Hampton Lumber Mills, one of the country’s largest privately held dimensional lumber mills, has successfully achieved significant energy savings by engaging employees in the process.

Hampton Lumber started their energy savings journey with Energy Trust of Oregon through the Strategic Energy Management (SEM) initiative almost ten years ago. SEM helps organizations identify and achieve significant cost savings with plenty of support and learning opportunities from Energy Trust. Through its participation in the initiative, the Hampton team learned to look deeply at how the mill used energy and developed a strategic approach to energy management that leveraged low-cost and no-cost changes.

Broad-based employee engagement was at the core of the effort.“The employee engagement is absolutely vital,” said KJ Konink, maintence planner, Hampton Lumber. “It is remarkable that ten years in there is still energy savings that you can find.”

“To see it on a graph and see how much energy we decreased is a whole different perspective,” added Brandon Terrill, kiln boiler lead, Hampton Lumber. “The data proves that we saved a lot of money doing this. Now we’re more encouraged to find other ways to keep that trend.”

Energy Trust facilitates an SEM process that is fun, interesting and high value for employees and management alike. “People want to do a good job, so if we’re paying less for our energy bill, it helps the bottom line and it’s going to become important to them,” says Brad Blackwell, Plant Manager.