AFE July/August 2012 : Page 9employee is important to any institution-wide sustainability and utility reduction eff ort. If no goals exist for energy, water, carbon or greenhouse gas reductions, seek out goals and met-rics that resonate in your institution. Certainly you can also tie into the fi nancial goals for the operations and the building code-driven energy maximums for your designers to focus on. Building code is now address-ing minimum energy performance for buildings, and now contains a design element that brings lighting, electrical and HVAC systems to the forefront of design. To meet current code, designers can no longer install conventional, oversized systems that lack occupancy controls or energy recovery. Sus-tainable design doesn’t mean it is just better for the environ-ment, it also needs to be cost eff ective, simple to understand and maintain, and provide a comfortable, productive and safe environment for all end users. Improvements must be fi nan-cially sound and environmentally and socially sustainable in order to meet institution-wide approval. Vision and Mission Where no clear energy or sustainability goals exist, establish a stakeholder group to create them. Use your institution’s vision statement and mission statement to help create new sustainability goals. Your goals should be measur-able. Th ey should have a rate of change target and a timeframe to reach the goal. Create a formula for success. Th ink about the variables in your organization and apply them to your formula. What does it mean if your organization grows or shrinks, adds facilities or loses occupants? What if capital funds dry up, operating funds become tighter and revenues decrease…or the opposite occurs? Consider reporting and sharing the progress annually with your stakeholders. make energy reductions work. What can one person do? Well, a lot actually. Especially once you have upper management behind you and new goals for the institution. Understand the challenges that need to be overcome to allow designers to be comfortable with your effi ciency and conservation goals. Repeat and reinforce the uncompromising values and goals that your institution has agreed on. Ally with the maintenance staff and understand their chal-lenges. Help to make sure that any new, reduced energy systems don’t add unnecessary complexity or cost to equipment or con-trols, and that they don’t add to the maintenance staff ’s burden. Ask your maintenance staff lots of questions to understand why they do things the way they do, what they need to do their jobs better, and what their frustrations are. Help address all the operational needs without compromising energy effi ciency or conservation. Get robustness, redundancy and reliability with modular right-sized systems, not with complex controls. Find the best and brightest designers to help guarantee the success of your projects and that all targets are hit. Measure results and share both the successes and the challenges. Identify and admit failures early, and take corrective measures quickly. Dashboards and Smartphones Th ese devices are revolutionizing building operations and maintenance. Have you ever seen the Prius dash-board energy monitor? It gives you easy-to-understand visual feedback for your actions at the gas pedal. Now take this concept and apply it to each building on your campus. Who is watching the building management and energy management systems and making adjustments to maintain comfort, but also optimizing performance and energy reduction? Have you implemented any optimization soft ware or persistent commis-sioning strategies to keep your equipment running optimally? Smartphones have apps for just about everything, and these apps are raising stakeholders’ expectations for excellent service and lowering their tolerance for substandard responsiveness. In conclusion, it is important to remember that the value of energy conservation is globally recognized as important both inside and outside of academic institutions. It also appeals to fi nancial personnel, commercial facilities managers, operational leadership, consumers, employees and their employers. Don’t wait for your supervisor or university president to ask what you are doing to improve the fi nancial, social or environmental sustainability of your institution. Th ink ahead and become a leader among your peers. FEJ Edward Kirk, LEED AP (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design Accredited Professional by the U.S. Green Building Council) , CEM (Certifi ed Energy Manager by the Association for Energy Engineers), is the university energy engineer at Johns Hopkins University where he has worked since 2010. He has worked in facilities operations, construction and design for the past 25 years. He holds a B.S. in marine (mechanical systems) engineering from the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy and a master’s degree in environmental management and policy from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Feedback You are looking for the small wins that will pay off over time. Identify the areas where no-cost or low-cost chang-es will save big. Don’t ask people to sacrifi ce. Pick projects that solve comfort complaints, safety concerns, or productivity issues, and fi nd ways in those projects to save energy and wa-ter. Use these successful demonstration projects to train your existing design, project and maintenance staff on new code requirements, and your energy and water reduction goals. Make sure that fi nancial metrics are understood and are being correctly implemented. Work with your design consul-tants on new construction and renovation projects so that they understand your new goals. You do not have to compromise budget, schedule or quality to achieve sustainable operational savings, but the design team needs to know about new goals early on. Incorporate LCC analysis into all value engineering and project cost-reduction decisions. Change Management No one says it is easy to change institutional procedures, standards or cultures. But that is exactly what is needed to July | August 2012 ■ Facilities Engineering Journal ■ www.AFE.org 9 Publication List Using a screen reader? Click Here |
