Automating a Reporting System for a Building Performance Analysis Consultancy

Problem

The client was a building energy performance consulting company. Their work involved monitoring the energy consumption of their clients' buildings to analyze and document those buildings' efficiencies.

One of their primary deliverables to their clients was a quarterly report about those clients' buildings' efficiencies; however, constructing this report involved manually stringing together data from disparate sources, and generating a report using Microsoft Excel and Microsoft Word.

The goal of this project was then to overhaul this process, and deliver a totally automated solution for custom report generation which was extendable to a myriad of other reports that the client also sent to its clients.

Solution

A Python software package was delivered which performed the report generation, and involved a component of human data-annotation in Google Sheets to augment the data in the report.

Impact

Monthly person-hours spent on creating the quarterly reports was decreased from 30 to 1, making it more cost-effective and robust, all while enabling higher quality reports for client delivery.