Guide: Compliance Dashboard & Report

The Compliance Dashboard & Report provides users with a portfolio breakdown of compliance requirements for all buildings within the portfolio.

Monitoring energy compliance within a single building can be challenging, let alone across a national portfolio. With regulations on the rise, accompanied by escalating fines, staying compliant is more crucial than ever. The Backpack compliance dashboard & report consolidates all your compliance needs into a user-friendly interface. This enables you to gain clear visibility into portfolio requirements, minimizing the risk of non-compliance & possible fines. 

This report puts valuable information at your fingertips including:

1. Visuals to quickly understand the properties in the portfolio that have at a compliance requirement

2. A chart showing the types of compliance requirements included in the portfolio.

3. Building details including due dates & helpful links that take you right to the regulatory website governing each compliance requirement.

Sections in this Guide:

Learn about compliance

Learn how to view the report.

Learn how to filter the report. 

Learn how to understand the report.

Learn how to download the report.

What is "compliance" and "compliance requirements?"

The term "compliance" is a term that has evolved over the past few years as building owners, operators and regulators focus in on the effects of building on overall energy usage and emissions.  This focus has lead many local and state agencies to develop regulations that buildings must comply with, hence the term "compliance requirements."  Compliance requirements fall into multiple categories, the three main groups are:

• Benchmarking - Benchmarking & Transparency is a common compliance requirement. It requires measuring and reporting on how much energy (gas & electric, and sometimes water) a building consumes so they can compare in against other, similar buildings. Most programs typically require property owners to use Energy Star Portfolio Manager to share the results with the regulatory body. Benchmarking requirements are supported by Backpack with no additional fee.
• Building performance standards - Building performance standards go into more depth and often include a future goal the building must meet.  These regulations often require buildings to meet certain performance levels, typically for energy use or greenhouse gas emissions by a certain date. Our Backpack professional services team can support many of these requirements for a fee, or, provide references for an expert in your area.
• Audit/ retro-commissioning - Audit requirements generally include bringing in an outside expert to do an audit of the building and produce a report. This may include a survey and analysis of energy use in a building, ensuring that the energy systems in an existing building are installed & operating as designed. Our Backpack professional services team can provide references for an expert in your area to support this work and any reporting needed.

To View the Compliance Report: 

STEP 1: 

Login to Backpack and navigate to the 'REPORT' dropdown menu on the left-hand side. Select ' COMPLIANCE OVERVIEW'. 

The compliance report will populate based on the properties in your portfolio.

Understanding the Compliance Report: 

Compliance data is pulled from an Backpack database containing information sourced directly from regulatory sites.  We are continuously maintaining & updating this data! 

Compliance requirements are categorized into three groups; benchmarking, building performance standards and audit/ retro-commissioning. Read more about each type in the section above!

The first portion of the report provides an easy visual breakdown of which buildings within the portfolio have compliance requirements, and which do not. The bar chart shows a breakdown of property type by compliance requirement type. Not every building will have a compliance requirement.

 

To Filter the Compliance Report: 

There are multiple ways to filter the compliance report. 

Standard filters allow users to filter the report view on the following: 

• Property Type
• Fund (if applicable) 
• Market (if applicable) 
• Asset Manager 

Advanced filters allow users to filter the report view by building(s). This filter can be used alongside any of the standard filters. 

To apply a standard filter:

Select the desired filter dropdown, and check/uncheck the boxes you wish.

Below is an example of toggling on/off the Property Type filter. 

Note: Filter selections can be individually selected/removed, or cleared by using the 'CLEAR ALL' button.

To apply an advanced filter:

Select the 'ADVANCED FILTER' dropdown. A list of buildings in the portfolio will show, and users can check/uncheck buildings one by one, or use the 'SELECT ALL', 'CLEAR ALL' buttons.

Building Breakdown Section:

Below the Compliance Overview section you can view detailed information about each building.  This is the data behind the metrics at the top of the report. 

Here you can see the reporting years, deadlines and the link to the regulatory website.

The building-level information within the portfolio can be displayed in two ways, either a card, or table. Each card/table row represents a single compliance requirement for a building. Any building can have multiple requirements, therefore users see multiple cards/rows. 

Card View Example:

Table View Example:

Downloading the Report

There are two options to download the report:

1. Select the DOWNLOAD REPORT button in the top right hand corner of the report page to download a PDF of the report data.
2. Click the download ICON to the right of the CARD/TABLE options to download a CSV of the report data.

Want to learn more? Reach out to our team at support@backpacknetworks.com.