Synergy and Sustainability

Ei Companies
Written by Jessica Ferlaino

Ei Companies is a multi-award winning energy consulting firm that has been recognized by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the United States Department of Energy (DOE), as well as the non-profit and private sector, for its successful efforts to bring energy efficiency and sustainability to hundreds of thousands of homes and commercial projects. In doing so, the company is reducing greenhouse gas emissions by millions of pounds.

Founded as Energy Inspectors in 1998, the company was an entrepreneurial response to the emergent field of energy efficiency and sustainability in residential and commercial construction, which was starting to take off, especially in the Nevada, Arizona and California markets. With its code compliance and verification services, Energy Inspectors was present during the entire construction process to meet their clients’ sustainability and efficiency goals. Having established a foothold in Nevada, the firm later entered the California and Arizona markets.

In 2006, Energy Inspectors was reorganized and began to experience real growth, doing so even during the downturn when many other firms and companies were going belly up. By leveraging the strength of its capitalization, which many others lacked at the time, the company set out independently as Energy Inspectors Corporation and continued to find opportunities for growth in a challenging market.

The true secret to its success was the adoption of the EPA’s Energy Star for New Homes Program. The program was adopted as an accredited sustainability program for new homes to improve energy efficiency and sustainability in construction. With a strong sales and implementation team, Energy Inspectors Corporation brought energy efficiency and sustainability to the fore, scaling up its resources and expertise to deliver results for residential and commercial construction projects in an ever-growing market.

According to Director of Marketing, Danielle Armentrout, “Our strategy became to use energy efficiency and sustainability to help our client builders to market and differentiate themselves from their ‘new-home’ building competitors – and equally important, from their largest true competitor, normally the quiet elephant in the room: the existing home market.”

The company’s efforts were recognized by the EPA and DOE and it received the EPA Energy Star Partner of the Year Award, the first of many national awards. Since then, Energy Inspectors Corporation has received all three of the EPA’s top honors for its work in energy efficiency, water efficiency and conservation, as well as indoor air quality.

Energy Inspectors Corporation is the only thirteen-time winner of the National Energy Star Partner of the Year Award (for Sustained Excellence) and has swept all three major awards handed out by the EPA (EPA Energy Star Partner of the Year, EPA WaterSense Partner of the Year, and EPA Leadership Award for Indoor Air Quality) in 2011, 2015, 2016, and 2018.

With a presence in the residential and commercial sector, the company’s relationships are far reaching and run deep. “We currently have eighteen of the top twenty homebuilders in the U.S. as clients,” said Armentrout. “The other two homebuilders which we do not have are not in our territory.”

In 2018, Energy Inspectors certified over 21,000 homes, a figure that represents 21.45 percent of the national total. Each Energy Star represents a reduction of 3,227.5 pounds of carbon emissions in the year it was certified and every year of its existence thereafter.

In 2018, of the 48,249 total homes inspected across the United States, 10,177 homes were IECC certified and 16,379 were Energy Star certified. Of that, in California, 17,046 homes were Title 24 certified and 4,647 were Energy Star certified. The impact of the 21,026 Energy Star certified homes is equal to reducing carbon emissions by 67,862,694 pounds, growing 508,830 tree seedlings for a decade, 71,488 barrels of oil or removing 6,539 vehicles from the road.

Likewise, the impact of the 48,249 certified homes nationwide in 2018 equates to the planting 1,167,627 tree seedlings for ten years, avoidance of the consumption of 164,046 barrels of oil, or the removal of 15,005 passenger vehicles from the road. While 2018 was a big year for environmental impact and sustainability for Energy Inspectors Corporation, it represents only a fraction of the company’s efforts to date, as the team has certified over 500,000 homes, reducing emissions by 1.6 billion pounds per year.

Figures like these are possible because of the growth in resources and capacity at Energy Inspectors Corporation. As the company grew in terms of volume of work, so too did its aspirations, and in order to achieve its goals, it continued to expand its geographic footprint and added adjacent service offerings.

“By adjacent services, we mean services that can be delivered by our executive and field staff, providing greater value to our clients, realizing additional revenue, in which we either had little competition or client confidence in our ability to deliver the related service. As such, we have expanded into engineering services, risk management services, and design services,” Armentrout explained.

Energy Inspectors Corporation offers energy modeling, inspections, sustainability, quality assurance and field services and works in tandem with the other component parts that fall under the Ei Companies umbrella. Ei Design serves commercial and residential clients with architectural and design services, while Ei Risk Management offers construction risk management services for residential and commercial clients, and Ei Engineering is an engineering services arm that provides full-service solutions to meet a project’s efficiency and sustainability goals from the outset.

Ei Companies assists residential and commercial projects from pre-construction to post-construction in terms of energy efficiency, green building and sustainability, water management and conservation, solar energy design and implementation, indoor air quality, engineering, design and modeling, code compliance, above code program administration, quality assurance and commissioning.

Sustainability is at the core of Ei Companies’ offerings and as such, it has become a trusted partner for its clients through design, verification and documentation to ensure that a project’s design decisions reflect the standards to which they are subject.

“It’s one thing to provide the right design; it’s another thing to build according to the design’s intent. Ei Companies assists throughout the entire process from beginning to end, delivering the quality that our customers expect,” said Armentrout.

Ei Companies has offices located in Arizona, California, Nevada, and Texas. Ei Design is licensed in all fifty states, and Ei Engineering is licensed for mechanical, electrical and plumbing work in Arizona, California, Nevada and Texas, licensed for mechanical and plumbing work in Oregon, Utah, Washington, New Mexico and North Carolina, and licensed for mechanical work in Florida, Indiana and Tennessee. Energy Inspectors and its risk management arm have boots on the ground in Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, Oregon, Texas, Utah and Washington. Across the company’s market footprint there are 260 team members to serve its clients and ensure their sustainability and efficiency goals are being met.

From its pending certification LEED Gold headquarters in Las Vegas, Nevada, Ei Companies not only assists others in their sustainability and efficiency goals, it exemplifies sustainable and efficient design, setting the stage and demonstrating what is possible when it partners on projects. The firm worked with the Northeast Police Station to achieve a LEED certified commercial project in accordance with a strict timeline to ensure compliance with municipal sustainability requirements. It successfully delivered LEED Silver Certification by the deadline date, coordinating multiple measures to ensure all required LEED credits were achieved on time.

Similarly, the Ketter Lofts project in San Diego, a project of Citymark Development with the goal of achieving LEED Platinum certification, truly exemplifies the value Ei Companies can bring to a project and its ability to achieve desired outcomes, even when it doesn’t seem likely. In fact, the Ketter Lofts project was not initially deemed a good candidate for such a high level of certification, but Ei Companies partnered on the project to successfully navigate the LEED for Homes program to help achieve the client’s goal.

“Coordinating with multiple consultants on a LEED Platinum residential project requires a deep level of communication and direction that Ei Companies delivered without fail and helped the many consultants and trades design and build according to airtightness and envelope standards that they were not used to,” said Armentrout. “This field expertise and training was an essential element to the project’s success,” which is something Ei Companies will continue to look to expand in the future.

Ei Companies has been profitable every year since its founding and year-over-year revenue growth has exceeded twenty percent for the past decade. Synergy has played an important role in Ei Companies’ success, especially as it has grown its resources, footprint and capabilities.

The goal is to continue to expand the volume of work the company undertakes, as well as its territory into Florida, North and South Carolina, Virginia, Maryland and Delaware by the second quarter of 2021. For Ei Companies, the plan is to continue to deliver results – as it consistently has – through synergistic project delivery, making the team an indispensable part of the U.S. construction industry in both residential and commercial sectors. From land acquisition to commissioning and beyond, the company will continue to support its partners by facilitating sustainability and efficiency in their projects and the many benefits therein.

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