2.2 Establish the energy management team or committee

What is this?

With the exception of small organizations, the establishment of an energy management teamA Team is a cooperative group with a common purpose. They help each other to achieve the goals of the team is essential for success. The purpose and key benefit of forming an energy management team is to engage the various departments or work units of the organization (e.g. procurement, production, facilities, etc.) in the development and implementation of the EnMS. The energy management team provides visible evidence of the importance of cooperation across the organization to ensure the success of the EnMS and is often the first concrete step in changing the culture of the organization with respect to energy.

In some organisations the term “team” is not typically used. Regardless of the terminology, it is essential that there is a core group of people who have the interest, competence and capability to implement the EnMS and to improve its energy performance.

How to implement

The energy management team or committee may include any or all of the following:

  • Energy Management representative;
  • Energy manager or energy engineer (note: in smaller organizations, the management representative may also be the energy manager or the environmental, health and safety officer or all three).
  • People who have shown interest and whose assistance will benefit an effective implementation;
  • Production and/or operations manager(s).
  • Note that in most cases there is not a full time energy manager employed by the organisation unless it is very large or its energy use is a very significant part of its operating costs. The energy manager usually has another role such as maintenance engineer, engineering manager, etc. etc

Section 2.5 (roles and responsibilities) will give details of all tasks associated with the development and operation of the EnMS and also who is involved in each task. The energy team referred to here is a subset of the roles and responsibilities matrix. The team is the core group of people who make the system work in a coherent manner.

What is team

A group of people with a full set of complementary skills required to complete a task, job, or project. Team members (1) operate with a high degree of interdependence, (2) share authority and responsibility for self-management, (3) are accountable for the collective performance, and (4) work toward a common goal and shared rewards(s). A team becomes more than just a collection of people when a strong sense of mutual commitment creates synergy, thus generating performance greater than the sum of the performance of its individual members.