Key Findings From Retrocommissioning A High-Performance Building

KLH coordinated multiple tests and reviewed the functional performance testing data and the building’s environmental trend data to find a solution to improve system performance and operating efficiency, and reduce energy costs. Through this research, KLH identified multiple issues, including a problem with the building pressure—the RTU exhaust fan was only enabled when the outside air damper was open above a minimum position and the building pressure was above the building pressure set-point.

The minimum outside air damper position was set to 10 percent on all RTUs and the power exhaust outside air minimum position was set to 20 percent. This set-point prevented the power exhaust from operating and maintaining an appropriate building pressure. After looking at the building pressure trending, KLH discovered that the building pressure would continually rise throughout the day, until approximately 5:00 p.m., when all of the doors opened as employees exited the building. Because the building envelope was secure and the doors remained closed, the building pressure would rise to the point where doors were difficult to close once opened.

To combat this problem, the outside-air minimum damper position set-point (for the power exhaust system) was lowered to 5 percent on RTU #4 in an effort to see if the power exhaust fan would engage and maintain building pressure. Once the set point was lowered to 5 percent, the rooftop unit immediately began to exhaust air. After this change, the BAS showed the building pressure decreased until the programmed building pressure set-point was attained.

In addition to these findings, the RCx study uncovered other opportunities, which KLH recommended to further improve the building’s energy efficiency. These projects include: carbon dioxide space monitoring and outside air ventilation control, a new control strategy for supply duct static reset, installing an enthalpy economizer control, and implementing a new supply air reset control strategy.

The success of the RCx project shows how to utilize RCx not only as a means of obtaining LEED certification points, but as a foundation for responsible energy management practices. According to Johanning, knowing that the mechanical systems and controls operating the buildings are working in sync—and efficiently—creates peace-of-mind, and RCx is the vehicle to deliver those results. Not only did the Springfield RCx project exceed Johanning’s expectations, it also expedited the funding approval process for some of the recommended corrective actions to further enhance efficiency.

The Springfield RCx project was so successful that the business is planning to conduct RCx studies in selected facilities throughout its commercial office portfolio to further drive down operating costs. RCx is proven to be a smart choice for facility managers and building owners who want to streamline their building’s performance and operations. Doing so can further improve building efficiency, save monthly costs, and ensure happier employees with more comfortable working conditions.

Jerry Schmits is Director of Energy Solutions at Kohrs Lonnemann Heil Engineers. You can reach him at jschmits@klhengrs.com.

Retrocommissioning Improves Energy Efficiency In High-Performing Buildings

LEED certification and Energy Star benchmarking continue to grow in popularity for existing buildings as pressures mount to control operating expenses. As a result, energy efficiency is now mainstream, and managing a building’s energy performance is standard procedure among an ever-growing number of facility managers.

Energy Manager Patrick Johanning is one of them. Johanning works for an international commercial real-estate services corporation, where he manages energy cost and consumption for a Fortune 500 financial services company. Acting on a hunch that he could improve energy efficiency and reduce operating costs among his top-performing facilities, Johanning looked into retro-commissioning (RCx). The result was an RCx project in Springfield, Ill. — performed on a building that was LEED Gold certified with an 89 Energy Star score — which managed to produce a 10.4 percent energy savings on its HVAC system.

Multiple options existed for reducing the energy-related expenses, including energy audits and re-lamp projects. But while the benefits of these activities are well documented, the state of efficiency that existed between the facility’s mechanical and operating systems, and the control systems that function on the front-end, was not documented. While the RCx process is intended to restore a building’s equipment and mechanical systems back to their original operational design, functional performance testing can also improve energy efficiency. In short, if Johanning could show favorable RCx results in a high-performing building, he could find support for an RCx program across the entire commercial office portfolio. The first challenge was to both prove his hypothesis and get the project funded.

The funding arrived in the form of an RCx study rebate provided by City Water Light and Power (CWLP), the power utility company serving the building’s area. Johanning then hired Kohrs Lonnemann Heil Engineers (KLH), an engineering firm with experience in energy solutions and the RCx process, to help restore the building’s systems back to their optimal operational state while focusing on potential energy saving opportunities. The following details how KLH worked with Johanning to reach RCx success.
Beyond the low-hanging fruit

A review of the current facility requirements confirmed that there had been no material changes in the building zoning or use of the facility from its original design and construction.  Based on this information, the scope of the project was designed to focus on domestic hot water, snow melt, lighting, and HVAC. There were no blatant, major equipment or operational issues; preventative maintenance practices were in place; and the building was in exceptional physical condition. However facility staff interviews uncovered some issues related to fluctuations in the building pressure.

Functional performance testing of the HVAC system and testing of the BAS revealed discrepancies in the airflow throughout several of the VAV boxes. In addition, data from the BAS showed a steady increase throughout the day in the building pressure, and that the exhaust fans were not properly maintaining appropriate pressure levels. But despite these pressure levels, carbon dioxide levels only reached 75 percent of the maximum acceptable levels for indoor air quality—well within the ASHRAE minimum standards. The absence of obvious energy conservation measures—the low-hanging fruit—meant that the success of the RCx project would be an even greater challenge.

Growth Expected For Smart Building Measures

Despite the gains facility executives have seen from implementing smart building measures, less than half say that their organizations have developed an overall smart building strategy. (See Figure 5.) By comparison, most organizations have overall strategies in place for energy efficiency and sustainability.

Figure 5. Does your organization have an overall: R=826

Smart building strategy (R=878): 45%

Energy efficiency strategy (R=858): 74%

Sustainability strategy (R=845): 61%

Among organizations that do have energy efficiency or sustainability strategies, a majority of respondents say they rank smart building strategies as top priorities for those strategies. (See Figures 6 and 7.)

Figure 6. How important is a smart building strategy to your current energy efficiency strategy? R=631

A top priority: 52%

Not a top priority: 41%

Not implementing smart building measures: 7%

Figure 7. How important is a smart building strategy to your current sustainability strategy? R=511

A top priority: 57%

Not a top priority: 38%

Not implementing smart building measures: 5%

Although a majority of respondents say smart building strategies are top priorities, the percentages are far smaller than the number that say smart building strategies have helped improve performance in energy and sustainability. This discrepancy suggests that many facility executives may be failing to integrate smart building planning, on a strategic level, with energy efficiency and sustainability planning.

But the survey suggests the next few years could see a significant upswing in the implementation of smart building measures. While the percentages of those who expect to take the two most common measures, lighting upgrades or recycling, decline compared to what was done the past three years (lighting upgrades down from 83 percent to 62 percent; recycling down from 70 percent to 39 percent), many smart building measures show an increase. (See Figure 8.)

Figure 8. Which of the following steps do you anticipate your organization taking in the next three years? R=775

Expect To Take Measures

Controls upgrades: 47%

Integration of building systems: 41%

Automated monitoring and reporting: 40%

Automated optimization: 23%

Continuous commissioning: 22%

Automated fault detection & diagnostics: 21%

Dashboards: 19%

Increase compared to implementation in past three years

No change

+5 percent

+8 percent

+53 percent

+120 percent

+50 percent

+58 percent

The increase for “integration of building systems” is particularly noteworthy for two reasons. One is because it comes after three years of integration improvements in many facilities. The other is because integration is vital as the underpinning of a smart building strategy.

“Systems integration is central to a smart building strategy,” Zimmer points out. “By integrating individual systems and buildings into a common user interface, operational activities in the various subsystems can be monitored to detect inefficient operating conditions, allowing corrective action in order to achieve high levels of systems optimization.”

Moores believes all building systems should be accessible through the building management system and well interfaced for Internet access. Facility executives and others “should have access to pertinent information via dashboards,” says Moores.

Gerald Cotter, associate director of engineering and project management for Connecticut State Colleges and Universities, believes systems integration has to make smart building strategies “as simplified as possible.”

That’s not to say that systems integration guarantees a smart building. “Systems integration is an important element but will not in and of itself create value,” says Rob Murchison, co-founder of Intelligent Buildings, LLC. “There are many high-tech, integrated systems that are set on override or that don’t use interoperability.”

“Smart building strategies need to be easy enough for everyone to understand,” says Moores.

It’s essential to have a strategy for systems integration, rather than simply integrating systems for the sake of integration. “A systems integrator may come in and offer an overlaying control system that will monitor every system and subsystem in the building through one interface,” says Andrew Reilman, associate partner at Syska Hennessy Group, a consulting engineering firm. Reilman doesn’t believe that is an appropriate strategy for every building. “The question is, why are you doing it?” Gigabytes of data that no one uses or knows how to extrapolate are useless. “The facility executive needs an easy way to extract and collate data to verify energy model results.”

Analytics is emerging as an important area of smart building technology. The survey showed that about one in five respondents are now using analytics to improve energy efficiency while another one in three are considering that option. (See Figure 9.)

Figure 9. Are you currently using or considering analytics software to improve energy efficiency in your buildings? R=797

Using analytics to improve energy efficiency:

21%

Considering analytics to improve energy efficiency:

36%

Neither using nor considering analytics software to improve energy efficiency:

43%

Role of the BAS in Smart Buildings

Basic control over building functions is essential to smart building strategies. Building automation is generally the cornerstone because its aim is to optimize energy performance while enhancing occupant comfort. Employing sensors, controllers, actuators, and software, a building automation system (BAS) may serve many functions, including:

• Optimizing start/stop functions on various building systems and subsystems.
• Scheduling maintenance.
• Employing predictive fault detection.
• Detecting abnormal operating conditions.
• Alarming and preventive actions to minimize damage in case of emergency.

Depending on the BAS chosen and the preferences of the organization, decisions can be made manually by building operators, or facility staff can use embedded intelligence algorithms to automate actions.

The range of capabilities of a BAS makes it well-suited to be the basis of a smart building. And the survey shows that most facility executives do identify the BAS as the foundation of smart building strategies. (See chart below.) The University of Southern California (USC) has a smart building strategy that allows facilities management to see what’s happening in every campus building, according to Andrew Reilman, associate partner at Syska Hennessy Group.

Which do you think should be the foundation for smart building strategies? R=795

Building automation system: 55%

Software analytics: 11%

Not sure: 31%

Other: 3%

“They know what’s going on in operations and maintenance across building systems, down to the filters and their product numbers,” Reilman notes. USC’s building management system has a facilities management system layer that allows sophisticated control strategies. “But you could also treat a 50-story high-rise building as a ‘campus,'” says Reilman, to accomplish similar smart options.

Almost by definition, many BAS functions make a building smarter. For example, Thomas F. Smyth, director, facility services at Cobbleskill Regional Hospital, believes the advantage of a building automation system is “less human error. The BAS lets you create setpoints and parameters for temperature in a specific space, for instance, so that is not left to someone’s memory. It also does monitoring functions so that we don’t have unhappy surgeons in the operating room. Of course, the BAS is only as good as the people operating the system.”

Tom Walsh, chief engineer for Transwestern Commercial Services, believes another excellent use for BAS in smart building strategies is “trending data, particularly watching how and when temperatures rise and fall. This is invaluable information to use for planning energy use.”

In addition to controlling, monitoring, and trending strategies, a BAS can serve another valuable smart building function, says Gerald Cotter, associate director of engineering and project management for Connecticut State Colleges and Universities. “The BAS can show others what we are doing to save energy and encourage sustainability. When people can see the benefits, they are more willing to spend money on improvements.”

Experience Shows Value Of Smart Building Measures, But Obstacles Remain

Facility executives say that money often is the biggest obstacle to smart building strategies. Tom Walsh, chief engineer for Transwestern Commercial Services, stresses this includes not just first cost, but also return on investment (ROI). “We prefer ROIs in two to three years,” Walsh explains. He also looks for energy improvements that will increase the value of the building.

The survey results bear out the extent to which a lack of financial resources can be an obstacle to smart building strategies. While only 3 percent of respondents say smart building technology is not available today, 69 percent say they don’t have a budget for smart building strategies. What’s more, having staff resources — another budget issue — is an obstacle for roughly half of respondents. (See Figure 2)

Figure 2. What are the obstacles to development and implementation of smart building strategies in your organization? R=469

We don’t have a budget for smart building strategies: 69%

We don’t have time/staff to implement smart building strategies: 49%

Smart building strategies cost too much: 24%

I’m not familiar with smart building strategies: 19%

Top management does not support the use of smart building strategies: 18%

Information about smart building technology is not readily available: 8%

Smart building technology is not available today: 3%

Other: 7%

Thomas F. Smyth, director, facility services at Cobbleskill Regional Hospital, also believes another obstacle is education and training. “How much quality training is available from the company that sold you that system?” Smyth asks. “Sometimes the training is free. Sometimes training is so expensive you cannot afford it.” On the topic of training, Smyth also believes refresher courses are valuable both for existing facilities staff and for new hires.

Kristina Moores, an associate at Arup, an engineering and design firm, thinks the biggest obstacle to smart building strategies is not all building systems are tied into the building management system, followed closely by the lack of user education. “There are many vendors selling smart equipment and programs, but the new software may not allow for coordinated systems and points reporting from existing building systems,” Moores points out.

Experience With Smart Building Systems

Although funding has posed a hurdle to wider implementation of smart building measures, the survey shows that those measures have paid off with gains in energy efficiency and sustainability. Among facility executives who have implemented smart building strategies, a large majority has found that those measures aid efforts to boost energy efficiency and sustainability. (See Figures 3 and 4.)

Figure 3. Have steps you’ve taken to make your facilities smarter also improved energy efficiency outcomes? R=826

Yes: 82%

No: 4%

Haven’t taken steps to make the facility smarter: 14%

 

Figure 4. Have steps you’ve taken to make your facilities smarter also improved sustainability outcomes? R=830

Yes: 69%

No: 11%

Haven’t taken steps to make the facility smarter: 20%

It’s worth noting that fairly significant numbers of facility executives say their organizations haven’t taken steps to make the facility smarter. When those organizations are factored out, the vote for the value of smart building measures is even stronger. Looking strictly at respondents who have taken smart building measures, 96 percent say those steps improved energy efficiency, and 86 percent say they improved sustainability.

These results are in line with the experiences of those who are familiar with smart building strategies. Facility executives and independent experts alike have seen that smart building strategies can improve building performance, increasing overall energy efficiency and assisting in sustainability efforts. In addition, the savings in energy costs can improve the bottom line.

According to CABA statistics, advanced smart building strategies can reduce energy use as much as 50 percent compared to unimproved buildings, “with the most efficient buildings performing up to 70 percent better than conventional properties,” says Zimmer.

With smart building strategies, energy efficiency isn’t achieved at the expense of occupant comfort. “If you put the effort and brainpower into your BAS, you can get what you are looking for in controlling the comfort level and also keeping a handle on the energy side of things,” says Smyth.

Provided senior management buys into the smart building strategy, implementation and execution are thought out, and accountability exists, “smart building strategies can significantly lower operational costs through optimizing building functionality across different systems such as lighting, HVAC, security, elevators, etc.,” says Rob Murchison, co-founder of Intelligent Buildings, LLC. Murchison also points to the importance of retrocommissioning and continuously commissioning the building, as well as monitoring and measuring progress.

Key strategies that enable energy efficiency and sustainability ideally use BAS and building energy management systems from building inception, suggests Zimmer. On-going commissioning also is critical. “Through the use of these technologies and techniques, building owners and managers can realize many financial benefits, including lower energy costs, lower maintenance costs, and lower repair and replacement costs,” he explains.

It’s important for facility executives to present a complete picture of the economic value of smart building measures when seeking funding. “Building managers can use life-cycle costs analysis to calculate the cost of a building system over its entire life span,” notes Zimmer. The life cycle process analyzes the long-term impact of construction and infrastructure costs on forecasted operational costs throughout the expected life of the property.

Importance of People in Smart Building Strategies

Experts agree that people play a crucial role in smart building strategies. For Shircliff, the three pillars of a smart building strategy are buildings, people, and technology. “The buildings must be enabled and the people, including process, aligned to best leverage newer technologies and basic information technology (IT),” he says.

Smyth believes a program that focuses on educating employees and hospital staff is essential. Communicating what smart building strategies are being implemented can be accomplished by an email that explains the precise situation, according to Smyth. “Let’s say we want to turn off all computers when they are not in use,” says Smyth. “So we show how many kilowatts per hour can be saved and how that adds up as we get more cooperation. Then we may show what that savings can represent. For instance, we may be able to add another piece of equipment for our patients.”

Walsh also believes keeping building occupants informed helps in energy conservation and sustainability efforts. He uses a newsletter to tell building occupants how much paper is being diverted from landfills, the advantages of using automated faucets, and even the benefits of variable frequency drives.

Like Smyth, Walsh has found informing building occupants encourages them “to pitch in with everyone else. We also get more feedback and that is a good thing.”

Zimmer sees a smart building strategy as combining IT, equipment, and the efforts of highly skilled people.

“The universe of technology solutions that create an intelligent building has evolved considerably over the last decade,” says Zimmer. “Innovations in energy-saving solutions, smart sensing, remote monitoring, automated diagnostics, as well as a myriad of Internet-based solutions have made their way into the domain of intelligent building solutions. The solutions allow buildings to become more responsive to the needs of occupants. The solutions, however, do require oversight by professionals with a high level of expertise.”

Medical Center Uses BAS for Smart Energy, Sustainability Strategies

Located in central Texas, Dell Children’s Medical Center is part of the Seton Family of Hospitals. The 503,000-square-foot medical center has achieved LEED Platinum certification for new construction.

Acting as the heart of this accomplishment is a building automation system (BAS) that efficiently integrates numerous facility systems and devices. From a single workstation, technicians can monitor and control indoor air quality, HVAC operation, and utility distribution. An energy management system also integrates the fire alarm system and provides air handling system control.

Alan Bell, Seton’s director of design and construction, reports that “with our building system we’ve been able to achieve about 17 percent better efficiency than ASHRAE standards, which was the target for our LEED rating.”

The medical center’s BAS supports complex smart building strategies for energy conservation and sustainability. For example, integration with variable frequency drives in combination with underfloor systems drives energy costs down. In addition, chilled water consumption is monitored, kilowatt-hour use is calculated, and run time on all pumps is managed by the BAS.

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Using Smart Building Strategies To Meet Energy, Sustainability Goals

Executive summary: Many organizations are taking steps to make buildings more energy efficient and more sustainable. At the same time, many are implementing smart building measures. The results of a new survey of facility executives demonstrates that smart building measures are being used to improve energy and sustainability performance, and that those measures have in fact proven to boost performance in those areas. But a more strategic approach to smart buildings, combined with even wider use of smart building measures, represents an important opportunity for facility executives to drive further gains in energy efficiency and sustainability.

This white paper examines facility executives’ experiences with smart buildings and shows how smart building measures can enable other key organizational goals.

Topics addressed include:

• Synergies between smart buildings, energy efficiency, and sustainability
• Facility executives’ plans for smart building upgrades
• Value of a broad-based team to develop smart building strategies
• Role of people in smart building strategies
• Integration as a key to a smart building strategy

 

Smart Building Strategies Can Help Reach Energy and Sustainability Targets

It’s a rare facility executive who doesn’t devote significant effort to improving energy efficiency or sustainability. These two issues are now priorities for many organizations. Increasingly, organizations are also seeing the benefits of implementing measures to make their buildings smarter. And as those smart building strategies have been implemented, experience has shown they are key enablers for meeting energy efficiency and sustainability goals.

The synergy among sustainability, energy efficiency, and smart building strategies suggests facility executives should address all three in combination, rather than each separately. For example, smart building strategies can help facility executives ensure good indoor environmental quality leading to occupant comfort, a key sustainability goal, while hitting energy efficiency targets. Indeed, smart building strategies should be seen as key ways to achieve energy efficiency and sustainability goals.

Today, however, the fact is many organizations have failed to take advantage of key smart building opportunities that can not only improve operational efficiency, but also reduce energy costs and buttress sustainability efforts. Many organizations have also failed to link smart building strategies with strategies for energy efficiency and sustainability. But the next few years should see a significant increase in the implementation of important smart building measures.

These are among the key findings of a survey of facility executives conducted by Siemens Industry, Inc., and Building Operating Management magazine, as well as discussions with facility executives and other experts in the field. That research points the way to the wider use of smart building technology to help achieve energy efficiency and sustainability objectives.

Smart Building Strategy Defined

Although there is no single, universally accepted definition of a smart building, widespread agreement exists about some of the key elements of the concept. A key part of the consensus is that smart building strategies improve the productivity of people and processes in buildings and lead to better decisions, based on actionable information, for improvements to the facility.

Technology is also critical. For example, smart buildings tap building automation systems (BAS), allowing facility executives to have the building’s core systems seamlessly integrated. And smart buildings often leverage advanced technology to make their properties as efficient and sustainable as possible.

A smart building strategy “works to ensure that a building can provide timely, integrated systems information to building owners, managers, and tenants so that they can make intelligent decisions regarding operations and maintenance,” explains Ronald J. Zimmer, president and CEO of the Continental Automated Buildings Association (CABA). This plan “evolves with changing user requirements and technology, ensuring continued and improved optimization,” Zimmer says.

Smart buildings are comfortable buildings for occupants. “Ideally, such a strategy leads to a building that uses both technology and process to create a facility that is safe, healthy, and comfortable and enables productivity and well-being for its occupants,” says Zimmer.

Tom Shircliff, co-founder of Intelligent Buildings, LLC, a real estate professional services company, points out that “strategy is about what is happening to you and what to do about it.” And what Shircliff sees happening involves material changes in building controls technology. Given that perspective, he says there should be three basic outcomes to a smart building strategy:

“1. The Hippocratic Oath: ‘First, do no harm’ when spending capital and operational budget money by avoiding proprietary solutions and disconnected building systems.

“2. Lower Cost Structure: Create a base strategy that lowers your overall and ongoing capital and operational cost structure. This aligns all planned projects and spending with a smart building strategy.

“3. Data-Driven Decisions: Move your organization to a data-driven decision making culture. Big data and the cloud have finally come to real estate, and there are millions of data points that can provide insights, risk reduction, and lower costs.”

Improving and Enabling

According to the Siemens/Building Operating Management survey, many organizations are taking steps to make their buildings smarter, more energy efficient, and more sustainable. (See Figure 1.)

Figure 1. Which of the following improvement measures has your organization taken in the past three years? R=821

Lighting upgrades:83%

Recycling:70%

HVAC retrofits: 61%

Facility staff training: 52%

Water efficiency measures: 51%

Controls upgrades: 47%

Green cleaning: 45%

Integration for building systems: 39%

Automated monitoring and reporting: 37%

Retrocommissioning of building systems: 20%

Reflective roofing:18%

Renewable energy:17%

Automated optimization:15%

Automated fault detection & diagnostics: 14%

Dashboards: 12%

Continuous commissioning: 10%

Other: 3%

The top two items on the list are measures that often have a very rapid payback or are very low cost — not surprising, given the economic conditions of the past three years. But the survey indicates smart building elements have been under-deployed in comparison to how important facility executives say those elements are.

The survey asked whether a range of measures were important for achieving energy and sustainability goals. Sixty nine percent of respondents say “integration for building systems” is an important smart building strategy to meet energy and sustainability goals, yet only 39 percent of respondents report having implemented integration in the past three years. Similarly, 52 percent say “automated monitoring and reporting” is important, yet only 37 percent report having implemented it. A similar situation holds for “automated fault detection and diagnostics” (31 percent say it’s important but only 14 percent implemented it), “automated optimization” (30 percent vs. 15 percent), “continuous commissioning” (24 percent vs. 10 percent), and “dashboards” (21 percent vs. 12 percent).

One exception to this pattern: 54 percent of respondents call controls upgrades important and 47 percent say they performed controls upgrades in the past three years.

University Taps Smart Building, Water Strategies for LEED

Portland State University (PSU) earned LEED Gold certification for its Northwest Center for Engineering Science and Technology by tapping both smart building technologies and smart water strategies. The building features natural lighting, natural ventilation of its five-story atrium, a rainwater harvesting system that supplies water for toilets and urinals, and geothermal heating and cooling from underground springs.

The facility’s building automation system (BAS) controls geothermal water flow and the rainwater harvesting system’s water flow applications, as well as controlling the motorized operable windows and providing indoor air quality measurements. The BAS also is integrated with building systems for fan controls and shutdown operations for life safety.

Rainwater from the roof goes into a sediment tank to allow large particles to settle out. A sump pump transfers the untreated water from this tank into the storage tank. Water samples from the storage tank are pumped through a flow cell where the automated controller monitors and compares oxidation-reduction potential to a target setpoint, pumping in sodium hypochlorite as needed.

Two ultraviolet systems disinfect water as it is pumped to its usage points and as a sidestream treatment for the storage tank. During the rainwater system’s first eight weeks of operation, no city water was used for flushing toilets and urinals.

By combining smart energy and water efficiency technologies, PSU uses 45 percent less energy than Oregon code and nearly 40 percent less water than it did in the past, according to the university.

More here: http://www.facilitiesnet.com/

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Successfully Managing Occupant Complaints Often Involves Determining Underlying Reasons For Complaints

It is much more palatable to think of complainers in a facility as simple cranks who are avoiding doing their real jobs, who get some sort of perverse joy out of filling out work orders. But there can be a lot of layers behind a complaint, especially one that looks frivolous on the surface. Successfully managing occupant complaints often requires digging deeper to find the underlying reasons.

Take this story, as told by Susan Mazur-Stommen, behavior and human dimensions program director, ACEEE, about a string of complaints that occurred at a new administrative building for a federal renewable energy laboratory. The facility was daylit and some of the people located near the windows started complaining about glare. But when they were offered cubicles away from the windows, the complaints disappeared.

“Their real issue was status,” Mazur-Stommen says, because in the new space they had lost their enclosed offices. But at some level they realized that HR was not going to be receptive to their perceived slight and instead tried to change their situation by complaining about glare, which is an ergonomics issue and must be treated seriously, she says.

When addressing complaints, it’s smart for facility managers to take a moment to try to peel back any additional layers, just so time and resources are being allocated properly, says Woodard. “In this business, sometimes we think we know the answer and can get the problem off our back quickly, but it turns out that wasn’t the problem,” she says. “There are times that you’re halfway done trying to solve it the way you would solve it, and you realize that’s not the problem at all. And now you’ve wasted all this energy and you have to start all over again.”

In understanding what is really going on, it’s also important to see who is involved and who is labeling the complaint as frivolous, says Mazur-Stommen. “Oftentimes, the building engineers are male and the complainants are female, and the situations get written into very gendered frames of reference,” she says.

Temperature wars are a place this comes to light. To paint it with a broad brush, men have set the standards for thermal comfort in commercial buildings, and cultural norms put men is a very standardized business uniform. “You have high summer and you have men wearing wool slacks, and undershirts, and socks, and closed-toed shoes,” Mazur-Stommen says. Meanwhile, women’s attire varies more to match the demands of the seasons. “To be specific, it’s cold in the building because we’re cooling men who are not dressed appropriately for the season. We’re spending a lot of money to let men wander around in wool slacks.”

When facility managers receive complaints they perceive to be frivolous, it would be ideal to take a step back and evaluate who is making the complaint and what else might be going on, as the individual might be trying to address feelings of lack of status, or low morale, or not being heard, by trying to control their environment. “It’s not the building engineer’s job to empower people,” Mazur-Stommen says, “But if you’re asking where these complaints are coming from, it’s a ‘kick the dog’ phenomenon.”

Frivolous is in the eyes of the beholder as well, she says. Ramps for ducklings might be the poster-child for a frivolous request, but only from a certain perspective. “Is it frivolous because it’s not about dollars and cents, and is instead about meaning and values and comfort?” Mazur-Stommen says. “Those are what makes us human. A building is more than just a building envelope and systems for heating and cooling. A building is a social structure, it is a community.”

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Temperature Complaints Are Most Common, Restroom Complaints A Distant Second

The single biggest complaint or request made to respondents of the Building Operating Management survey was temperature, with 68 percent of respondents saying this was their No. 1 issue, with restrooms coming in at a distant second at 10 percent. Temperature is also the largest daily source of complaints — 16 percent of respondents say they field a hot/cold call every day.

Facility managers are often more than a bit jaded in the temperature department. Iain Schlenkermann, director, Manassas facilities, with American Public University System, says he remembers one cold call that started out normally enough, with a technician going down to the space armed with an IR gun, ready to educate the local occupants. But the temp calls started rolling in every half hour and cranking the thermostat was having no effect. By the time the HVAC tech could diagnose the problem, it was 52 degrees in the space.

“A lot of times we thought they were crying wolf,” Schlenkermann says of hot/cold calls in the past, “but we’ve gotten better at investigating temperature reports. And we refer to them as employees ‘reporting information’ rather than ‘complaints.’”

Creature Comforts

Even though the primary response to a complaint should be to try to be responsive and find a suitable solution, sometimes you have to draw a line. For Kristina Descoteaux, vice president with Colliers International, the line was drawn at the Charmin. She recalls a time when the president’s assistant at an owner-occupied building where she was the property manager called with a particular request. Could Descoteaux please go to a drugstore and purchase Charmin for the president’s bathroom because the standard-issue toilet paper was too harsh? It was early in her career, and for a second she hesitated. Is that what petty cash is for, she remembers wondering.

Of course, making TP runs was not going to happen, but Descoteaux worked with the assistant to find a suitable alternative that could be stocked via normal channels just for the executive floor, with the overage directly billed back to the president’s office.

“If a tenant comes in with a special request, it really comes down to what you can run through the building as an operating expense and what really needs to be billed back,” she says.

Another time, she had someone saying that the space was making her sick. In response to the complaints, Descoteaux had the space and the ductwork cleaned, and two different environmental agencies came in and said the space was fine. But the individual kept complaining. Finally they had to sit down with one of the lease administrators for the account to say they’d done everything that the lease required and there was nothing to indicate anything was wrong with the space, which was accepted by the tenant. “It’s all about how well you can communicate that you’ve done all you can,” she says.

Having policies in place to dictate both the escalation and de-escalation steps when responding to a complaint is important, says Kit Tuveson, a facility management consultant, Tuveson & Associates. “Without proper policies, the FM team has no power to say no and everyone else has the power to say yes,” he says. “There has to be some prioritization, some gating, and some feedback. And anybody who wants to buck that system has to get their management’s authorization.”

Let’s Connect. Collaborate. And Partner Together! Learn how to not only manage occupant complaints, but minimize or eliminate them! Info@setpointsystems.com

How Facility Managers Can Handle Occupant Complaints

Did you hear the one about the employee who noticed an ant on a raisin on the floor and instead of picking it up and throwing it away, left a note for the facility manager, who happened to be out of the office for three days? Guess how many ants he found when he got back? Or how about the one where it took an IAQ study to mollify the lawyer who insisted he could smell cigarette smoke? And then there’s that old chestnut: the toilet paper is too rough, or there’s not enough of it, or there’s too much of it. Knowing how to handle occupant complaints is a key skill for facility managers.

Of course you’ve heard these, and you probably have a stack of stories just like them. Maybe funnier. Maybe worse. But facility managers know that complaints are no joke. Attended to willy-nilly, they can multiply endlessly and suck up all your time. Ignored, they can breed resentment, even bigger complaints, and the perception that you’re not doing a very good job. Dealing with complaints, especially the frivolous kind, takes strategy, even cunning. They take a serious attention to customer service, some dabbling in psychology, and rock solid policies.

Recently Building Operating Management surveyed readers on complaints, asking you to share some of your stories and your best tricks. And boy did you respond — from baby geese wrangling to elevator scheduling to a whole bunch of stories we can’t quite print, here are some tales from the trenches. And, more importantly, strategies for handling complaints as productively as possible. (Click here to read some comical, frustrating, or otherwise memorable occupant complaints, as well as practical responses from facility managers.)

Kids in the Hall

Sometimes Larry Virts, local president of BOMA Corpus Christi and property manager with REOC San Antonio, says he feels more like a high school principal. He inherited a tenant mix with glaring differences in work and life styles. In one corner, a call center making up about 25 percent of the building’s population, filled with very young employees who are loud, brash, and often not used to working in a professional setting — at least as evidenced by their behavior. In the other corner, everybody else.

And worse, the call center was clogging the elevators. The tight scheduling typical of a call center was causing this set of employees to enter and leave the facility in large groups. Where other tenants had been always been able to get on an elevator in 40 seconds, now they were waiting two, three, or more minutes — an eternity. The complaints rolled in. When Virts hired on, he resolved to improve the situation.

“The tenant had assumed that complaints made about them were because of their appearance and their loudness, their unrestrained youth,” Virts says. “I think they just assumed that it was a personality clash, never realizing they could make it better.”

After first cultivating a relationship with the call center’s management, Virts says he approached them in a calm manner to find a reasonable solution to the issue. They were very receptive and a compromise was found in staggering start times and break times to relieve long waits for the elevator. It has helped the situation, some, he says.

Up next in this 6 Day series:

Part 2: Wildlife Can Be Popular Or Pests, But Either Can Cause Occupant Complaints
Part 3: Survey: Temperature Complaints Are Most Common, Restroom Complaints A Distant Second
Part 4: Successfully Managing Occupant Complaints Often Involves Determining Underlying Reasons For Complaints
Part 5: Ignoring Occupant Complaints Can Be Tempting, But Often Leads To Further Problems
Part 6: Survey Results: How Facility Managers Handle Occupant Complaints

Let’s Connect. Collaborate. And Partner Together! Learn how to not only manage occupant complaints, but minimize them! Info@setpointsystems.com

Energy, materials, health, resilience and the near future of architecture.

These days, one of the definitions of the value of design relates to how architects are uniquely positioned to positively impact ways in which people can live more sustainably. Yet, despite notable individual and collective progress, the profession hasn’t fully leveraged its resources to advance enduring solutions for these global challenges.

Through the introduction of two linked design and practice action plans, the AIA is focusing its intellectual resources on the core issues of energy and materials, as well as the emerging issues of design’s impact on health and resilience, by connecting chapter and component support, offering new and revised continuing education products, encouraging practice-based research, pursuing strategic partnerships, and refining its advocacy of the profession both legislatively and publicly.

Both energy and health emerged as priority issues in the “Sustainability Leadership Opportunity Scan” (published in October), a report commissioned by the AIA and undertaken by AIA Resident Fellow Mary Ann Lazarus, FAIA, to identify unique areas where the Institute can most effectively strengthen the sustainable leadership and influence of architects.

“Energy and health are two very tangible areas that help clarify the bottom-line impacts of sustainability,” Lazarus says. “We’re talking about real issues that affect how people live, work, relate to their communities, and thrive.”

Although energy and health—as areas for architectural innovation—each face unique challenges and are at different places in their evolutions, both offer numerous opportunities to elevate architectural leadership.

“Architects can be the fulcrum for positive changes, and do so with purposefulness that comes out of the reason that many of us joined the profession,” says Rick Bell, FAIA, executive director of AIA New York (and a member of ARCHITECT’s editorial advisory committee).

Bell and others have observed that the continual growth of energy benchmarking regulations and performance-based codes has catalyzed a global industry shift from loose, aspirational sustainable goals to measured performance expectations and requirements. And the AIA Energy Action Plan will harness this important shift in order to set an agenda for the coming years.

“Optional rating systems, including LEED, helped set the stage for the recent transition to code-based and regulatory sustainable requirements like CalGreen and the International Green Construction Code, but requirements are quickly expanding to include actual performance and measured design outcomes,” Lazarus says.

The upgrade of existing buildings represents the greatest design need and opportunity, with 57 percent of existing U.S. building stock—more than 40 billion square feet—constructed after 1945 and commonly burdened by insufficient urban design, poorly performing envelopes and systems, and large floor plates.

“From a sustainability and energy standpoint, the most important challenge for architects is to improve the performance of the existing building stock,” says Carl Elefante, FAIA, principal of Quinn Evans Architects and a member of the AIA Board of Directors. “Our conundrum is that fascination with glossy photos on magazine covers of even the most innovative and imaginative new buildings misses the most important point: With only the rarest exceptions, new buildings add to the current carbon footprint. To reduce global warming potential, retrofitting existing structures offers the quickest, most reliable, and measurable opportunity. It is the best way for architects to have impact.”

Market forces have driven architects to do just that. The recent economic downturn has compelled some sole practitioners and firms to target existing buildings. According to the 2012 AIA Firm Survey, 42 percent of small projects today include renovation and rehabilitation work.

The AIA Health Action Plan recognizes perhaps the most important opportunities of our time: The built environment is a potential catalyst for addressing many of the nation’s most pressing health and wellness challenges, including rising healthcare costs, an aging Baby Boomer population, and climbing obesity rates.

“I do believe we’re in a collision of forces—a perfect storm of health issues,” says Dr. Richard Jackson, Hon. AIA, a professor at the UCLA School of Public Health and host of the recent PBS series Designing Healthy Communities.

“We’re looking at a 25-pound weight increase in adults since 1960 as well as a doubling of obesity rates and diabetes, not to mention an epidemic of depression.”

Jackson attributes much of these alarming U.S. health trends to the chaotic American lifestyle, a lifestyle that has been enabled by the built environment.

“We have excessively engineered physical activity out of our daily lives,” Jackson says. “I think architects need to create an America where the default option is the healthy option.”

Fully engaging the profession around issues of design and health is going to require a shift in mind-set, according to Joyce Lee, FAIA, architect fellow at the National Leadership Academy for the Public’s Health and co-author of Active Design Guidelines for the City of New York.

To illustrate the point, Lee compares the evolution of stairs and elevators in buildings to that of re-embracing natural ventilation in the age of air conditioning. “In many ways it’s about bringing back and celebrating age-old design techniques that the profession has taken thousands of years to perfect, yet have fallen away over the last 50 years,” she says.

Two Paths Forward

The AIA Health Action Plan

• First, the AIA Leadership and the AIA Intern Development Program Advisory Committee have entered into discussions with the National Council of Architectural Registration Boards to explore opportunities to integrate public health concepts into the Intern Development Program, beginning in fiscal years 2014 and 2015.
• Second, a new Design and Health website (aia.org/practicing/designhealth) has gone live under Practicing Architecture, replacing the Center for Value of Design. The site serves as a social aggregator for individuals to self-select public health issues according to their interests. Other features include a discussion board and resource library populated by members.
• Third, with support from a $20,000 matching grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, the AIA and the AIA Foundation will host a summit on Design & Health in April 2014. The event will organize and advance research that concerns the intersection of design and health measurement, convening practitioners from design, policy, and public health as well as leaders in government agencies, non-government organizations, universities, and the private sector. In recognition of the efforts to measure health, the summit will seek to reconcile research and conversation around several focus areas.

The AIA Energy Action Plan

• First, the AIA 2030 Commitment Database will house project-level energy data provided by AIA 2030 Commitment signatory firms, with the ultimate goal of migrating current Excel-based reporting into an easy-to-use online database that draws on aggregated data to provide real-time feedback and benchmarking. “There is so much value to this kind of information and it’s never existed before,” says Rand Ekman, AIA, director of sustainability at Cannon Design. “Having access to a robust database will be useful on the ground in establishing energy targets on projects, and will help firms better understand how well our energy models are guiding us.”
• Second, AIA advocacy for energy legislation, which dates back to the energy crisis of the 1970s, has increased with the growing recognition that architects play a vital role in helping buildings use less energy. The Institute’s current advocacy efforts include supporting the Energy Savings and Industrial Competitiveness Act of 2013 (commonly known as the Shaheen-Portman bill), a bipartisan Senate bill that promotes energy efficiency within commercial and residential buildings. At the same time, the AIA has rallied support from nearly 1,000 small businesses to oppose a potential amendment to the bill, an amendment that will propose the repeal of a 2007 law that applies the 2030 energy target to federal buildings. “We are more than 80,000 members strong, and that collective voice helps amplify our message to policymakers at all levels of government,” says Andrew Goldberg, Assoc. AIA, the AIA’s managing director of government relations and outreach.
• Third, momentum is building for the AIA Awards Task Force recommendations to require each AIA Honor Awards submission to include predicted energy- and water-performance metrics, and a basic sustainable design integration narrative. Proposed to take effect with the 2015 awards program, the recommendations have gained broad national support from past AIA Firm Award recipients, AIA Knowledge Communities, and prominent firms. “We are quickly entering a new era of evidence-based design where the resource and carbon emissions reduction capabilities of our buildings can be reasonably predicted,” says William Leddy, FAIA, chair of the AIA Committee on the Environment Advisory Group and a founding partner of Leddy Maytum Stacy Architects. “We feel this information should become an important part of our discussion of design excellence in the 21st century.”
• And finally, responding to member demand for additional energy educational resources, the AIA is planning to develop a curriculum that addresses a range of energy design and energy modeling topics. Coursework will combine in-person workshops and online learning tools as well as a new generation of written guides that provide a deeper understanding on topics such as how to effectively work with energy modeling consultants and how to identify financing opportunities within the energy retrofit market. Materials will be informed by existing energy educational programs, most of which were developed primarily for engineers.

More here: http://www.architectmagazine.com/high-performance-building/action-plans_o.aspx

Zero Net Energy Buildings Gain Ground

Commercial zero net energy (ZNE) buildings have more than doubled in number since a 2012 report, says the New Buildings Institute (NBI).  A new report, 2014 Getting to Zero Status Update, says that 213 North American structures qualify, up from 99 in the initial report.

ZNE verification of buildings is based on review of one-year of measured energy data including building energy consumption and renewable energy production, or other valid documentation from a third-party entity.

NBI tracks the development of ZNE buildings in North America throughout the year. NBI had identified and verified 33 ZNE projects including 32 buildings and one district (a group of buildings), an additional 127 projects that were working toward ZNE but did not have a full year of energy use yet to verify net-zero, and 53 buildings that had verified high levels of efficiency comparable to zero net energy performance, but without sufficient onsite renewable generation, for a grand total of 213 buildings.

Key report findings include:

• ZNE is achievable in all regions and climate zones: ZNE buildings exist in 36 states and two Canadian provinces covering all eight U.S. Department of Energy climate zones.
• ZNE works for many building types and sizes: More than 25% of the ZNE and ZNE emerging buildings referenced in this report are larger than 50,000 sq. ft., and half of those are over 100,000 sq. ft.
• ZNE districts are a growing trend: In addition to individual buildings, there is a new trend of communities and campuses committed to groups of ZNE buildings to leverage resources.
• Private sector increase in ZNE development: 26% of the verified ZNE and ZNE emerging buildings on this year’s list were privately developed.
• ZNE is achievable in existing buildings: 24% of the verified ZNE buildings in the report were renovation projects, demonstrating the potential for ZNE during major building renewals and expanding the potential floor space for ZNE well beyond just new construction in North America.

Learn more: http://www.energymanagertoday.com/zero-net-energy-buildings-gain-ground-098098/