Energy Department's Federal Energy Management Program Wins Top Award for Continuing Education and Training

As America’s largest single energy consumer, managing more than 350,000 buildings and 600,000 vehicles,[1] federal agencies have a continued responsibility to cut energy costs, optimize energy performance, and eliminate unnecessary use of energy resources while enhancing the resilience and security of our federal building infrastructure and operations. To be successful, they must sustain a high-performance federal workforce that constructs, operates, and maintains energy-efficient and cost-effective federal facilities and fleets.

One role of the Department of Energy’s Federal Energy Management Program (FEMP), within the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, is to empower agencies to achieve these goals through the development and dissemination of innovative, internationally accredited training resources that enhance an agency’s ability to manage their critical missions by becoming efficient, resilient, and secure. This includes meeting the requirements of the Federal Buildings Personnel Training Act.

In demonstrating its outstanding efforts to enhance the skills and agility of the federal energy management workforce, as well as expand private and educational institutions competencies, FEMP was awarded the International Association of Continuing Education and Training (IACET) 2019 Exemplar Training Organization Award—IACET’s most prestigious award. It honors exemplary, results-oriented programs or projects that demonstrate cost-effective, significant and relevant impact on the populations served.

The award also recognizes FEMP for promoting economic development from increased efficiency through better management; promulgating affordable, replicable solutions; developing training designed for the way people learn; and connecting FEMP with stakeholders for their valuable feedback.

FEMP’s Workforce Development Program provides training through a number of venues, such as the annual Energy Exchange training and trade show, which offers more than 120 agency-developed technical sessions across two and a half days. Additionally, FEMP offers more than 200 accredited and non-accredited, on-demand training courses, numerous regional interactive workshops, and live webinars at no cost. These resources can be accessed through FEMP’s searchable training catalog. From this course catalog, users are routed to the learning management system hosted by the National Institute of Building Sciences’ Whole Building Design Guide to register for selected courses.

In a constrained federal funding environment, FEMP’s training offerings help federal employees meet their professional certification and training requirements. FEMP’s program resulted in the provision of approximately 40,000 hours of training in fiscal year (FY) 2018, showing a continual upward progression from 29,000 hours in FY 2015. Nearly 28,000 hours of this training were IACET accredited. FEMP’s general training program provided significant taxpayer savings in offset training costs.

FEMP continues to strive to enhance federal workforce competencies and strengthen job performance through developing innovative trainings and leveraging public-private partnerships. Visit FEMP’s website for more information, and read more about IACET’s 2019 and past award winners.