Case Study

OTTER/TREATtracker

Challenge: Develop an online tracking system for the electric utilities of New Hampshire that could provide fine-grained job management, contractor invoicing, and aggregate data reporting to support the home energy efficiency retrofit program sponsored by the state's public utilities commission.

Results: Sunnywood responded to this complex project with a design that substantially improved the antiquated system that had been used to track the New Hampshire program. We worked with Performance Systems Development to define the project details and integrate with their building energy analysis software. Looking at the existing process flow, we developed an interface that would allow utilities to have full control over assigning and reviewing projects and invoices. Data from TREAT is loaded into OTTER for analysis and assignment of rebates defined by the New Hampshire program. Once a project is complete, contractors can aggregate jobs and invoice for work completed. The process management is detailed and the control is deep, allowing high visibility for all parties.

The project was online from 2002 to 2012. Sunnywood continued to provide maintenance and development of new features, such as an integrated messaging system, utility billing data bulk import capabilities, a refrigerator ordering system that provided orders to an outside vendor, and a quality assurance system for reviewing contractor work before approving.

This project was the foundation to Green Energy Compass, which is now the flagship product for Performance Systems Development and will be used by New Hampshire as a replacement for OTTER.

Technologies:

• ASP.NET / SQL Server
• Windows 2003 Advanced Server (system administration)
• Subversion (version control and deployment of development site)
• Red Gate SQL management tools