Clallam County staff asked the Board of County Commissioners to accept a $237,500 grant to perform energy audits required by Washington’s Clean Buildings Act and to authorize the county to manage the procurement in-house rather than sign a state Department of Enterprise Services (DES) contract.

Staff said two county facilities meet the statutory square-footage thresholds that trigger Clean Buildings compliance (the county headquarters is a Tier 1 building and the juvenile detention center is Tier 2). The staff recommendation was to use the county’s procurement process to issue a request for qualifications or bids for audit professionals and for the county to manage project procurement and management, citing restrictive language in the DES template contract that could impose project management fees and termination penalties.

Commissioners and staff discussed timing pressures: the county must complete required compliance steps by calendar-year deadlines and staff said they would prefer to run a county RFQ immediately to meet audit and reporting timelines. Commissioners asked how audit recommendations would be used; staff said audits would produce recommended measures and simple-payback calculations the county could use to prioritize capital planning and potential requests for later funding.

Ending: Staff said it will return promptly with a proposed RFQ and timeline; commissioners supported moving forward with an in-house procurement to meet the tight schedule.