Effective Scheduling for Facility Management in Schools
For many businesses, the evolution of mechanical systems and digital controls continues to make operating and managing one facility challenging. Yet for Lee’s Summit School District, standardizing systems and controls meant tackling more than two dozen facilities, including implementation in new builds and retrofitting existing spaces. With such a big task at hand, the district sent out an RFP to evaluate its options, hoping to determine how to move forward in the most cost-effective, efficient way. Control Service Company presented a proposal unmatched in both pricing and service to the school board for the district’s first bond project, and the relationship has only continued to blossom since.
Initiation
With a desire to marry student and faculty comfort with significant energy savings for the district, CSC’s project team worked very closely with the school district to obtain a $2.5 million MDNR loan for securing the energy project. Using the Automated Logic product, CSC provided the facility management team with a way to implement controls and feedback loops to schedule equipment more effectively. Tired of performing reactive maintenance and struggling to extract data from their previous buildings automation system, users could now anticipate problems and address them before faculty and staff were impacted. Key initiatives included monitoring carbon dioxide levels for a more consistent fresh air flow and adjusting fan speeds to produce conditioned air more efficiently.
Implementation
After successfully completing the first project, the district commissioned CSC to implement systems in more than 30 facilities, including a $3.2 million project to retrofit 19 buildings (eight of which were completed in the summer of 2013 alone). CSC provided a breakdown of all labor hours and materials on a confidential basis to ensure the financial side of the contracts were managed just as seamlessly as the projects themselves. Due to the systems’ user-intuitive nature, individual school building principals can now access a level of control to more efficiently monitor their facility and mitigate personnel issues. In addition to the projected $288,000 annual energy savings benefit, annual operational savings of $20,000 and improved personal comfort, the district can access a unique platform developed exclusively by CSC for potential integration into its K-12 curriculum: NviroED. This online dashboard engages students, helping them understand how their actions can impact energy savings and ultimately lower district energy costs even further.
