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The Importance of Verification

Over the years (since 1999 – yeah, that was an actual date not so long ago)  I have come across a number of verification events that has influenced the manner of how things progressed from there onwards.  Safe to say that, was it not for these verification events, the project or activity would have ended up in a very different and much less pleasant situation.

Nobody understands the importance of verification until the lack thereof bites them in the behind and sometime swallows them up whole.  I have a dear friend that has taught me a long time ago that; “Fools learn from experience and the rest learn from fools”.  As a young professional starting up, I have actually taken that to heart – mostly because I just had a foolish learning experience – no comment…

Verification plays an important role in everyday life.  Sometimes it saves a life, another time it saves money, most of the time it goes by without any issues – and THAT is when Murphy strikes in the cruellest form.  I have been talking and preaching about verification especially in metering and M&V ever since I got the ♪aaaaaaah♪ moment.  However, I still come across things in the energy management field where verification was neglected.

So, I thought instead of discussing verification methods and how it is applied in M&V and energy management,  let me rather give real-life examples of verification or the lack thereof and what happened to Murphy and its “Plan Evil”.  Hopefully this will highlight the importance of verification.

• Those changing tyres at a certain place with a tiger in its name, might have noticed that two to three persons double-check that the wheel nuts are properly torqued. It has become company operational procedure that these checks be done more than once after various claims of inferior fastening has caused a loose wheel overtaking people at the stop-sign. 

The same goes for trailer or caravan wheels.  Who knows that the left side of the trailer wheel tends to loosen itself?  That is why one needs to ensure the wheel is properly fastened at the correct torque value before each trip.  Having that wheel run away by itself in the Kruger when the elephant is chasing you, is not a good experience.

• Electricians constantly locks out switchgear before they do work downstream. It has gone as far as clamping a special locking mechanism around the breaker, locking it, hanging notice cards with contact info on these locks to warn other “electricians” not to tamper there.  Then while the electrician is working on site, there is constant measurements that the supply is still off, as there is still some idjit somewhere that will ignore those lock-outs and switch on the power. 

I have personally witnessed such an idjit do it!  Luckily, we could stop that idjit before any damage was done.  The electrician doing the work downstream then came into the substation very furious as he was about to start exposing cables for work.  Imagine them touching those live cables that should have been dead.  Imagine if they did not verify those cables were still dead…

• Recently a trainee had to measure a number of electrical equipment for an M&V assessment. This trainee had been taught on the use of the measurement equipment and had been witnessed to use such equipment correctly in the field while using the measured values in actual M&V assessments.  Failing to ensure the measurement equipment was correctly set up, had this trainee measure the wrong values and thus this trainee had to return to site to remeasure everything.  This resulted in loss in productive time and additional travel expenses to the company.
• Many years ago during a diving trip I attended, all students were taking their last diving evaluation for the day. This was a group of students that has been diving the whole weekend and had been properly taught on deep diving (30m) and had done 4 deep dives already throughout.  The last deep dive was a night dive and we briefed every diver on what, where, when, how long and how to.  The surface marshals were part of the briefing as is standard procedure.  All gear were checked and rechecked.  All students got into the water and as usual I covered the tail to ensure the students stay together and all return safely. 

During the resurfacing one student just … lost it.  This student wanted to pop from 30m straight to the surface without safety stops and proper breathing.  This meant this student will get “the bends” – nitrogen bubbles forming in the bloodstream due to a too sudden change in pressure.  Bends kills – as simple as that.  This student burst through the group and made a bee-line – fishline to the surface.  Luckily, I spotted this student starting to behave strangely when we were at the 30m bottom and caught this student just in time.  That bewildering look and frantic clawing to get out could easily have startled other students and led to more problems.  I was able to calm this student and take him out safely. 

During debriefing it came out that this student had taken some headache medicine just before the dive and did not declare that during our preparation briefing.  Having known that up front would have ensured we take that student on his last qualifying dive at another stage.  By verifying everyone knows what the diving plan was and asking everyone on their state of physical and mental wellbeing we verified that everyone was good-to-go, but if some information is not made known or cannot be made known, eventualities will follow.  By verifying everyone understands the process and their roles during the diving exercise, we were able to safely bring this frantic student back to surface.

• We had to evaluate a very large lighting efficiency improvement project implemented across a whole province but with limited budget for M&V. M&V needs to stay impartial and always verify changes, thus the limited budget was stretched to include as much site inspections as possible.  These site inspections – although limited – verified changes, numbers and operational hours of the lighting systems.  Years later we were brought in to defend our position on the reported results during an arbitration between the ESCo and the client.  In short, even though the verification portion was not as large as we would have liked, it did still prove that the work was done, the savings attained and payment was due to the ESCo.  If verification was not done, the reported savings results was as good as gossip and would not have been acceptable.
• A national efficiency project was sold to a client based on energy savings attainable. However, the sampled M&V site inspections revealed that the operational conditions where very different than what the ESCO had used in their project development.  We then increased our sample of site inspections to verify our initial findings and found it to be true.  This negatively affected the proposed project savings by more than 50%! 

We contacted the ESCo and presented our findings and asked for a detailed discussion as we still anticipated that the client might have changed operational conditions based on the proposal of the ESCO – this actually has happened to other projects in the past.  This would mean our baseline will not be representative of the conditions the ESCO experienced during their project development.

As the discussion analysed their site inspection information, it came out that the ESCO had chosen only one site as the representative base to develop their national project upon.  This site was actually NOT representative, hence the whole project development was wrong.  This lack of verification had severely influenced the basis of the contract between the ESCo and the client to such an extend that work was halted until a solutions or different agreement could be reached.

Verification is a schlep almost every time, but verification saves lives, money, projects, reputation, clients, time and reduces the risk of something going wrong or something being reported wrongly.  Do not neglect the old double-checking process.  Many has wondered why court cases take so long – it is because every stated fact needs to be verified as a real fact before it can be accepted.  From the colour of the vehicle stolen to the smoking gun used.

In Energy Management every output is dependent on the measurements and operational conditions.  Apply smart effort and time to verify any and all factors that influence the outcome of the energy management process, especially those that has a material effect on the contractual performance promises.

Safe checking!

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Christo van der Merwe has a Masters in Mechanical Engineering, is a Certified Measurement and Verification Professional (CMVP), a Certified Energy Manager (CEM), and member of the MVCSA, SAEEc, and AEE.  He is constantly involved in workshops and workgroups to improve training, standards and protocols in the vast field of energy management including the AEE and in the past, EVO.

Christo is the owner of CFJM Solutions – a specialist industry energy consultancy and one of the few SANAS accredited M&V specialist entities in South Africa.   He has gained vast experience in the M&V industry over the past 24 years by being involved in over 450 M&V projects spanning Utility DSM M&V processes, tax incentive, government funded energy efficiency projects, performance contract assessment and related verifications.  These assessments covered all types of projects and energy sources across the industrial, commercial, agricultural, residential and health sectors.

CFJM Solutions is the preferred M&V professional to a number of large profile clients such as BBEnergy, Mediclinic, KPMG, Anglo-American, Sibanye Stillwater, Twinsaver, Curroseal ENSTRA Paper, Green Yellow and others.

Christo is also a co-director of Green SolX, an official verifier and validator for confirming renewable energy generation of entities that need an International Renewable Energy Certificate (I-REC).  The I-REC is used to show proven, actual and compliant delivery of renewable energy generation.  Green SolX is also the training partner of IEPA in the Mauritian Islands while also performing much-needed energy management within the Mauritian region.

Christo is the course trainer for the Institute of Energy Professionals Africa (IEPA) on the Measurement and Verification Training (MVT), Certified Measurement and Verification Professional (CMVP®) training program as well as the Energy Performace Certificate (EPC) Programme.  He is one of only two trainers accredited by AEE to train CMVP in Sub-Sahara Africa.  To date he has trained more than 400 delegates in more than 20 sessions virtually and in-person.  Christo was also part of the team of four selected specialists to develop and optimise the new CMVP training for the AEE CMVP programme.

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