Planner; Municipal Building Energy and Flood Resilience

Planner (Municipal Building Energy and Flood Resilience)

Focus Areas: Municipal building energy management, facility benchmarking, operational conservation, and flood mitigation assistance for homes and businesses.

Location: Hybrid;
Sandy Hook, CT

Salary: $60,000–$85,000 (depending on qualifications) plus competitive benefits.

Schedule: 35-hour workweek

Closing Date: Open until filled

WestCOG seeks a Planner to support building performance and resilience initiatives, focusing primarily on municipal building energy management and secondarily on flood mitigation assistance for homeowners, businesses, and private property owners.

The Planner will help municipalities collect and analyze building and energy-use data, identify operational improvements, support energy-related projects, and evaluate capital investments. The position will also support flood resilience efforts by helping owners of flood-prone properties understand risk, evaluate mitigation options, access funding, and advance projects toward implementation.

This is not an engineering position and does not require professional licensure, but candidates should have, or be able to develop, a practical understanding of building systems, building science, and the factors that influence energy use, comfort, and flood risk.

Responsibilities may evolve based on regional needs and the qualifications of the selected candidate.

The primary focus of this position will be helping municipalities understand and improve the energy performance of public buildings, fleets, and related operations.

• Develop and maintain a regional inventory of municipal facilities, including building type, age, size, use, fuel source, known improvements, operating characteristics, and other relevant information.
• Collect, organize, clean, and analyze municipal utility, fuel, and energy-use data.
• Develop systems to benchmark municipal facilities and identify high-performing buildings, outliers, and facilities with unusual or excessive energy use.
• Identify low- and no-cost management and operational improvements.
• Evaluate opportunities related to scheduling, setbacks, controls, ventilation, humidity management, air movement, lighting schedules, plug loads, preventive maintenance, recommissioning, space utilization, and operating practices.
• Assist municipalities in understanding how building systems and building science affect energy use, comfort, and operational performance.
• Coordinate with municipal employees, including elected officials and department staff.
• Assist municipalities in evaluating proposals from energy service companies, contractors, consultants, utilities, and vendors.
• Develop energy management workflows, templates, data collection methods, and reporting tools.
• Identify opportunities for efficiency, electrification, renewable energy, storage, fleet improvements, and other capital projects.
• Support funding strategies, grant applications, procurement approaches, and implementation planning for appropriate energy-related improvements.
• Assist with regional approaches to energy program delivery, municipal capacity-building, and permitting modernization where appropriate.

The position will also support WestCOG’s work to reduce flood risk for private property owners, including homeowners, businesses, and owners of other flood-prone structures.

• Assist homeowners, businesses, and other property owners in understanding flood risk, mitigation options, funding opportunities, and project requirements.
• Support development and implementation of flood mitigation projects for individual properties and groups of properties.
• Assist with FEMA and related grant programs, including Flood Mitigation Assistance, Hazard Mitigation Grant Program, BRIC, and other resilience funding sources.
• Coordinate with municipalities, property owners, consultants, state agencies, and federal partners on flood mitigation and resilience projects.
• Support project development related to elevation, acquisition, flood proofing, drainage improvements, repetitive-loss properties, and other eligible mitigation measures.
• Help property owners and…