411714
KN:
Thanks everyone for joining us. Welcome to the Peer
Learning Series webinar. Today we’ll be talking about tools
for Green Team success, and we’ve got great speakers lined
up for you today. So we’ll have a couple speakers go, and
then have a short session for questions, and then at the
end you’ll have another chance to ask questions.
Our first speakers today are Jamey Lowdermilk and Meghan
Oswalt. Jamey is the Environmental Coordinator on the
Helena Ranger District, and Meghan is the Program Analyst
with Sustainable Operations. And they’ll be talking about
Get Your Green On. So Jamey and Meghan, whenever you’re
ready.
JL:
You can go ahead, Meghan.
MO:
All right, so, [UNINT.] having a speaker focus on the Get
Your Green On tips. So the Get Your Green On tips are a
weekly sustainability tip that is published in People,
Places and Things. And these tips are coordinated with a
Footprint of the Month. So each month all the Get Your
Green On tips focus on one subject area. So in November all
the tips focused on waste prevention and recycling and this
month all the tips were focused on energy. So you’ll see
below on the bottom portion of the slide we have an example
tip here, and this is the Get Your Green On tip that went
out around the New Year. And the Footprint of the Month in
[UNINT.] towards the top so this one focused on
sustainability leadership. And then the title or the topic
of this particular tip is listed second. So we were
focusing on a New Year’s resolution for sustainability. And
then in the body of the tip itself we have information,
encouragement related to the topic area for that particular
tip, and we usually have a link to at least one reference,
it’ll point you to our internal web site where you can find
more information on how to accomplish the suggestions in
the tip. So like I said these do come out in People, Places
and Things and it’s usually towards the bottom of People,
Places and Things.
Jamey, do you have anything you want to add before we go to
the next slide?
JL:
No, that’s all. We can give some history and how to use
them next.
411714
So I’m Jamey Lowdermilk and I, about a year or two ago I
sat on the Helena National Forest and I have been helping
to organize the Green Team on this forest as well as the
Lewis and Clark National Forest. And our Forest Supervisor,
Kevin Morgan, asked for specific tips that he could bring
up on staff calls that would help him to integrate
environmentalism into the sort of conscientiousness of his
staff. So that’s where they started, was in 2011, me trying
to draft up a little piece of information and the way that
I would try and come about these is if I was talking to a
colleague about the footprint area for that month, what
little piece of advice would I try and impart on them, or
what little thing could they tell me that would impact
their day. So that’s when we started to draft them. They
were using the weekly staff calls, and then they started to
go out to all the board members for the Western Collective,
and since then they’ve grown into being a weekly highlight
in the People, Places and Things, and they go out to all
Forest Service employees. And the goal of these tips is to
either, one, provide an implementable action item that
people can do in their day to day basis to reduce their
environmental footprint, or we sometimes use these as an
opportunity to highlight success stories from around the
country. So sometimes maybe you’ll see pictures of solar
panels that a ranger district was able to install and use
to reduce their environmental footprint. But that’s the
history of where these came from. And now, Katie, if you’ll
flip forward we’ll talk a little bit more about how they’re
used.
So back to the Helena, just because that’s what I know the
best, we have a Green Wall here where we try and keep our
wall updated with information that’s current for the
current footprint focused area. And we use these Get Your
Green Ons as a way to key that information up there. So
they go out to everyone in the office, and they also go up
on the board, and then Kevin brings them up on the weekly
staff calls, and the Green Team just tries to find ways to
incorporate this information into all the other things
we’re already trying to do. But you could use them in all
kinds of ways. I mean obviously you can post them around
the office, you can email them to your friends from People,
Places and Things, or maybe you just use them yourself, to
think about little changes that you might be able to make.
We are always looking for new ideas, and so if you read
these and you’re like, gosh, that – I don’t know if that’s
the best piece of advice! Like, let us know, you know the
411714
people drafting these are Forest Service colleagues just
like everyone on this call, and we sit down and we think,
you know, what do we observe in our office that maybe could
work a little bit better. But we are definitely open to
some suggestions. So if you’d like to submit an idea,
Meghan will give you some contact information on the next
slide, but we’d love to hear feedback or if you have
success stories we’ve got a web site where you can upload
those success stories and we use that to pull highlights
for these Get Your Green On activities. Next slide.
MO:
All right. So, as Jamey mentioned, if you do have ideas for
a [UNINT.] feedback [UNINT.] on Get Your Green On tips
please feel free to email me with that information. My
email address is posted on this slide. You can also call me
if that works better for you. If you’d like to get a hold
of our previous tips, you can find them on our internal web
site, under ‘Resources and Tools’ and I’ve provided a link
in this presentation and Katie I believe shares this
presentation with everybody on the call. You can also check
out our Footprint of the Month calendar so that you can
maybe have some corresponding events and get some outreach
ideas, and I’ve included a link to that calendar as well so
that everybody is aware of what our focus areas are for
each month.
JL:
And I’ll just add that the, every year the communications
team tries to survey the existing sort of national and
international environmental focus activities to outline our
footprint, our monthly footprint calendar. So if we are
missing events or there’s ideas that are not reflected in
this that we should include, like, definitely let us know,
these are all works in progress and we would love to build
on the resources that we’ve started to draft. And that, I
think that’s all we’ve got. Do we want to do questions now,
Katie?
KN:
I think we’ll go through Meghan’s SharePoint slides and
then we’ll ask questions, we’ll ask for questions. But
Meghan and Jamey this is a great resource for our Green
Teams to use, especially if they are having a bit of
writer’s blocks and having trouble coming up with some
tips. And Meghan is right, I will share the slides that
were shared today with everyone, I’ll put it on the SusOps
Collective SharePoint site, which Meghan will actually be
talking about in just a minute. So they, all those links
will be available for everyone. So Meghan’s going to keep
411714
presenting for us today, and she’s going to talk about
SharePoint sites, which are a great resource to organize
your Green Team. So whenever you’re ready, Meghan.
MO:
Okay, thanks, Katie. So today I’m going to talk about
SharePoint, and I want to point out that I’m not an expert.
I’m merely sharing the experience and the information that
I’ve gathered as I’ve worked with the communication team
and the Collective on our SharePoint site. So before you
start using SharePoint I think it’s really important to
understand what SharePoint is and how it was intended to be
used. SharePoint was really a platform for web sites, and I
know that some people think it’s easiest to think about
SharePoint in terms of a content management system. So a
web platform that manages all of your web content. But
that’s not really what SharePoint is. It does kind of serve
in that role, but it’s really more of an integrative web
platform that supports collaboration through adaptive web
components. So features that you can adapt to your personal
style and your team’s needs. And so the uses of all these
different web components is really enhanced by proper
management and application of them to what your team
specifically needs from your web site. So that [UNINT.]
simply is not difficult once you understand the basics of
it. And in terms of collaboration, so far it aims to allow
groups to share, locate and manage resources while staying
organized. So it’s like SharePoint sites do lend themselves
to keeping your team very organized. I would think of
SharePoint as more of a collaborative web development
system. And when Microsoft designed SharePoint it had one
goal in mind, and that was for SharePoint to become the
single point for all information aggregation, search and
collaboration in your organization or in this case, for
your Green Team. So next slide, Katie.
So now that I’ve give you a brief overview of what
SharePoint is, I’d like to talk about a few of the
features. The, I’m just going to share seven with you today
but there are definitely a ton more. And it’s worth
exploring if you’re interested in using SharePoint for your
Green Team site. The first [UNINT.] I talk about is the
calendar. SharePoint offers a calendar and you can link
this to your Microsoft Outlook calendar in your in box, or
you can simply use it to organize the meetings for your
Green Team, or just for events that are going on during a
particular month. Several calendars can be displayed at
once in the SharePoint calendar, and I will show an example
411714
in a little bit from our SharePoint site. There’s a great
federal holidays calendar that you can overlap with your
SharePoint calendar, that helps keep everybody reminded of
when we’re not going to be in the office. You can also add
the SharePoint calendar to your Outlook calendar as an
overlay in your Microsoft Outlook, so that you can do both
your individual calendar and your SharePoint calendar all
at once, without having to go to your SharePoint site. This
is a feature that I actually use a lot and have found
really helpful.
The next feature I want to talk about are document
libraries. [UNINT.] A repository for documents where team
members can create, collect, upload and manage several
documents of [UNINT.] text in one place. And a document
library is essentially like My Documents on your desktop or
your laptop. It just provides a one stop shop or sharing
place for everything that’s related to your Green Team, and
I’ll give you an example of that here shortly. A really
powerful feature of SharePoint are lists, and so these
lists are really similar to what we think of when we design
an Excel spreadsheet or we have a table in an Access
database. Unlike a spreadsheet, SharePoint’s really awesome
about doing a lot of predefined lists, so it has lists that
are already created that you can then use and customize for
your specific needs. And there are some common types of
lists in SharePoint, and one is our communication list, and
these are used for announcements or contacts or discussion
boards, and then there’s tracking lists, such as your
calendar or a list of links or surveys. And then there’s a
custom list that you design yourself. If you are looking
into SharePoint I strongly suggest that you play around
with the predefined lists that are in SharePoint and then
try to make your own custom list. It’s really helpful to
get a hang of the lists first before you start trying to
customize.
Another really strong feature of SharePoint that we have
not used yet, but I think we’re going to start using, is
workflow. So there are workflow features, these are
available for your lists, your libraries and your
documents, and this allows your team to set up an automated
process, so [approval and backflow]. And this is really
helpful if you’re working on a big project with a lot of
different people involved, and partnerships involved. It
helps you just keep everything straight and keep your
411714
timeline moving, while making sure that you’re
accomplishing everything that you need to accomplish.
They also have wikis and blogs on SharePoint, and these,
these are really helpful if you can’t have a face to face
meeting or the conversation is bigger than just a onetime
meeting and you need the conversation to keep moving. Wiki
[UNINT.] a quick collection of resources and ideas to
inform and keep your conversation moving, but the great
thing about wikis is that they are nonstructured, meaning
that individuals can go in and add ideas or links or
content as they come up with these ideas. And there’s no
particular order to it. A wiki just allows you to put in
information and the order that it’s put into a wiki is the
order that it’s kept in. Which is kind of nice, even to the
natural progression of conversation around a particular
topic. Blogs are very similar to wikis. These are
structured and they’re usually organized chronologically
with the most recent posts listed first. So this is just
another way of keeping the conversation rolling. ArcGIS is
another feature, this is pretty new. It combined ArcGIS
features with SharePoint and it allows you to have map
[UNINT.]. The great thing about ArcGIS is that with
SharePoint you can have an Excel spreadsheet and maybe you
want to provide a visual component for your Green Team or
for people that are accessing your Green Team site. But
ArcGIS component allows you to do that. It is pretty useful
in taking your Excel spreadsheet and mapping it out for
you.
The last thing I want to point out, and what I consider one
of the most important pieces of SharePoint are the
customizable permission settings. Everyone in the Forest
Service automatically has access to your SharePoint site.
However, there may be times when you’re still working on a
document and you're not ready to share it with everybody
yet. You can restrict the permissions for an individual
document, for a document library, for a list. And this is a
great way to limit who can edit, visualize, delete and add
items, particularly when you're still in the drafting
phase. We use this quite a bit on our SharePoint site and I
it very, very helpful.
So Katie, if you manage to get the [UNINT.] slides to
ArcGIS map before we go to the web site.
KN:
Yes, is that the one that you're looking for?
411714
MO:
Yeah, it’s perfect. So I wanted to make sure that everybody
was able to see a demo or a preview of what ArcGIS
capabilities are in SharePoint. This is actually a map from
our internal SusOps web site. This is out of the box ArcGIS
in SharePoint. So we took an Excel spreadsheet, with all of
the Green Teams that we’ve contacted, and we were able to
take that spreadsheet and map all those Green Teams. So
each flag represents a different Green Team and the
different colors represent different types of Green Teams.
So one color is a regional Green Team, then we have a
forest Green Team, a district Green Team, and then our
research station Green Teams. So this is just one example
of how ArcGIS is used in SharePoint and what’s really great
is that it was as simple as putting in your Excel
spreadsheet and using ArcGIS is SharePoint to take it to
the next level. It wasn’t very difficult. So now we can go
to the web site, Katie.
KN:
Okay. I’m going to switch over to my [UNINT.] and then
quickly Meghan if you can tell me if you can see most of
what you’re looking –
MO:
Yeah. I can see a fair amount of it, if you scroll down
just a tad, Katie. Jamey, does that look okay on your side?
JL:
You can see about half the screen but hopefully we’ll be
able to get the point across.
MO:
Okay. So, Katie, this – at the web site here, so this is
our collective SharePoint site. This is what the entire
site looks like. We have our teams listed down the left
hand side. This is our home page, so we have our [data]
information up, and then we have our announcements quickly
here, to our left. They're also listed below the [UNINT.].
So this is what a SharePoint site can look like. This is
not what they all look like.
KN:
-- just want to let people know that they can scroll down
for their screen on the right hand side of their bar to see
more of what you’re talking about.
MO:
Oh perfect. Thanks Jamey. Yeah, so Katie, can we get in the
calendar across the top bar please? So this is an example
of the calendar on the SharePoint site. Anybody that is
part of our certain group or part of the collective can go
in and add an event to this calendar. And I do have an
411714
example slide in the presentation so you can view this
again. I also have a screen shot of what it looks like when
you have this calendar in your Outlook calendar so that you
can what that looks like. You can scroll through the
calendar, you don’t have to just look at January, and to
add a tip it’s pretty easy, you just hover over the bottom
of a date box and ‘add tip’ should come up. So this is our
calendar. Katie, can we go to the ‘Collective Resources’,
towards the top? Thanks. So if we scroll down on this page,
we can actually see a document library. And we have
document libraries on most of our pages. The great thing
about this is you can set up the various categories
associated with your document library. Then you can also
set up the view. So not all document libraries look this
way. What we’ve done is we’ve gone in and said, you know,
there are six categories, one of them is administration,
communications, and if you just keep scrolling down the Get
Your Green On tips are also housed in this particular area.
So to add a new document is fairly easy. There’s an ‘add
document’ link at the bottom of the library. You simply
click there, you upload the document that you want to add
to the library, and then you pick the category that it’s
associated with and it’s automatically added to the
library. It’s pretty easy.
So Katie, can we now go to the announcements. And so I
think we want to go back to the home page, that might be
easiest. So if we hit SusOps Collective, across the top,
and then scroll down a little bit. So we have the
announcements presented in two different places. At the top
of our home page, and then we also have them in the middle
of our home page. And you’ll see that when you’re in the
middle of the home page, more of the announcement is shown.
So there’s different ways that you can show your
announcement, and have them [related] to people. And you
can also create the announcement once, which is great, and
then show it on various pages of your SharePoint site. So
that’s another powerful component of SharePoint. Once you
create an item, like a document library, you can put it in
several different locations on your site and you can
replicate it and use the same categories for other document
libraries on your site.
So Katie you can go back to my presentation now, thank you.
KN:
Is that where you would like to be, Meghan?
411714
MO:
Perfect. So what I’ve tried to do for this part of the
presentation is outline the steps on how to get started and
how to get access to a SharePoint site. The first thing you
need to do is take the site orientation training. And I’ve
provided a link to that training and its presentation. And
then I strongly suggest taking additional SharePoint
training in [UNINT.], I think it’s really helpful to just
get a firm basis before you start playing around with
SharePoint. Once you’ve taken training, then you just need
to complete a site request form, and I’ve provided [UNINT.]
as well. And then I strongly suggest reviewing your site
owner responsibilities. When you’re a site owner for a
SharePoint site you are responsible for adhering to the
Forest Service web content and guidelines, and you also
have to ensure that your site and your site members adhere
to established SharePoint governance. So I’ve provided
links for those documents as well. It’s pretty important to
review ethos and make sure that you’re following all of the
guidelines. And then step five, we just start building and
sharing, so this is where you get to start playing with
your SharePoint site. Next slide.
So one thing I do want to point out before my presentation
ends is that everybody has what’s called a ‘My Site’ page,
this is a SharePoint page and this is where you can
download a photo of yourself and tell your professional
story. So others can link to this particular My Site page
from any SharePoint site where you’re listed as a contact
or a team member. They can click on your name and it will
usually take you there. I used this to help myself start
learning about SharePoint. I think this is a great way to
test out a few ideas and just see what SharePoint is all
about. So if you go to the next slide, Katie. Here’s an
example of My Site page. So you upload a picture, you can
fill in details about yourself, your organization, you can
connect with other Forest Service employees with My Site
pages. It’s just a really great way to get started. And the
way that you link to these pages or get to your My Site
page is to visit any SharePoint site, and in the upper
right portion of your screen there’s going to be a drop
down, and you, with your name, you click on that and you
click on My Site and it’ll take you to your My Site page.
So that’s how you access your My Site page. Next slide
please.
All right. So lastly I wanted to make sure that I shared
some resources with everybody on the call. As [UNINT.] this
411714
is the group that provides support resources and manages
the site requests, so this is where you’re going to go in,
take your SharePoint training, and then submit your
requests for your SharePoint site. So I’ve provided a link
to that site. They also have a great frequently asked
questions section that I’ve used quite a bit and have found
helpful. I’ve also provided a link to the SharePoint users’
group, also known as SPUG. They provide great resources and
they have monthly meetings to discuss various SharePoint
issues or what’s happening with SharePoint, anything new
that’s going on in the SharePoint world. Their next meeting
is Thursday, January 24th at 12:00 mountain standard time. I
think they’re a great group to get involved with even if
you just sit and listen in on the call. They are full of
great resources and a wealth of knowledge when it comes to
SharePoint, and I would defer to them on the expertise side
of this. So hopefully this has gotten everybody excited
about SharePoint. Katie, I’m ready for questions if you’re
ready.
KN:
Yes, thank, Meghan, and thanks, Jamey, as well. So we have
just a couple minutes to take questions for Meghan and
Jamey. If you guys have any questions you press *1 and I
think Eddie is going to give us some instructions about how
to ask a question.
MV:
That’s correct. So for all of our participants if you would
like to ask a question you may dial *1 on your phone. And
that will go ahead and basically raise your hand and I will
go ahead and unmute your line and you’ll be notified when
your line is unmuted. Please state your name and your
question. So again, if you would like to ask a question,
dial *1 and you will be notified when your line is unmuted.
KN:
And it looks like on the webinar a couple of people have
raised their hands, are they coming through, Eddie?
MV:
Yes, give me one second here, I am pulling that up right
now. One second.
KN:
Okay, thanks.
MV:
Okay, [UNINT.] you may go ahead.
FV:
Thank you. I just wanted to point out that the resources
links for FS teams and the SPUG group is a much better
place to go for training than [Ag Learn]. They don’t make
411714
you do the little tests, it’s much faster and more
interactive. Microsoft does a much better job of that.
Thank you.
KN:
Thank you for your comments. And it looks like we have just
one more question, I think.
MV:
Renee, you may go ahead.
FV:
Can you hear me?
MV:
Yes we can.
FV:
Oh. Never mind, my question has just been answered, thank
you.
MV:
Okay.
KN:
Do we have any more questions, Eddie?
MV:
We do not appear to have any more questions on the line at
this time.
KN:
Okay, and I think Meghan and Jamey have graciously agreed
to stick around and answer questions if you guys think of
them at the end, is that right, Meghan and Jamey?
MO:
Absolutely.
JL:
Yes.
KN:
Okay, thank you both. So now we’ll be moving on and Laura
Polanski is, she is actually, normally she’s the SusOps and
Climate Change Coordinator for Region 5 but she’s currently
acting as the National Climate Change Coordinator, and I’m
Katie Newcomb, I’m the SusOps Coordinator for Region 6. And
Laura and I will be presenting on behalf of Michele Parker,
who is on leave today, but Michele developed a great
training tool called Sustainable Operations Training for
Managers. And as a manager or a supervisor, managers and
supervisors have a unique opportunity to help their units
achieve sustainability goals and reduce their environmental
footprint. They can set an example and use their leadership
position to help comply with federal sustainability
requirements, save money, and be a sustainable--, help
their unit be a sustainability leader in the Forest Service
and the community. So Michele and, I think she led a team
411714
to develop this training to help supervisors and managers
work toward long term success in sustainable operations. So
Laura and I will go through this interactive PowerPoint
that Michele has developed so you guys can see what the
training looks like for managers and supervisors.
Excuse me. So this training is, was developed by Michele
Parker who sits on the Tongass, so some of the information
is specifically for the Tongass National Forest. But
they're piloting this training opportunity and it will soon
be available for all forests to customize for their own
unit. So just keep that in mind that some of these examples
are very Tongass specific, but the idea is that this
interactive PowerPoint can be customized for other units.
So we will be walking through the eight tabs that you see
on the top, and each one has a different subject of
sustainability for supervisors and managers, and it’s a
combination of information that is useful to the
supervisors and managers, and then tools and resources they
can use to communicate with their staff. So the first
section is called Understanding Sustainability. And this
section includes some definitions of sustainability and
sustainable operations. What that means in regard to the
Forest Service mission, and then what the Forest Service
managers and supervisors can do to help incorporate
sustainability into their operations.
So as I mentioned before there’s eight different subjects
on the tabs that go across the top of the screen, and then
for each different section, the details are outlined on the
right side, so as you can see there’s blue boxes that say
‘Section Start, Why Should You Care, Federal Requirements,’
et cetera. So each different section has sub sections that
you can interactively click through and you can go back and
forth as you're using this training tool to learn.
So the next tab for the ‘Understanding Sustainability’ is
‘Why should you care about sustainability?’ and it actually
links to an external PDF that’s available for all Forest
Service employees and you can see a picture on the screen.
And it just includes information about how sustainability
fits in the Forest Service mission, and our local
communities, what the requirements are, it’s just a one
page information that anybody can use to communicate
sustainable operations.
411714
The next tab, under ‘Understanding Sustainability,’
includes information about federal requirements and what
supervisors and managers need to comply with for
sustainable ops.
And ‘Sustainability and You’ is the next page, and this is
a good section that helps managers and supervisors think
about how they can communicate sustainability with their
staff, what they can do to lead by example, and how they
can get involved in their Green Team in order to help
further sustainability on their units.
And the last page under ‘Understanding Sustainability’
includes information about the six footprint areas that the
Forest Service uses for sustainable operations. I think
everyone’s probably familiar, but these are energy, water,
fleet and transportation, waste prevention and recycling,
green purchasing, and sustainability leadership. So this
page provides a list of the footprint areas, and then it
has a lot of links for each one, about what the Tongass is
doing to address those footprint areas. So this is a good
example of how you could customize this for your unit and
insert information specifically to where you are.
And that, this is, continued, the last three footprint
areas are shown on the screen.
So the next tab is the Green Team, and Michele Parker
actually presented a lot of information on the Tongass
Green Team at the Peer Learning webinar in December, so if
you’re interested in learning more about that you can
reference the recording from December, but that information
is really specific to each unit and you can just put, you
know, contact information, what projects you're working
on,, what line officer is involved in your Green Team, all
that information goes under that tab.
So the third tab is called ‘Understanding Environmental
Impacts,’ and this is where you can highlight the different
sustainability projects and then the current state of your
consumption on your unit. So the Tongass included three
ways of doing this. The first is Tongass environmental
footprint reports, and they worked very hard to document
all of the projects they’re doing towards sustainability,
their consumption for energy, water, how much waste and,
waste and recycling they use, things like that. So all of
that kind of information is included in these reports, and
411714
these provide links to those reports so the managers always
have them available. Another way to look at your
environmental impact is something that I think most units
have done, which are energy and water audits. It’s
important to know that energy managers in most regions were
able to get energy evaluation training, so they were given
the tools and resources needed to conduct their own energy
and water evaluations in half. And just in case you haven’t
flipped through an energy and water audit before we wanted
to provide a quick snapshot of what these look like, so I
just pulled a couple pages of an energy and water audit for
the Tongass National Forest. So they go through your
building and include information about your building
envelope, your heating and cooling systems, how much
electricity you use over the year, and what you can do to
reduce your consumption.
And including this in the sustainability for managers
training means that those audits are always available for
managers to reference when they’re talking about
sustainability projects with their Green Team or at a staff
meeting, or things like that.
The final piece of information in Understanding Your
Environmental Impact is training, and here is a link to new
and seasonal employee training. This is actually available
for all Forest Service employees and we developed, the
Sustainable Operations Collective developed this document
last year, and then we have updated it for this year, so I
believe this will be coming out in early spring. And this
is the document that includes key messages, resources, and
local contact information and information about how to get
involved in sustainable operations and the Green Team on
your unit.
So the fourth tab in this training is called ‘Your
Responsibility,’ and this helps supervisors and managers
get a good overview of what the footprint focus areas are,
how they can meet federal and Forest Service goals and
requirements, and what tools exist to help them do that. So
the section start just briefly explains this and it goes
through three different ways that we are held accountable
for our sustainable operations.
One of those is the Climate Change Scorecard, which I think
everyone on this call is familiar with, but it’s a ten
point scorecard that Forest Service units use to report
411714
accomplishments and plans for improvement in operations
that affect climate change. There are four different
categories: organizational capacity; adaptation;
engagement; and mitigation. And sustainable operations
falls under mitigation. So this is sustainable operations
element 10 is included here because each Forest Service
unit reports on it and therefore it is part of supervisors’
and managers’ performance evaluations. So information was
just included here so they have a quick link to the
scorecard.
Another focus of the Tongass and I think most units are
looking at this in this fiscal year is high performance
sustainable buildings. And we have different requirements
for high performance sustainable buildings that are put
together in a sustainability ranking system. And we
actually dive into this topic quite a bit in a previous
Peer Learning series. I think it was in March of 2012? So
if you guys were interested in learning more about high
performance sustainable buildings you can look there. But
this is just to provide information for managers to know
what’s going on with their HPSDs and what they can do to
help further sustainability and increase their ranking in
the system. So the next tab that I just wanted to quickly
mention before I pass it off to Laura, that we’re also
skipping, is the Tongass action plan. This is where you
could again customize this training for your unit. But
Michele has presented extensively on the Tongass action
plan as well. So if you go to the SharePoint site where we
have all the recordings you could learn more about their
action plan. Now I’ll pass it off to Laura, who will go
through the rest of the information.
LP:
Excellent, thank you, Katie. I just wanted to mention one
minor correction, that I’m currently serving as the Acting
National Sustainable Operations Program Manager, as opposed
to Climate Change Coordinator. I just wanted to make sure
that was clear, only so many hats one can wear. [UNINT.] Of
course. Didn’t want anyone to think that I was taking over
a different program. So I wanted to talk a little bit about
communications to staff. And as many of you know that are
active on Green Teams, communication is really the key. If
the education and engagement really stems from clear,
transparent and frequent communications. So there’s a few
resources that Michele highlighted here that have been
really effective for the Tongass. – is this new and
seasonal orientation document that was shown on a previous
411714
slide, and it’s an excellent resource for sharing with
interns, seasonals, the new permanent employees. You adjust
it basically to say, welcome to the Forest Service, we’re a
conservation organization and this is how you and your
daily business operations fit into our mission. Another
thing is, that you can think about, Katie had mentioned an
upcoming version of this is going to come out in the
spring. You might want to think about being prepared to
work with your local or regional human resources staff, and
your director if you’re in a regional office, to integrate
this resource into hiring communications, hiring packages.
Anyone who has a direct connection with new employees,
think about how you can help yourself by not being the only
one who is spreading this message about this intro guide.
And then another great one has this course on the Get Your
Green On Tips that were mentioned before, and if you aren’t
accustomed to flipping to the final page of People, Places
and Things, definitely [UNINT.] comes at the very end of
each edition. Next slide please.
So another piece of communication and the part that’s more
fun is really thinking about how can you engage the power
of competition to achieve your goals on the unit. And so
this Get Your Green On contest is one that the Tongass
Green Team used successfully, and for them they called it
the Summit Mount Edgecombe Footprint Reduction Contest. A
similar type of contest has been conducted by the Rocky
Mountain Research Station, which was focused on Mount
Elbert in their case, and the Pikes Peak Ranger District
also launched a successful sustainability challenge that we
both touch on in just a couple slides. Next slide please.
So what is this Get Your Green On contest? And this was
really fun I think for the Green Team, I think it’s also a
great way of providing visual feedback when it comes to
those little steps that we each take towards our
sustainability goals. So they just [UNINT.] but you can
probably see the different colors here, the different
little colored bubbles on the Get Your Green On Summit
Mount Edgecombe photo there. And the idea is the
individuals gain points in several categories and gradually
climb up Mount Edgecombe as they do. So that the idea is
you want to get up to the top. And when this is in full
presentation mode, you can access instructions, directions
and the point tracker by going into presentation mode and
then clicking on each one of those hyperlinks there. So you
don’t have to recreate the wheel here. Many of the things
411714
have been done for you. And really you could take any high
peak of mountain in your region and apply this great idea.
Next slide please.
As I mentioned that there have been some other contest
examples. The first I’ll talk about is the one in the Rocky
Mountain Research Station, this is the base of Mount
Elbert, this is a footprint reduction contest, it is a five
week contest, designed to increase awareness and encourage
the adoption of green activities on a daily basis. Some of
those green activities were turning off your computer each
night, using task lighting or natural light to conserve
energy, using your own water bottle instead of a bottled
water bottle, composting food scraps, packing waste-free
lunches, setting your computer to print double sided as
default. So these are things that individual employees have
full control over which I also think is a very important
piece of how you [UNINT.] designing your contest. There’s
also tremendous leadership participation and this is going
to be key regardless of which unit you’re on, you really
need the boost from the top. In this case the Assistant
Director for Communications [UNINT.] demonstrated how
sustainable operations is important by participating in the
contest, and not only did she just participate but she
actually accumulated a total of 5,800 points and climbed
beyond the summit. And so that’s truly showing dedication
to the concept.
Another sustainability challenge was held by the Pikes Peak
Ranger District. About 40% of the employees participated in
three different facilities, so pretty high engagement rate.
And cash and day off awards were given. So this is another
thing you want to think about, whether there’s a carrot
involved in your competition, and just make sure that’s
well known. Some prizes were given away that promoted a
green lifestyle, so again thinking about your event, how
can you make sure that, from, you know, start to finish,
everything is green, including any type of incentive you
might be giving. I thought this was interesting, that the
[UNINT.] did a complete switch of handheld radio batteries,
so clearly getting in touch with the [UNINT.] and the fire
community is key. And this really brings a lot of new
awareness. If this sounds familiar it may be because you
tuned into the May Behavior Change Peer Learning webinar,
so if you want to go back in a little bit more detail about
the Pikes Peak Ranger District challenge I would direct you
411714
to the May Peer Learning webinar series slides. Next slide
please.
So here’s another piece of communications that was used in
Region 10. The Region 10 overall has an online newsletter,
they call it Sourdough News. And one of the things that the
Green Team did is to integrate sustainability messages in a
four part series, it was called the Green Page, and so here
you see the different topics. ‘The Capacity to Endure’ was
one that was split into two different pieces; ‘The Tongass
Clean Energy Diet: Going Light on Petroleum with
Renewables’; and then the fourth part of this was ‘Energy
Savings through Better Information.’ And then they also hit
on some energy management topics related to both costs and
pollution prevention. You see the Earth Day cleanup and
then sustainable tourism. And so they, you can think about
what existing communication channels do you have at your
unit or your region, and how could you perhaps embed
stories within those as opposed to creating a newsletter
[UNINT.] sustainable operations. Just like [UNINT.]
integration is the key. Next slide please.
Great. Now we’re going to move on to this idea of successes
and awards. Obviously one of the best things we can do is
not just, you know, shake our stick at employees and say,
there’s an executive order hovering above our heads and we
need to do it or else. But also thinking about what’s the
carrot at the end of the road. And so rewarding employees
for reducing environmental impacts is a great way to
increase staff engagement. And you can think about, at the
Tongass, you know, they have their leadership in
sustainable operations system, they have their own Tongass
Green Team award nominations and then they have regional
award nominations that have sustainability as one of the
categories. So they’re looking at sustainable operations
awards at multiple levels. Next slide please.
Great. So I just mentioned LISO on the previous slide, LISO
is leadership in sustainable operations, I imagine that
several of you on the line are familiar with this tool. But
leadership in sustainable operations basically provides an
online platform for employees to [pose], to review
sustainable operations projects throughout the Sustainable
Operations Collective, through a combination of self
reporting and success stories. And LISO actually has a
direct connection to the Climate Change Scorecard element
10. In fact it has these outputs that can directly graph
411714
Climate Change Scorecard performance analysis; how a unit
is doing on the top 10 action items in the Scorecard; and
also the Climate Change Scorecard progress averages, if
you’re looking at averages across fiscal years as opposed
to a snapshot in time. So there’s really a lot of capacity
within the leadership in sustainable operations system. If
you haven’t taken a look at that you can get started by
clicking on that hyperlink there provided on the slide.
Next slide please.
And I guess I should really mention one thing more about
LISO, and that’s that currently there are three different
ways that one can report on Appendix G, if one uses
Appendix G for Scorecard elements and reporting. One is the
table that’s provided as a Word document. One is an Excel
version. And the third one is a LISO report. We’re really
starting advocating using that LISO report. One, it’s a
much cleaner type of report. A lot of these here you just
simply print and hand over to your forest leadership team
for review. And also you know allows you to systematically
track and graph your progress over time, as opposed to
having to set up your own graphs and whatnot in Excel. So
highly recommend using LISO for Scorecard reporting if
you're not currently doing so.
So we talked about awards a little bit. Regional forester
awards. So this is something that Region 5, my home region,
has also done in terms of integrating sustainable
operations and energy management as a regional forester
honor award category. In our case, the award recognized the
individual or group that demonstrated contributions above
and beyond normal job responsibilities toward reducing the
environmental footprint of a Forest Service unit in Region
5 through three things: project accomplishments,
partnerships, and education. The emphasis for the Region 10
awards, the Alaska Regional Forestry Sustainable Operations
Award, may have been a bit different, but the idea is still
making sure that sustainable operations is highlighted as
one of the key things that we’re rewarding our employees
for. And if you have a regional awards program, think about
who [UNINT.] that and whether you can either be a member of
the committee or whether you can at least [UNINT.] to say
integrate the SusOps award. Next slide please.
Great. And so it’s important to think about how do we
measure results. We can’t manage what we don’t measure. And
so the Tongass has really been a frontrunner in thinking
411714
about how to quantify their sustainable operations and
footprint area impact. So we talked before about energy and
water audits is one way you could do that. The Climate
Change Scorecard, that’s CCS element number 10 is another
way that you can quantify your progress assuming that
you’re reporting through Appendix G which is the list of
[UNINT.] action items. If you use the narrative form, that
tends to be more qualitative as opposed to a quantitative
assessment so you really push that Appendix G. We talked
about leadership in sustainable operations, that’s another
way you could measure and then demonstrate progress. And
then the Tongass has actually done a greenhouse gas
emissions inventory. Many units have not conducted
greenhouse gas emissions inventories at the unit level. The
most that’s something that they might hear about being
conducted nationally, but the Tongass has as well as
several of the forests in the Greater Yellowstone area.
Conducting greenhouse gas inventory is really a great
opportunity to understand our corporate [UNINT.] systems as
an agency, and your unit’s emissions profile. Because if
you understand your unit’s emissions profile then it helps
you target your largest emissions sources, and then begin
to prioritize your mitigation [UNINT.]. So just something
to think about. Next slide please.
So this is an example of, I was mentioning before that LISO
as [UNINT.] just spit out these instant reports. If you’re
using that to track your progress on the Scorecard? And
this is one. So again you can see the way that it’s been
displayed on the slide is I know a bit hard to read but you
can get an idea that it’s a lot cleaner of a presentation
than if you were to print out a multi-page Word document,
that kind of thing. Next slide please.
Great, okay, so here’s another one. The LISO rating scale
operates somewhat similar to a [lead] rating scale. There’s
the bronze level, the silver level and the gold level. And
this is one of the graphs that LISO provides that quickly
allows a unit to show where they are with respect to their
accomplishments of action items and the different footprint
areas. And then by doing so one can say okay, we’re on our
way to becoming gold or we’re on our way to becoming
silver. And again, just something that with the click of a
button you can provide for leadership or anyone else who’s
going to be [sitting] on your unit. Next slide please.
411714
Great. So these four we mentioned a little bit about
greenhouse gas inventories. Federal agencies are required
to measure and reduce our greenhouse gas emissions
according to Executive Order 13514. There’s a lot of value
on doing greenhouse gas inventories at a smaller scale, at
a more detailed scale, to better understand what your
emissions inventory is on the unit that you’re currently
sitting. So next slide please.
So there’s an opportunity for you for those who are
interested in engaging in this. The Sustainable Operations
Collective has a team called the Greenhouse Gas and
Emissions Tracking Team, and currently this team is
conducting a field unit pilot with the title ‘Understanding
Your Greenhouse Gas Profile.’ So if you are interested in
learning about your unit’s carbon footprint I would highly
encourage you to take advantage of this pilot opportunity.
Over the past year the Greenhouse Gas Tracking Team worked
with the National Renewable Energy [UNINT.] to test three
different greenhouse gas inventory tools. From those tools,
they did an analysis and provide – prepared a lessons
learned document. And then we kind of parsed that down and
took a look and said okay, what one tool might we want to
test further and apply to other units. And the team
selected what’s called the GSA carbon footprint tool. So if
you are a field location that is interested in piloting
this tool, you might think about whether you would like to
do so at a compound, at a district, at a forest, at an RO,
anything about the scope and scale. The [palette] will
focus just on FY ’12 data, so we’re not going to ask you to
dig all the way back in time, just this past year’s data,
although of course if you’re interested in coming up with a
trend analysis you might think about just reiterating the
process after you have it down for the FY ’12 information.
The objective is basically, we want to help the SusOps
program improve the accuracy of [UNINT.] greenhouse gas
inventorying and tracking, and strengthen the connection
between the field level and then this higher level national
greenhouse gas inventory that we [conduct] every year. And
in so we wanted to promote this two way [UNINT.]
information sharing. -- likely things that we can learn
from the field unit in order to conduct a better national
greenhouse gas inventory. And then here, I’ve documented
the time commitment that the team is proposing knows that
we do, are asking it to complete pilots by Mid-May of 2013.
And this is entirely so that the pilots are completed
411714
before field season goes into full swing. Next slide
please.
So this is the follow up piece for the pilot opportunity.
There is a connection to utility bill cleanup, I’ll let you
go ahead and read that for yourself. Note that you’re not
doing this alone. The team is willing to provide one to
two, we’re calling them Greenhouse Gas Inventory Mentors,
for the Greenhouse Gas Tracking Team. And they’ll help you
through each step of the process. So depending on where you
are in the learning curve on how to conduct the greenhouse
gas inventory, they might start off with something like
offering a webinar to the unit who’s interested in
greenhouse inventories 101. But if you already have the 101
down then they might start thinking about, okay, let’s help
you understand what your different data systems are that
you can tap to get the information. So they would be
customized help based on your level of expertise in the
area, and also there are some limited funds available to
cover some of the salary time, because we do realize that
you know it’s not an [INTERRUPTED RECORDING] time that’s
required to do this.
And you might be wondering okay, how does all of this
relate to the objective of the Climate Change Performance
Scorecard, and this is because Sustainability Leadership
Action Item number 12 specifically talks about conducting a
greenhouse gas inventory and then developing a mitigation
plan after conducting a greenhouse gas inventory. So you’d
be helping your unit achieve at least one of the action
items here. And if you’re interested, there’s your key
contact, her name is Beth Anderson, and please respond to
her by February 8th. Next slide please.
Great. So this is just one more example of how you might go
about tracking information. This is the Energy Staff
Portfolio Manager. This is something that energy managers
use quite extensively and it’s another way of putting in
information, housing it in a way that can be easily
visualized and is relatively easy to learn. There’s not a
big learning curve for that one. Next slide please.
And so finally I want to touch on the idea of sustainable
operations performance measuring. Part of measuring results
is of course measuring yourself and measuring the employees
that work for you, and although there is no one or two
sustainable operations performance measures that are
411714
systematically integrated in every performance
conversation, you might think about what you would do on
your own unit. And so the next slide please.
And this is an example. So if you’re thinking about
integrating the sustainability conversation into
performance, you could have some, you know, broad
overarching type questions that address all six footprint
areas, or you could target a couple of them. If you’re
thinking about energy, you might think of using these as
measures. So again, now what kind of things employees can
do directly and have full control over. Well, one is
routinely turning off lights, electronics, appliances.
Another one is frequently practicing computer energy-saving
tips and turning off all unnecessary electrical devices at
the end of the workday, or when you're not using them for
an extended period of time, like if you go to a multi-hour
offsite meeting. And so these are things that you might
want to think about integrating into the conversation in a
similar way to the way that we currently integrate safety
into our performance discussions. Next slide please.
And so that is the end of this Sustainable Operations
Training for Managers package. We just wanted to leave you
with three things. One is the force of sustainable
operations internal web site. Another is the Tongass Green
Team web site. And then know that Michele Parker has
developed this guide and is the main contact for questions,
although Katie and I will do our best to address them now.
And her email and phone are there. Thanks.
KN:
Thanks so much, Laura. And if you have to get going to your
next meeting that’s okay, I can handle questions. I
appreciate you presenting.
LP:
Sure thing. I’ll stick on for another five or ten minutes.
KN:
Okay, great. So as Laura mentioned the Sustainable
Operations Training for Managers, if you’re interested in
customizing this for your unit contact Michele Parker. It’s
a great, concise way that we took everything that, you
know, a lot of things that Green Teams think and spend a
lot of time working on and put it all into one document for
managers and supervisors.
So I just wanted to highlight two quick upcoming learning
opportunities. The first is the open mic, which is on
411714
Wednesday, January 16th at 10:00 a.m. and the next one is
the next Peer Learning webinar, which is Wednesday,
February 6th at 10:00 a.m. And the topics for the next Peer
Learning webinar is Fleet and Transportation, and we’ve got
a lot of really interesting topics lined up for you so I
hope you’re available for that day.
And now we just have time for questions. If you guys have
questions for any of the speakers on any of the topics
please either type it into the notes section of the webinar
or press *1 to ask a question over the phone.
And Eddie, whenever you get a question, just please let us
know.
It looks like there’s one question. We’ll just wait for her
line to get unmuted.
And while we wait for her line, for the line to get
unmuted, I just wanted to also mention that these three
tools we shared today are great tools to use for Green Team
success. But we have covered a number of other topics about
Green Team in previous Peer Learning webinars so if you’re
interested in example charters or how to get your Green
Team up and running, what types of projects that our Green
Teams are working on, you can scroll through the other
recordings of previous Peer Learning webinars, a lot of
that information is included.
So, Eddie, are we ready to take the question?
MV:
Yes, Katie, we appear to have actually, we appear to have
lost contact with [Jean Glenn], actually hang on one
second, Jean are you still there?
JG:
I am. You know what, it’s okay. I don’t [UNINT.] -- well,
you know what, it’s more geared toward Fleet and I don’t
want to take up a lot of time. I just wondered if there,
with all the, everything’s electronic, and with all that
capability, with – you know, we do these transaction
registers come all the time. There should be a real easy
way of just getting our miles per gallon without us doing
manual calculations or anything like that. It should be
real slick the way it’s set up, we use our credit cards,
credit cards are all electronic, and for some reason we had
trouble just having an easy way to access that. So I
411714
wondered if you guys in other regions had a line on any of
that. Because we shouldn’t have to reinvent the wheel.
KN:
Yeah, Jean, that’s a great question. That’s actually come
up quite a bit on previous Peer Learning webinars and you
are not alone.
JG:
Oh.
KN:
I think of regions are struggling with that –
JG:
Good!
Team]
there
or do
KN:
I be--, now I might be corrected next month on the Fleet
and Transportation, they can dive into this topic if you
are interested, but I think that right now it’s, they’re
still having trouble with the credit card system but
they’re working on getting that fixed, and in the meantime
they’re still doing manual calculations.
JG:
Yeah, I meant to just, like, so retarded, I mean, people
don’t have time, you know, like it’s, we wear a lot of hats
and just, I don’t know, it’s just that seemed like such a
simple thing that would be, you know, readily available.
And so I was just surprised about it. But okay, well,
that’s all it was, I’m sorry.
KN:
No, that’s okay, thanks for bringing it up, I’ll make sure
to mention it to the, well you’re on the Fleet Team but
I’ll make sure that that gets [UNINT.].
JG:
Yeah – no, they know. Yeah, we know. Okay.
KN:
And I actually just got a note typed from Brian [UNINT.] --
JG:
I see it! From Brian, yes, and he’s our head, so no
problem. I’m sorry! I almost, that’s why I hesitated and I
hung up because I thought no, I, we’ve already got this
going, and that’s why I was, yeah.
KN:
No worries. We appreciate the comment. Thank you. So I’ll
leave the comment up from Brian, and then if you need, if
you want to ask a question over the phone, press *1 or you
I was going to wait for, because I’m on an [Eco Fleet
and I was going to wait till they kind of started it
too, but, good! Well, do you, is there any resolution
you know anything?
411714
can type it in. You can press the ‘send note’ button at the
top of your screen.
MV:
And Brian, your line has been unmuted if you want to chime
in.
MV:
Okay, great, I wasn’t sure how this would work and if
everybody would be able to see it, but one of the things
that we talked about – and, again, we’ll cover this for the
Fleet’s discussions in a month but we’ve got a month in the
meantime where folks might be concerned. And if anybody out
there needs to kind of spread the word that one of the
things they’re looking at right now at the Department level
is in perhaps a different fleet car provider. We’ve had
some serious problems with U.S. Bank, and I think it’s
because they’re basically a bank and they’re not a fleet
car provider if you will. And so we’ve had some serious
issues with calculating gallons used and things like that,
which, you know, makes things very difficult if you’re
trying to manage fleets. So just to answer that question,
maybe in the meantime if folks wouldn’t mind spreading that
word. We may find out as early as the middle of next month
who that new provider might be. And I guess I’ll just leave
it at that.
KN:
Great. Thanks, Brian, for chiming in.
MV:
Okay, thank you.
MV:
Katie, there is a question in terms of how soon these
slides will be made available.
KN:
Oh, yeah. I’ll have a PDF of some slides up to the
SharePoint site by the end of the week. I’ve got lots of
meetings today but they’ll be up by the end of the week.
[MUSIC] And Eddie, I don’t know if I’m the only one but I
hear some background music.
MV:
Yes, I just muted that. I
line, I don’t know who it
who would like to ask any
dial *1 on your phone, or
‘send note’ button at the
KN:
While we’re waiting for other questions I’m going to post
the link to the SharePoint site that I keep referencing
where all of our Peer Learning documents are, just for
apologize for that. There
was. Okay and for anybody
question you may go ahead
you may send a note using
top of your screen.
was a
else
and
the
411714
those of you who are new to the Peer Learning series. So I
think if you click on the ‘notes’ section you’ll be able to
copy and save that link. Are there any other questions over
the phone, Eddie?
MV:
We do not appear to have any more questions over the lines
at this time, Katie.
KN:
Okay, I don’t see any in the notes either. So I guess last
call for questions, otherwise we can end a bit early today.
Thanks everyone for participating. We appreciate your time
on this Peer Learning Series. And that, I don’t see any
other questions popping up.
MV:
Yup, I don’t see any questions over ‘notes’ or the phone
line, Katie.
KN:
Okay, great. Thanks for your help.