Condo Media - March 2020 - 42

VENDOR SPOTLIGHT

RISE Engineering
Keeping Condominium Communities at the
Cutting Edge of Energy-Efficiency Technology
[by Pamela Schweppe]

Do you remember life before email, the internet, or smartphones? These advances might seem
a lifetime ago, but technology changes at an everincreasing pace-and right now, it's happening in the
realm of energy efficiency. Fortunately, RISE Engineering has been keeping pace with these changes
on behalf of the condominium industry for decades
and now is poised on the threshold of a new era.
A THREE-LEGGED STOOL OF SERVICE
The company was founded in 1977 with a mission
that incorporated a three-legged stool of service.
For condominium associations, the first leg of the
stool is to identify energy-conservation measures
appropriate for that community through an onsite
assessment by a trained specialist.
Once those opportunities have been identified,
the second leg of the stool comes into play: providing
direct assistance in arranging the installation of those
recommended improvements. The company commands
a full complement of electricians, weatherization specialists, and experts in mechanical work, all trained to
provide quality work. And all work is backed by long-term
warranties and guarantees to ensure peace of mind.
Finally, by partnering with major utilities such as
Eversource and National Grid, RISE Engineering
strives to make the work affordable for associations by
accessing the various types of incentives that have been
available over the past few decades, such as energy tax
credits, financing programs, and rebates.
These three principles still guide RISE Engineering's
corporate philosophy today.
A FOCUS ON MULTIFAMILY COMMUNITIES
The condominium industry has been a core sector for
RISE Engineering just about since the dawn of the industry. The company inked its first contract with utilities
to deliver multifamily program services back in 1985,
and it has continuously delivered that program through
its different phases right to the present day. "It's an

Electric-vehicle charging stations are just one way RISE
Engineering helps condominium associations keep in step
with energy-efficient technology.

uninterrupted streak that we're on," notes Vin Graziano,
president of RISE. "When you're the first in and clients
feel that you did a good job, they reward you by retaining
you, and that's the position we've been in all these years."
He adds that multifamily housing is a sector where
utilities have offered exceptionally attractive incentives
that cover much, if not all, of the cost of energy-related
improvements. "We've been in literally hundreds of thousands of units and thousands of properties," he reports. "It's
very unusual that we would find a property of any size in
our service territory that we haven't been to at least once,
maybe twice, maybe more over the past 30 or 35 years."
One association RISE Engineering has serviced
multiple times is Marina Point Condominiums of North
Quincy, Mass. The partnership began in 2018 with a
decision to upgrade the lighting in a two-level parking
garage. Converting the entire 30-year-old lighting system
from fluorescents to LEDs was a costly proposition that
met with some resistance among residents, but when

Condo Media - March 2020

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