Think Small – The Key to Unlocking the Existing Buildings Market
Tim Kensok
On average there are nearly 2,000 existing buildings for every new building built. Market forces will make it increasingly difficult to ignore the small and medium-sized building segment. Energy costs continue to rise. The ability of electric utilities to deliver increased supply is limited. More firms are establishing sustainability goals. These factors increase the demand for assistance in reducing energy consumption, and what better place to start than retrocommissioning?
Capitalizing on the existing building market will require new skills to sell the concept of commissioning and to effectively execute the jobs. 98% of all commercial buildings are less than 100,000 square feet, comprising nearly two-thirds of the total floor area. Only about 10% of these buildings have a building automation system. The sheer numbers of small and medium sized buildings, combined with poor access to data from these buildings make traditional processes for selling and executing commissioning difficult. To be successful, commissioning professionals will need to learn to think small to ensure quality and unlock energy savings in small buildings
The key to thinking small; simplicity. Simplifying the sales process – from access to real building data to qualifying the opportunity, the skill set of on-site personnel required, energy analysis and modeling, return on investment analysis, to reporting and sales presentations – will be invaluable in shifting to the high-volume business model necessary to address the existing building market segment. Scaleable business processes and available tools and technologies to capitalize on this growing opportunity will also be outlined in the presentation.
California’s Commissioning Toolkit for In-House Commissioning
of Small Buildings
Dan Burgoyne
The State of California is one of the nation’s largest developers of energy and resource efficient green buildings. California recognizes the many benefits of commissioning the buildings it builds, renovates and operates. State government mandates 20% reductions in energy use from 2003 levels, and requires LEED® Silver certification on State buildings. The State’s larger building projects can usually hire commissioning authorities as consultants. However, many of the State’s smaller building projects have small budgets and are often located in remote portions of the State.
Owners and owner/operators benefit much by developing commissioning experience and expertise in-house. Through in-house owner-based commissioning, knowledge and experience gained through the Cx process is retained within the organization, benefiting project teams and future projects, as well as building operators.
In December 2006, California’s Department of General Services
released the Commissioning Toolkit for In-House Commissioning of Small Buildings. This Toolkit is available free online at http://www.green.ca.gov/CxToolkit, and includes numerous documents, templates, and sample specifications oriented towards commissioning small buildings using project teams and in-house building professionals. All documents and templates are in a format that can be easily edited and customized for different projects.
Through developing commissioning expertise among in-house building operators and project teams, and implementing the use of standardized templates, forms and Cx processes, California will be able to extend Cx benefits to all State buildings, even small ones. In doing so, State building professionals will gain a better understanding of how to design, build, and operate its buildings optimizing energy and resource efficiency.
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