Leadership

Stacey A. Towell, LEED BD+C, President

Stacey is President of CxE Group and provides overall company management and business development. She holds a master’s of science in education from Southwest Baptist University and a bachelor’s of science in elementary and special education from the University of Missouri at St. Louis. As a member of the US Green Building Council, Stacey has a LEED AP BD+C and serves as a mentor for the USGBC’s Green School Quest.

As a life-long learner who began her professional life as a teacher at the middle and high school levels, Stacey spent many hours providing administrative support for a consulting engineering firm and learning more about the fields of commissioning and energy efficiency. As her interest grew, she saw the emergence of the need and desire for better designed and operated buildings and combined forces with Bob Towell to create a licensed engineering firm that emphasizes independent building commissioning authority services and energy savings analysis. This remains the main focus today but has expanded to include control system optimization, daylighting analysis, and implementation support services for retrocommissioning and energy savings efforts.

As the business development arm of CxE, Stacey manages the day-to-day operations of the company, but her responsibilities are not limited to that realm alone. Stacey is very active on projects and provides many support services to the team. Depending on the specific needs of the project, her duties include gathering and compiling equipment and space usage data, overseeing documentation procedures for testing and operating manuals, managing LEED compliance activities, completing analysis of utility data, and organizing and writing aspects of commissioning reports and energy assessments.

Robert L. Towell, P.E., QCxP, LEED AP, Vice President

Bob is Vice President of CxE Group, serves as the Commissioning Program Manager, and runs the energy modeling department. He is a registered engineer in Missouri and Illinois as well as three other states, a Qualified Commissioning Process Provider under University of Wisconsin College of Engineering Certification Program, and a member of ASHRAE, USGBC, BCxA, and NSPE. He graduated from the University of Illinois in 1977 with a degree in mechanical engineering and completed graduate studies in advanced control theory and optimization of thermal systems at U of I before entering the professional engineering field.

As the Commissioning Program Manager for CxE Group, Bob brings a wealth of building commissioning, energy analysis, and large project management experience to the team. With over 30 years of experience in building design and system analysis for a broad range of building and system types, Bob not only has comprehensive knowledge about mechanical, electrical, and lighting systems, but he also has significant experience with a variety of control and monitoring systems. Major building projects include the Johns Hopkins Asthma Research Center in Baltimore, Wayne County Detention Facility in Detroit, Missouri National Guard Headquarters, the Edward Jones Dome at America’s Center, Metropolitan Square, and the Thomas F. Eagleton U. S. Courthouse.

Bob leads our energy modeling department and started preparing energy models before leaving the University of Illinois. Bob has worked with several energy programs including BLAST by the US Corp of Engineers, DOE, Trane Trace, and a few other options over the years. Currently, CxE is starting to utilize EnergyPlus, the current state-of-the-art energy simulation software that is based on both BLAST and DOE and provides many new options, including enhanced daylighting analysis.

From his college and early professional years to the present, Bob has brought an emphasis on efficient building operation to every design and energy conservation project he has managed. Shortly after joining Ferris & Hamig in 1978, Bob helped create Trans Energy Engineering Corp., a separate division, to focus on providing energy saving programs and energy modeling services for a variety of facilities such as Maplewood-Richmond Heights School District and Ferguson-Florissant School District in St. Louis, Missouri. As momentum for energy savings analysis has grown, Bob has performed energy modeling on various major construction projects such as the Eagleton Courthouse, along with many retrocommissioning and energy savings efforts.