School of Building Construction Assistant Professor Dr. Baabak Ashuri was recently awarded $37,977 from American Utility Management (AUM) to develop a Multifamily Property Utility Benchmarking Program. Dr. Debbie Phillips, a lecturer in the School of Building Construction, will serve as co-PI in the research project. The 8-month project will analyze energy performance in multifamily properties and create an energy benchmarking program using data envelopment analysis methodology.

This project has several specific objectives:

1)     Define a Database Architecture for the enhancement and standardization of required Input Data for Energy Benchmarking Program

2)     Develop a Property Utility Profile Questionnaire to retrieve necessary property data from owners in a standard format

3)     Establish an interface to facilitate compiling utility consumption data from the AUM billing system (bill aggregation/payment service) into the proposed benchmarking tool

4)     Define and standardize several Energy Performance Metrics for different energy sources and with respect to various measurement units  

5)     Analyze Energy Performance in multifamily properties with respect to multiple aspects of energy performance 

6)     Benchmark the entire set of multifamily properties with respect to one or many specified energy performance metrics 

Dr. Ashuri joined the School of Building Construction in 2007, after receiving his doctorate from Georgia Tech. He is Director of the Economics of the Sustainable Built Environment (ESBE) Lab at Georgia Institute of Technology. He specializes in Economic Decision Analysis, Strategic Risk Management, Project Delivery Systems, and Capital Budgeting. He teaches graduate-level courses in Decision Analysis and Risk Management, Design and Construction Processes,  Project Management, and Building Economics and Value Engineering and serves as the Graduate Coordinator for the Integrated Project Delivery Systems Track in the master’s program in the School of Building Construction at Georgia Tech.

Dr. Phillips has served as an instructor in the School of Building Construction since 2005; she earned her doctorate from Georgia Tech. Dr. Phillips has extensive experience in the multifamily housing industry and  is Founder/Owner, of The Quadrillion, a full-service training, marketing, and image development company. She has held the positions of Vice President of Marketing and Training for two prominent real estate management companies and currently serves as Executive Director for the Georgia Apartment Industry Executive Foundation. She holds the prestigious professional designations of Certified Marketing Executive (CME), Senior Housing Marketing Specialist (SHMS) and Certified Property Manager (CPM).