Running a Pre-Assessment Meeting

The pre-assessment meeting is a short call with the facility contact, usually a week or so before the on-site assessment. It is your first point of contact with the client, and it sets the tone for the whole engagement. Treat it as a conversation. The aim is to get the client talking about their own operation, so keep things loose and let them lead.

What the Meeting Is For

A good pre-assessment meeting does two things:

it builds rapport. You are about to spend a day in someone's facility, and the more comfortable they are with you, the more openly they'll talk on assessment day and the more access they'll give you.
It builds shared process awareness. You learn what the facility does, what motivated them to call us, and where they think energy is going. They learn who we are and what assessment day looks like.

Try to keep the meeting focused on what you actually need beforehand. A useful rule of thumb is that if a fact isn't actionable before you arrive, it can wait. Knowing the facility has air compressors is actionable, since if you don't see them on the walkthrough you know to go looking. Knowing the horsepower of those compressors can wait, because you'll read it off the nameplate on assessment day.

You will not cover everything, and that's fine. Anything you miss can be picked up on assessment day, and a real conversation beats complete coverage.

Make It a Conversation

Favor open-ended prompts. Asking a client to "tell me about" something invites a story, while a yes/no question tends to kill momentum. "Walk me through your process" will get you far more than a list of equipment questions ever will.

Ask why they do things the current way. The reasoning behind a practice is often where the opportunities hide, and a good follow-up is what turns an answer into a conversation. When a client mentions a corporate carbon directive, the natural next question is "what's the target, and by when?"

It helps to know the menu cold beforehand. With a strong grasp of what you want to learn, you can skip around, follow interesting threads, and let the discussion flow rather than reading down a list. Throughout, aim to let the client do most of the talking. Your job is to listen and stay curious.

The worksheet is retired

The old fill-in-the-blank question sheet is gone. Working line-by-line through a printed list, with blank space under each question to write responses, is what made these meetings feel like interrogations. Treat the menu below as prompts you've memorized rather than a script you read.

Don't take live notes

Record the meeting transcript in Teams and generate notes from it afterward. Taking notes live pulls you out of the conversation, and you'll fill in the assessment slides from the transcript anyway.

The Agenda

Drive the agenda explicitly from our end. Clients, especially the ones anxious about logistics, will try to jump straight to assessment-day details if you let them. Saying up front that logistics come at the end buys you room for the conversation that actually matters.

Introduce everyone. Both teams, briefly.
Explain how the meeting will go. "We'd like to start by getting to know your process and your facility, and we'll go over logistics for assessment day at the end." This one sentence does a lot of work.
What does your process look like? How material comes in, what happens to it, how it leaves.
What motivated you to get an energy assessment? This is where you learn the client's needs and priorities: a corporate carbon mandate, a utility bill that jumped, a piece of equipment nobody has looked at in a decade. Follow every thread that opens.
Where do you suspect energy could be saved? Their hunches point straight at the best opportunities.
Logistics. See below.

Don't give them an out on question 5

Avoid prefacing "where do you suspect energy is being wasted?" with "it's okay if you don't know." That's a well-meant instinct that costs you the answer. Left on its own, the question carries a mild social pressure to engage, and most people will offer something real. Add the reassurance and you've made "I don't know, that's your job" a comfortable reply, which burns the highest-value question in the meeting for nothing.

These are conversation starters to keep the discussion moving when it stalls, and you should treat them as prompts rather than a checklist. You'll rarely touch all of them. Each is phrased to open a conversation, so follow up with "why?" wherever it's interesting.

Tell me about your schedule

Shifts, production hours vs. equipment hours, holidays, long maintenance shutdowns. Ask whether any shutdown falls near our visit, since it changes what you'll see running.
What's your most power-hungry equipment?

Compressors, boilers, chillers, furnaces. You want to know what exists so you notice if it's missing from the walkthrough. Leave nameplate details for assessment day.
Is water part of the process?

Process water, cooling water, and scrubbers, or just domestic use? If it's in the process and we don't have the bills, ask for them.
What happens to your waste?

Scrap, heat, wastewater. Where does it go, and why is it handled that way?
What's changed recently?

Expansions, new lines, new buildings, on-site generation. Recent change is where nobody has looked yet.
Any past energy audits?

Has anyone assessed this facility before, and what came of it?
Which meter serves what?

Office vs. manufacturing vs. warehouse, number of buildings, on-site generation.
Who else should we talk to?

Your contact may not know the equipment. Find out who does, and get them on the walkthrough.

Match the question to the contact

Check who you're talking to before you plan the conversation. An environmental or EHS manager can give you a rich process walkthrough and the corporate drivers, but will often draw a blank on HVAC and lighting, which belong to the facilities team. Asking equipment questions of the wrong person produces a string of "I don't know" answers that stall the meeting. Ask them about what they know well, and ask them who to bring along for the rest.

Logistics

Save these for the end. The goal is a discussion of how the day will go, kept relaxed rather than run as a rapid-fire list of questions.

Walk them through assessment day. Roughly when we arrive, the group walkthrough, splitting into teams to install sensors and collect data, and roughly when we leave. Most client concerns surface on their own once they can picture the day.
Access. Set expectations that we split into two or three teams and need to move around. Ask whether they'll have people available from their side to support that, and whether we need escorts.
Rooftop access. Treat this as a negotiation rather than a yes/no question. If they need to arrange a lift or a crane to get us up there, they need the warning now. Explain why we want up there, mainly nameplates and the condition of the RTUs, and it usually gets solved.
Parking and arrival. How many cars we'll have, where to put them, and who to contact when we show up. This is usually worth a minute of back-and-forth over a map.
Site-specific security. Anything unusual about getting in or out, such as NDAs, badge or background-check procedures, or screening on exit. Ask if there's anything we should know before we arrive.

Handled Outside the Meeting

Don't spend call time on these. If a client's intake form predates a question, cover it on the call. Otherwise it's already answered.

On the intake form:

PPE requirements
Photo permission (the answer is "yes" about 75% of the time)
Citizenship or clearance restrictions

In the scheduling email:

That we may need to install sensors inside high-voltage panels, so a facilities person should be available
That we'll need a conference room for the day