peak loads or a boiler loop operating inefficiently. Below is a simple daily electric load profile for a building by months, where we identified the cause of high peak demand charges.
