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Page 16 — Property Management Quarterly — January 2018
GRIFFIS BLESSING
• Full Service Property Management
• Construction Services
• Due Diligence
• Receivership
• Financial Services
5600 W. Quebec St, Ste 141B, Greenwood VIllage, CO 80111
(303) 804-0123
102 N. Cascade Ave. Ste 550, Colorado Springs, CO 80903
(719) 520-1234
T racking the performance of
your facility investment is
no different than any other
asset. It is part of a sound
operations process; it can
identify improvements, verify
performance and ensure savings
persist over time. Improving build-
ing performance continues to be
one of the highest-return, lowest-
risk investment opportunities
and helps commercial real estate
organizations reduce operating
expenses, increase property asset
value and enhance the comfort of
their tenants.
Building energy systems often
consume approximately 15 percent
more energy than is necessary,
due to system deviation from the
design intent. And even with the
powerful aid of building automa-
tion systems, identifying the root
causes of energy waste in buildings
can be challenging. And energy
waste often goes hand in hand
with comfort and air-quality issues
in buildings, offering an opportu-
nity to solve nagging facility issue
that boost tenancy and production.
Even when buildings are “tuned-
up” to operate better, performance
can drift over time. Energy drift
is the concept that buildings do
not perform – from an energy
consumption standpoint – as well
over time as they did when they
were first built. As much as 10 to
30 percent of maintenance costs
can be incurred due to energy drift
if a building performance is not
analyzed and optimized over time.
This holds true
for any building,
regardless of its
age or green build-
ing certification.
Similarly, a
building energy
manager or sus-
tainability team
might initiate an
energy-efficiency
project or com-
missioning in an
attempt to get the
building back on
track. While this
holds well for a
short time, the drift begins again
until comfort problems of util-
ity cost escalate to a point where
another project is implemented.
So, what can you do if you don’t
currently track your performance?
A good first step is to benchmark
your building or portfolio of build-
ings. Benchmarking is the practice
of comparing the measured perfor-
mance of an organization, facility,
end use or device to itself, its peers
or established norms such as a ref-
erence building or code-compliant
building. For your buildings, you
may compare your energy costs
or top customer comfort or opera-
tional complaints from one year
to another or compared to similar
facilities. In doing so, benchmark-
ing can help select which buildings
to target for improvements.
Currently, the city of Denver
under its Energize Denver program
requires benchmarking. Other
municipalities around Colorado
and the nation also require it.
Benchmarking gives the big pic-
ture but, while it’s a good snapshot
start, it’s not great at detecting
problems early. The Energy Star
Portfolio Manager is a popular, free
tool for benchmarking a facility.
To track facility performance at a
systems level and further improve
comfort and operating costs, build-
ing operators or facility managers
often rely on building automation
system to keep things under con-
trol – but an automation system
is not enough to reach optimized
building energy performance. In
order to help best address the
challenges in maintaining per-
formance, building automation
systems should be combined with
energy analytics to generate a real
time, whole building energy diag-
nostics and performance monitor-
ing system. The proposed system
continuously acquires performance
measurements of heating, ventilat-
ing and air-conditioning, lighting
and plug equipment usage and
compares these measurements in
real time to a reference expected
design condition or acceptable per-
formance.
Energy analytics tools – also
known as fault detection and diag-
nostic tools – automatically detect
faults and may help diagnose the
cause of the fault. The tool often is
an add-on software program to a
building automation system, and
it monitors system data from the
building automation system. Not
only can it identify problems, but
also it ranks the problems with
respect to energy, comfort and
cost impacts. Automated detec-
tion of faults saves time, finds
those hidden problems and gives
operators more information on a
problem and its potential cause.
Energy analytics tools also offer
integration with utility bill track-
ing/benchmarking software and
work-order systems, which makes
them even more useful. Our clients
prefer deploying these tools using
software licensed on a subscription
basis versus purchased platforms,
as this results in lower up-front
cost and ease of installation and
external support.
Energy analytics can be combined
with energy information systems
or energy dashboards, which are
broadly defined as performance-
monitoring software, data-acquisi-
tion hardware and communication
systems used to store, analyze and
display building energy data. Like
the dashboard on your car, it pro-
vides a glimpse of key performance
indicators and may incorporate a
“check engine” light, but lacks the
of level of detail or sophistication
to inform users on where to act for
improvements. These systems typi-
cally provide utility building level
data and are useful as marketing
or communication tools for build-
ing performance to tenant, custom-
ers and staff.
Buildings that are prime candi-
Maintenance
Peter D’Antonio,
PE, CEM, LEED
AP
President, PCD
Engineering Inc.,
Longmont