Every year, Seattle building owners and property managers turn to one place when they have questions about energy benchmarking: the Smart Buildings Center’s Benchmarking Help Desk. Behind that resource are two Building Potential staff members, Jessica Cherry and Shino Severson, who provide the technical assistance that keeps building owners on track with the City of Seattle’s Energy Benchmarking ordinance.

Shino Severson: Leading Technical Support

Shino has worked in green building and sustainability since 2008, beginning her career as a Project Assistant at a Seattle-based green building consulting firm, where she supported LEED, ENERGY STAR, and Built Green projects. Today, as a Senior Project Manager at Building Potential, she serves as the Lead Technical Support for the City of Seattle’s Energy Benchmarking Program.

With deep expertise in ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager and energy benchmarking, Shino helps building owners and managers navigate the often-complex process of understanding their energy data and meeting the City’s reporting requirements. As the lead for the Benchmarking Help Desk, she manages day-to-day technical support, helping customers troubleshoot issues, resolve data discrepancies, and successfully comply with Seattle’s energy benchmarking requirements.

Shino is also a Certified Sustainable Building Advisor and holds a degree in Coastal and Marine Policy from the University of Rhode Island. Her education sparked a broader interest in sustainability and environmental stewardship that has carried throughout her career. What began with a focus on environmental policy and sustainable resource management evolved into a career in green building, energy efficiency, and building performance where she now helps Seattle building owners turn energy data into meaningful action.

Jessica Cherry: Technical and Programmatic Support

Jessica joined Building Potential in 2019 and has supported a variety of programs in roles spanning program coordination, customer support, and technical assistance. In her current role as Project Manager, she provides technical and programmatic support for the City of Seattle’s Energy Benchmarking Program, working alongside Shino to help building owners and property managers navigate the benchmarking process. Her technical support includes assisting customers with ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager, property use types, gross floor area discrepancies, compliance questions, and other common benchmarking challenges. She also contributes to the day-to-day administration and coordination of the program, including maintaining resources, supporting outreach and virtual appointments, and helping improve processes and guidance for building professionals.

Jessica also works extensively with Seattle City Light and Puget Sound Energy customers to establish automatic energy data exchanges and troubleshoot issues with meters and utility data. She helps customers resolve data issues, successfully transfer utility information into ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager, properly report their benchmarking data to the City of Seattle, and address other issues that can arise throughout the benchmarking process. She also provides support for the Oregon State Benchmarking Helpdesk and the Clean Buildings Performance Standard Helpdesk, in addition to her primary work supporting the City of Seattle program.

Why Benchmarking Technical Assistance Matters

Energy benchmarking with ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager can seem like a heavy lift, especially for building owners tackling it for the first time. The Smart Buildings Center’s Benchmarking Help Desk exists to close that gap: offering virtual appointments and resources that walk building owners through the entire process, from understanding what benchmarking is and why it matters, to interpreting results and turning them into concrete energy-saving action.

Jessica and Shino’s work on the Help Desk is a good example of what technical assistance looks like in practice: one-on-one troubleshooting that turns a regulatory requirement into a genuine opportunity for building owners to understand and improve their energy performance.

Building owners with benchmarking questions can schedule a virtual appointment or explore the full range of benchmarking resources through the Smart Buildings Center.

Time flies when you’re having fun and that’s no different at Smart Buildings Center! We’ve had a busy July and to make it easy to catch-up with us we’ve consolidated the biggest headlines into the blog post below. You can click each headline to be taken right to the story as it originally appeared.

We’re excited to announce our SBX Day 2 Opening Keynote “Accelerating Performance at the Speed of Innovation” | Last Chance for Early-Bird Pricing!

Megan Owen, Senior Vice President of Strategy and Markets at McKinstry, will deliver an opening keynote that focuses on the changing landscape for building owners and managers and how cost pressure, resilience, risk, security, operational complexity, and AI are reshaping expectations for smart buildings.

Megan’s insightful strategic approach is defined by never-ending curiosity and the ability to visualize and champion development and direction for McKinstry and its clients. With a focus on market strategy across all McKinstry operations, Megan’s experience and leadership have led to complex high-profile projects and advancements in climate and energy policy across the country. By establishing and strengthening market strategy, sales enablement, marketing and government affairs, Megan has shaped McKinstry’s go-to-market approaches to ensure success and client satisfaction.

Prior to joining McKinstry, Megan served as former Washington Gov. Chris Gregoire’s director of King County outreach. In this role, she united public and private entities around common interests. Her passion for stakeholder engagement and removing climate harm from the built environment is shared beyond McKinstry through nonprofit support and service. She currently serves on the board of directors of the NW Energy Coalition.

Stay tuned for more exciting speaker announcements soon!

The early-bird registration deadline is August 15^th. Register now to join us at the event on November 9^th & 10^th and save!

BOC earns Energy Skilled Recognition from DOE

We’re spreading the word! Our friends at Seattle Office of Sustainability and Environment have a new reporting portal and compliance tool for 2026 energy data!

New Seattle Building & Energy Portal Now Available for Building Reporting

The Seattle Building & Energy Portal is now live for Energy Benchmarking reporting. Current features can help building owners and representatives submit outstanding 2025 Energy Benchmarking data and get you ready for future building reporting requirements. BEPS compliance features and guidance will roll out in early 2027.

Reminders about the new Building & Energy Portal:

• Portal resource page now available: Visit the new Portal resource page at seattle.gov/building-and-energy-portal. This is where you’ll go to log in to and learn about the new Portal, access user guides, track compliance reporting deadlines, and more.
• Seamless transition with ENERGY STAR® Portfolio Manager®: The Portal syncs with building owners’ existing ESPM accounts. It will become your central spot for compliance, reporting, and technical assistance for Energy Benchmarking and BEPS.
• Changes to benchmarking compliance process: All covered buildings will now need to use the new Building & Energy Portal to comply with Energy Benchmarking for 2026 by June 1, 2027.
• Portal access codes coming soon: The City of Seattle will send notification letters to all building owners later this year. These letters will have custom claim codes to link your buildings and set up more users in your Portal account, helping you prepare for benchmarking reports due in 2027 and for future BEPS reporting.

Access the Portal and find Portal resources

Confirm Your Compliance Status with the Compliance Look-Up Tool

You can now use the new Compliance Look-Up Tool to confirm your compliance status for reporting 2025 energy benchmarking data that was due on June 1, 2026.

Look up your building’s Energy Benchmarking compliance status

Reminder: Submit Outstanding 2025 Benchmarking Data Through the New Building & Energy Portal

Buildings that still need to report 2025 data must submit their data under the new compliance process in the Seattle Building & Energy Portal. The City of Seattle will reach out directly to non-compliant building owners to share instructions for getting started and resources to understand benchmarking process changes.

Updates to Seattle Energy Benchmarking Map

The Smart Buildings Center (SBC) and Building Operator Certification (BOC) program are proud to announce the 2026 BOC Operator of the Year: Michael Durham, Lead Mechanic 3 from Edmonds College

Each year, BOC requests nominations for people working to improve the energy efficiency of their work environment using skills they learned in the BOC program. We received many impressive 2026 nominations detailing how methods learned in BOC classes are helping people make improvements in their work environments, but this year Michael’s work stood out among the other candidates.

At Edmonds College, Michael works hard to look for measures that will improve the college’s energy efficiency across all of their 25 buildings and 734,000 square feet of occupied space. In 2026 that meant reducing natural gas usage, replacing single building fans with fan walls in HVAC systems and replacing the plant’s cooling tower with an energy efficient induced draft model. Across the board, Michael’s work saw the incorporation of 143 scheduled spaces throughout the campus and up to a 98% reduction in equipment run time. These efforts even helped inspire the State Board of Community and Technical Colleges to offer an incentive to other colleges to adopt a similar system.

Michael’s hard work and application of concepts he learned in the BOC program resulted in the college saving an estimated 512,000 KWH in energy use over the course of the year. Michael’s tireless dedication to BOC principles, ingenuity in keeping up with the latest trends in energy conservation and building operation, and leadership have been instrumental in the college’s success in reducing its carbon footprint. His BOC training and hard work created the following real-world impacts for Edmonds College:

• Energy savings totaling 512,000 KW Hours in a single year saving $41,000.00 in annual energy savings.

• Estimated energy savings 
  • 38% estimated total energy savings over the past year
    • 15.4% reduction in electricity
    • 52.5% reduction in natural gas

• Estimated EUI Reduction
  • Dropped by 24.56, or 38%
  • Based on the energy data from Gazebo and an estimated 718,023 sq. ft. of buildings campus-wide

The SBC and BOC program applaud Michael on his efforts and congratulate him on being named as 2026 BOC Operator of the Year!

Know someone who deserves recognition for their work in the industry? Nominations will open for the 2027 BOC Operator of the Year award in April, so stay tuned!