A baseline is important because you can measure improvements after implementing options, and management will only be convinced to continue if you can show how much resources and money was saved.
To establish a baseline, for each input and output in the process flow chart collect the following information (see Worksheet 13):
- Quantities (e.g. tons of coal per day)
- Costs (e.g. $ per ton of coal)
- Other characteristics (e.g. temperature of water going in and out of the boiler, pressure)
Ideally, you want quantity and cost information for 3 years, 12 months within one year, and the days within one month, so that you can observe trends.
The information can come from interviews with staff, readings of online meters, monitoring records, and by taking measurements with monitoring equipment (especially to verify data records!)
However, in practice it is not always possible to do all this because:
- Not all companies have this information readily available. For example, a company may only have electricity bills and an electricity meter for the plant but no breakdown for each equipment or department that uses electricity
- Monitoring equipment is not available at the plant
- There is limited time available to complete this task
The level of detail and how much time is needed to measure and collect data under this task should already be identified during the pre-assessment (task 1c). Possible solutions should also have been included in the proposal to management (task 1e). See Company examples for examples of companies that participated in the GERIAP project on how they established a baseline.
Previous | Next |
