Commonworks Energy, British Columbia

How it works

The five steps, expanded

01. Assessment

Typical time: four to six weeks.

What your council does: Give us access to the plant room, two years of fuel bills, and any drawings the building still holds. That is the whole ask.

What we do: We visit the building and inspect the boilers, the domestic hot water plant, the pumps, the risers and the electrical service. We read the bills and work out the building’s real consumption. Where the building qualifies, we apply CleanBC study funding to the work. You get a written report, and it is yours to keep whatever you decide.

Cross-section of a mid-rise building showing the plant room, risers and suites Commonworks owns,operates and maintainseverything inside thedashed line. ROOF SUITE 401, FAN COIL SUITE 301, RADIATOR SUITE 201, RADIATOR HEATING RISER, TYP. DHW RISER, TYP. PLANT ROOM CONTROLS PANEL GAS METER EXPANSION TANK CIRCULATING PUMPS BOILER No. 1 1998 BOILER No. 2 1998 DHW TANK 2009 Heating riser,your repair Controls,your contractor Expansion tank,yours to replace Pumps, yourservice contract Boiler, 1998,yours to replace DHW tank,yours to replace Gas meter,your account 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 PARKADE COMMONWORKS ENERGY TYPICAL MID-RISE PLANT ILLUSTRATIVE, NOT A DESIGN SHEET 1
  1. 1Roof
  2. 2Suite 401, fan coil
  3. 3Suite 301, radiator
  4. 4Suite 201, radiator
  5. 5Heating riser, typical
  6. 6Domestic hot water riser, typical
  7. 7Plant room
  8. 8Controls panel
  9. 9Gas meter
  10. 10Expansion tank
  11. 11Circulating pumps
  12. 12Boiler No. 1, 1998
  13. 13Boiler No. 2, 1998
  14. 14Domestic hot water tank, 2009
The plant we look at in step 01, drawn from the plant room up through the risers to the suites.

02. Design and proposal

Typical time: four to eight weeks.

What your council does: Tell us what matters most: cooling in every suite, the lowest running cost, or the shortest time on site. Then read the proposal and put hard questions to us.

What we do: We design a plant for your building and price it. We finance it and put one fixed monthly capacity charge on the front page. We give you the 25-year comparison with every assumption printed. We attend a council meeting and go through the agreement clause by clause before any vote.

03. We install, at our cost

Typical construction window: eight to fourteen weeks.

What your council does: Approve the schedule and help us tell owners what is happening and when. We draft the notices if you want us to.

What we do: We pay for everything and we manage the work. The installation is phased, so we change over part of the building at a time and the rest stays in service. Where a changeover would otherwise leave anyone cold, we bring in temporary heat and hot water. If your existing plant fails after you sign and before the new plant is running, temporary heat and hot water are our responsibility and our cost. No cold days.

Here is what residents usually notice. Work like this makes noise in the plant room and on the stairs during working hours. Hot water goes off for short, scheduled periods, announced in advance , usually two to four hours at a time and only a few times over the whole job. Most installations need a crane or a lift outside for a day or two. Some parking is usually unavailable for part of the work. Where a radiator is replaced with a fan coil, a technician needs access to the suite for about two hours. We book those visits resident by resident rather than posting a blanket notice.

04. We own, operate and maintain

Typical time: the whole term, 15 to 25 years.

What your council does: Nothing routine. Send us the complaints. Read the annual performance report.

What we do: We monitor the plant remotely, and we act on a fault when the monitoring shows one. We service it on schedule rather than when someone remembers. We pay for every repair and every part. We answer one number at any hour, every day of the year, and our response times are written into the agreement : a technician on site within four hours for loss of heat or hot water, and within one business day for loss of cooling. Boiler and machinery insurance on the plant is ours.

05. One monthly statement

Typical time: monthly, for the term.

What your council does: Pay one statement. There is no service contract to renew, no repair invoice to approve, and no plant line in your reserve planning.

What we do: We bill two lines. The first is the fixed capacity charge, and the second is the metered energy at our cost. We report to your council once a year on how the plant performed. At end of term you choose: renew, buy the plant at the price set in the agreement, or have us remove it.

The Energy Services Agreement in plain language

This is a summary, not the agreement. The agreement governs, and your counsel should read it. We expect that.

Term.

The agreement runs 15 to 25 years, and the exact term is set before you sign. The term is chosen to match the service life of the equipment we install. Nothing extends automatically.

What we own.

We own the plant we install: the heat pumps, the pumps, the controls and the meters. Ownership stays with us for the whole term. Your building, your suites and your structure stay yours, and what else falls inside our scope, risers included, is listed in your agreement building by building.

What you pay.

You pay a fixed monthly capacity charge for the term, and the metered energy the plant uses at our cost with no markup. There are two lines on the statement and there is no third line.

What is included.

Maintenance, monitoring, parts, labour, repairs and replacement of the equipment we own are inside the capacity charge, and so is the response service. You do not approve repair invoices, because you do not receive any.

Performance and response times.

We commit to defined response times for loss of heat, loss of hot water and loss of cooling, and those times are written into the agreement : a technician on site within four hours for loss of heat or hot water, and within one business day for loss of cooling. We commit to maintaining the plant to its design efficiency and to reporting each year on how it performed. Design efficiency is the performance the equipment was built to deliver, not the lower level it slides to when maintenance is skipped.

Insurance.

Boiler and machinery insurance on the plant we own is ours, and we carry liability insurance for our work , with $5,000,000 in general liability coverage. We speak to your broker about how the agreement sits alongside the building’s policy. We make no representation about your premiums.

If your building is sold or a unit changes hands.

The agreement is with the strata corporation or the co-op, not with individual owners. When an owner sells a unit nothing about the agreement changes, and there is no levy to disclose. Whether a buyer’s lender needs notice of the agreement depends on the lender, and we answer that in writing for your building before your council votes. Nothing is registered against any owner’s strata lot, and any registration we make to protect equipment we own is disclosed in the agreement and explained before the vote.

If Commonworks is sold.

If the agreement is assigned to another party, its terms do not change. The same capacity charge, the same energy-at-cost billing, the same response times and the same end-of-term choices bind whoever holds it.

End of term.

Your council chooses one of three things. It can renew for a further term. It can buy the plant at the price set out in the agreement, or have us remove it and make the plant room good. The purchase price is written into the agreement before you sign, and it does not climb year over year.

Exit provisions.

The agreement sets out how either party may end it early, the notice each must give, and what is payable on an early exit : twelve months of notice, and a payment that covers the plant's remaining unpaid capital and the cost of removal. It does the same for our failure to perform. We walk your council through this clause specifically, because a careful council asks about it first.

Request a no-cost building assessment.

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Email service@commonworks.ca