Ringing the Green Bell to Sustainability

One of the main concerns in sustainability is whether or not there is a place for sustainability employment. At Bell Helicopter in Fort Worth, there are opportunities and those charged with keeping the company efficient, not only have a passion for it but are proud of the math.

Craig Liberman is an  Intergrated Facilities Specialist at Bell. He became involved with a Bell Sustainability Council (which I now lead) and grew it to include participants around Bell . He was a part of the  EHS council for the Corporation and helped to draft the 20/15 Vision goals.

"This got the attention of some Vice Presidents at Bell, resulting in the formation of my current assignment leading Sustainability Programs."

  

·reduce waste

· energy and

·greenhouse gases by 20% in 5 years (by 2015)

They evaluate facilities, "they" includes fellow UTA classmate Amy Harris, for energy use and waste.

"Also, we have been reaching out to suppliers and support companies and improving the impact of our products in use through engineering changes and new designs.  My primary focus has been reducing energy use in our factories and offices by implementing infrastructure changes like lighting upgrades and improvements to energy systems," said Lieberman.

That includes:

·office buildings

· factories

· entire plants including exteriors

· parking lots

·etc.

They implement a Kaizen process originally developed in the Six Sigma community and refined byGeneral Electric. This Kaizen process requires a pre-kaizen evaluation of a facility followed by a hands on investigation by a small team (10-15 people) looking at Machine Energy, Building envelope, Compressed Air Systems, Lighting Systems and Materials (Waste). Their goal is to identify opportunities to improve (reduce) the energy use in the facility or reduce waste.

"We participate as team members at sister companies like Textron Systems, EZGO, Cessna, Greenlee,etc. In this way, we exchange best practices and share ideas for what can be improved in our local facilities," said Liberman.  We are building local capacity at each company to execute these Kaizens and harvest savings. I was working as a Six Sigma Black Belt in the company’s continuous improvement program. This program requires that participants eventually move to a follow-on assignment in the company.  

Those include:

•  Outstanding Sustainability Program” by the Greater DFW Recycling Alliance and
• “Stupendous Recycling Program” by the North Texas Corporate Recycling Association 

 

According to Liberman, they have been very effective at replacing low performing older lighting with higher performance, longer lasting, lower energy use lighting. 

"We have attempted to do the same in our compressed air systems. Lighting controls like building timers, motion sensors have been effective. We implemented controls technology on our water heaters reducing energy use by 12% in the installations, " said Liberman.  We also installed a solar water heating system on one of our office complex buildings to heat water for domestic (sinks and bathrooms).  Some of the cost savings also come from low technology solutions (i.e. install a switch to allow folks to turn off items safely.

So, is this gentleman happy to work for Bell? This line says it all."I am thrilled to come into work every day and move the needle for Bell, for our customers and for the communities in which we live. This really is my ideal job."

 Sustainability Program efforts for the past year have resulted in harvesting projects that avoid more than 8% of Company DFW energy use and greater than 20% reduction in waste from landfill. They have engaged with the community and as a result have won two awards in the last year for the Sustainability Program. His role is to reduce the environmental impact of Bell Helicopter by helping to meet their  Vision 20/15 goals which are to: to