EIA-846: Manufacturing Energy Consumption Survey

Hi (insert name),

My name is (insert name), and I am calling from the U.S. Department of Energy. I’m interested in speaking to the person that would be responsible for completing any government surveys that your site receives. Are you that person? (Record name)

(If no, who is the right person?) (Record name)

I am working on a project with the Manufacturing Energy Consumption Survey, which is jointly conducted by the U.S. Department of Energy with the U.S. Census Bureau. We are adding new questions related to (asphalt plants / petrochemical plants / energy efficiency) and before we finalize these questions, we want to visit manufacturing sites in your area to gather feedback on them to see if these questions are feasible for you to answer.

Would you have time to meet with me during the week of (insert week) for about an hour to give us feedback on these questions? (If no, thank them for their time.)

Great, I have a few questions to ask you to make sure your information is correct in our database.

• First, we have your site listed in our database as manufacturing (asphalt/petrochemical/energy efficiency). Is this correct? (If no, what does your company manufacture/do?)

• Second, we have your site’s address listed as _____________. Is this correct?

• Third, this is the phone number that I have for your site ____________. Is this a good phone number to reach you on?

• Finally, what is your email?

Great, we really appreciate you taking the time to help us out. I will follow-up this conversation with a confirmation email.

Thanks again, have a great day.

Potential Questions/Answers

Q. Why do you want to meet with me?

A. Because before we ask these questions on the survey, we want to make sure they are understandable and can be easily answered from your existing records.

Q. How long will it take?

A. About an hour, if not less.

Q. If I help you with this, will I have to fill out the survey?

A. There is no guarantee that your site will receive the actual survey in 2015. We will pull a sample, which includes only some sites in your industry. Each sites data represents other sites data. We call this a sample.

Q. Can you just email me the questions and I’ll let you know what I think?

A. We can show you the questions in advance, if you’d like. But we still want to meet with you in person to visually understand the effort it takes to translate what is in your records to what we are asking on the form.

Q. What do I get out of it if I help you?

A. You get the satisfaction of helping us improve these new questions so they not burdensome on the industry.