Collecting energy data from a mixed building portfolio

A “portfolio” in this work is not a slogan. It is a list of addresses whose electricity is paid by three different companies, two of which no longer exist under that name.

Start with the legal entities in the report, then the sites, then the meters. If you start with a chart, you will draw a line through someone else’s bill.

Electricity

Ask accounts for a year of invoices, not a “total kWh” from a facilities slide. In Tbilisi the billing entity on the invoice is often the management company, while the report is for the hotel LLC. Write the mismatch down. Either bring the management company into the boundary or reassign the kWh with a note the board can see.

Prepaid meters and estimated readings are common in smaller houses. An estimated month is an estimated month. Do not average it away to make December look tidy.

Gas and district heating

Several older buildings still take heat from a network. The unit on the bill may be Gcal, not kWh. Convert once, in the workbook, with the factor written next to the cell. Do not convert again in the chart.

If a tenant pays the heat and you report operational control of the building, say who holds the boiler key. That argument belongs in week one, not in the board pack.

Diesel at the back of the house

Generators, laundry trucks, and a gardener’s pickup live in cashbooks more often than in fleet software. Photograph the shed ledger. If GPS mileage and diesel litres cannot both be true, stop. One of them is a story.

A working order

1. Entity list with registration numbers.
2. Site list with addresses and who holds the keys.
3. Twelve months of invoices in a folder named by site, not by “utilities.”
4. A one-line note for every gap (missing March, estimated July, tenant-paid heat).

Only then do we draw the energy figure for the report. The figure is the last object in the chain, not the first.