Bernhard | About | Environmental Social and Governance

Bernhard’s 2023 ESG Report

At Bernhard, we are in the business of serving others. Our mission as an Energy-as-a-Service provider focused on sustainability is to deliver innovative engineering, construction, and energy solutions that empower our customers to help promote a low carbon future. Ethics, safety, teamwork, and innovation are the very foundation and fabric of our work. We live these values every day and bring them to every aspect of our operations – whether that’s delivering projects to add to the nearly 5 million metric tons of CO₂e we’ve saved our customers, maintaining a safe and inclusive work environment for all employees, or creating a lasting positive impact on our surrounding communities.

Empowered by our diverse and talented team, Bernhard is well on its way to achieving our vision of being the leading Energy-as-a-Service provider in North America. We are truly one team working together to achieve a shared vision for a more sustainable future – for our company, employees, customers, and communities.

Environment

The United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change August 2021 Report demonstrated how rising temperatures are leading to extreme weather and environmental changes, while clearly connecting these changes to human activity. However, the report also communicated the potential to stabilize the climate by making aggressive and widespread progress towards net zero by 2050 – a task Bernhard is fully dedicated to supporting.

Sustainable Solutions for Our Customers

Bernhard’s business has always centered around energy efficiency and drastically reducing utility consumption and greenhouse gas emissions for our customers. To date, we’ve collectively saved nearly $1 billion dollars and avoided nearly 5 million metric tons of CO₂e for our customers.

Our multi-disciplinary team examines every aspect of a facility to find and implement technical solutions that cut emissions, increase reliability and resiliency, improve efficiency, and incorporate renewable energy solutions. We offer comprehensive energy optimization services for buildings in commercial, healthcare, education, manufacturing, and more.

Understanding the heightened awareness towards environmental impact is placing additional pressures on our customers to operate more sustainably, we are adapting our existing services to more clearly support the development of Climate Action Plans and efforts to reach net zero operations.

Reducing the environmental impact of the built environment through innovative engineering solutions has been our focus for more than 25 years, and Bernhard is committed to continuing to deliver these innovative solutions to help accelerate the global transition to a net zero carbon future.

Bernhard’s Commitment

While we’ve been helping our customers develop and achieve drastic energy reduction goals for decades, Bernhard recognizes that we have a responsibility to monitor and mitigate the environmental impacts of our own operations.

In support of our mission to create a more sustainable future, we have identified a number of ESG-related initiatives within our 2022 Strategic Plan. One of which is quantifying and reporting our baseline GHG inventory for all Scope 1, Scope 2, and select Scope 3 emissions. This process follows the methodology established by The Greenhouse Gas Protocol: A Corporate Accounting and Reporting Standard (Revised Edition-2015). The GHG Protocol guides GHG accounting and reporting with the core principles of relevance, completeness, consistency, transparency, and accuracy.

Bernhard will then use our base year GHG inventory as the starting point for developing our own Climate Action Plan. This plan will outline interim targets and goals and identify technical strategies to achieve net zero operations by 2050 or sooner.

Social Responsibility

Bernhard’s strength in the A/E/C industry is derived from the combined talents of our workforce. The intersection of diverse perspectives, backgrounds, and expertise is what enables our teams to deliver our innovative engineering, construction, and Energy-as-a-Service solutions. Bernhard recognizes the importance of developing and supporting the well-being of our employees and our communities, and thus offers immense education and training opportunities, employee wellness programs, and volunteer and charitable giving events. Because of Bernhard’s ethos as a socially responsible Energy-as-a-Service company, our strengths are amplified by our commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion. It is only through hiring and retaining a diverse talent pool that we will achieve our vision of being the leading Energy-as-a-Service provider in North America.

Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion

In support of our commitment to DE&I, internal processes are reviewed through a lens of equity and inclusion to ensure all recruiting, hiring, promoting, and talent management practices are fair, consistent, and accessible to all. Bernhard is continuously working to create a culture where every employee feels appreciated and is safe from discrimination, intimidation, and bias. Our collective efforts are intended to create a more diverse, safe, welcoming, and inclusive environment for our employees and the industry at large.

Equal Opportunity & Non-Discrimination

Bernhard is an Equal Opportunity Employer of Minorities, Women, Protected Veterans, and Individuals with Disabilities, and participates in the e-Verify program. All qualified applicants receive consideration for employment without regard to race, creed, color, religion, sex, age, national origin, veteran status, disability, or any other classification protected by law.

Employee Development

As a company, we believe our staff’s technical expertise is the key to our ability to provide innovative solutions to our customer’s challenges. We support each of our employees in advancing their education and pursuing industry-specific certifications and licenses. This includes offering tuition reimbursements and funding certification and licensure exams. Bernhard also has a comprehensive internal learning platform that provides employees with professional development. This program has multiple educational tracks including project management, human resources, soft skills, DE&I, and technical knowledge.

Community Engagement

Bernhard believes in nurturing a strong community impact and serving our surrounding communities as if they are one of our most cherished customers – because they are. In 2021, Bernhard donated more than $162,000 to numerous organizations throughout the many communities we work in. Additionally, we stay involved in our local communities through our employees, and we support the causes that matter most to them.

Governance

Bernhard’s executive leadership team is comprised of expert professionals with diverse and extensive experience in the industry. These individuals provide strategic leadership and direction to the organization and instill strong governance within our business operation, practices, and policies.

Bernhard is focused on delivering value to customers, employees, and investors through financial discipline, profitable and efficient growth, and sound business development. However, we must never sacrifice our core values in the pursuit of profits. Bernhard’s executive leadership team manages with integrity and trust to continuously create value for stakeholders and lead to continued, long-term success.

Health & Safety

Among Bernhard’s chief priorities is providing a safe and healthy workplace and conducting our operations in an environmentally responsible manner. We view such conduct as essential to successfully executing our business strategies. No activity is more critical to Bernhard than protecting the environment and the health and safety of our employees, business partners, and members of the communities in which we operate.

Bernhard is committed to working with employees to ensure they are safe and that work environments and conditions are continuously improving. All employees receive training to ensure their understanding of and competence in all relevant safety, health, and environmental matters. Safe work conditions will be maintained through orderly operations and adherence to policies and procedures that ensure the safety of everyone on site. Every Bernhard employee has the authority and obligation, without fear of reprimand or retaliation, to immediately stop any work activity that presents a danger to themselves, co-workers, customers, partners, or the public.

Ethics & Compliance

As we work toward Bernhard’s vision to become the leading Energy-as-a-Service provider in North America, we must operate with an ethical mindset, which is reflected in the way we embody and engage our core values every day. Our Code of Business Conduct sets the standard for who we are and how we operate. The Code and its policies provide clear, practical guidance on how we can demonstrate our core values of Safety, Ethics, Teamwork and Innovation.

Accountability is core to our culture and is a critical part of our commitment to earn the trust and respect of our colleagues, shareholders, business partners, governments and communities. Our long-term success can only be achieved if each of us acts in a manner that supports our values and is in full compliance with the law. Our Code and core values apply to all employees. It takes a lifetime to build a good reputation, but it can be destroyed with a single thoughtless or unethical act. Every employee is empowered to speak up and report any potential Code violations. Employees will not be retaliated against for reporting potential Code violations.

ACCUMULATED SAVINGS

$dollars

TOTAL SAVINGS

elec kWh

ELECTRICITY

ng MMBtu

NATURAL GAS

water kGal

WATER

co2 kg

C02

1 2 3 4 5 6