Every Penny Counts: Tracking Building Performance to Save Money and Resources

Lauren Riggs, LEED AP
Manager, LEED Performance
U.S. Green Building Council

This post originally appeared on FacilitesNet.

In today's economy, every penny counts. And as building owners and facility managers know all too well, every penny adds up. When the lights in your 30-story office building are left on an extra hour each day, or the brutal summer heat requires an extra blast of air conditioning, your energy consumption escalates and so does your utility bill. That's precisely why building owners and facility managers are starting to "listen" to their buildings to ensure optimal operations.

Inspired by these attentive facility managers, the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) launched its Building Performance Partnership (BPP) in 2009. The organization-wide initiative positions the optimization of building performance as a fundamental goal of the green building movement. BPP engages both owners and facility managers of LEED-certified commercial buildings through data collection, analysis and action. Participants receive annual performance reports, report cards and real-time data interfaces to aid in their building performance goals.

At the end of 2010, 132 LEED-certified facilities, mainly office buildings, had joined BPP. These facilities range in size from 2,000 to 2 million square feet. In 2011, the program grew to include nearly 350 partners, triple 2010's figures. The types of organizations and facilities have grown to include retailers, offices and other building types. These participants are demonstrating their commitment to energy efficiency monitoring and are leading among their peers by sharing their experiences and contributing to the market need for building performance education.

The first year participants represented high-performing buildings from every region of the country. Those buildings eligible for an Energy Star score had an overall average score of 87. Consistent with a high average Energy Star score, BPP participants had demonstrated Source Energy Use Intensity that is on average 41 percent lower than the national averages reported in EPA's Energy Star Portfolio Manager.

Each year will bring new enhancements to the program and offer increased connectivity to other USGBC programs. This year, all participants that share data through BPP will receive their performance report through an online interface, which will contain an analysis of their current performance, from the most recent 12 months of utility data provided, side-by-side with their benchmarks from LEED certification.

To support the increased interest in building performance, USGBC is implementing automation solutions for data collection and transfer, including establishing an automatic data input and output relationship with EPA's Energy Star Portfolio Manager, and will begin work to automate additional benchmarking solutions.

The goal is for the annual performance reports to act as a helpful reminder to facility managers that their building's performance matters and benefits the bottom line. Armed with comprehensive green building performance data, BPP will enable standardization of reporting metrics and analytics and establish new performance benchmarks, ultimately transforming the way the world views building operations and maintenance.

For more information about BPP, visit usgbc.org/bpp.

Tools for Tracking Building Performance on College Campuses

Kal Wellman
Associate, LEED
U.S. Green Building Council

Increasing utility costs and tightening budgets have led many colleges and universities across the country to rethink the way they manage their energy consumption. Take Western Michigan University for example: Their facilities team has installed 718 sub-meters across 151 campus buildings, allowing the team to closely measure, track and analyze their energy and water consumption on a building-by-building basis. They even went a step further and created an online dashboard which displays this data to the public for added transparency. Pretty impressive, to say the least.

For a number of reasons, not all higher education institutions have the capacity to install sub-meters on campus buildings. The majority of institutions use one or two central meters to track total campus energy and water consumption. However, it doesn’t matter whether your energy management strategy involves tracking performance data at the building level or at the campus level. There are a number of free online tools available to help you along the way. Check out the tools below to get started.

Fine-Tuning our Buildings for Optimum Performance

Lauren Riggs, LEEP® AP
Manager, LEED and Building Performance Partnership
U.S. Green Building Council

The notion that green building is a process and not just an event is something that is often overlooked. Much like the life cycle of a building, the green building process is one that takes a building from merely a sustainable “vision” to a sustainable structure.

The LEED rating system centers on sustainable operations and providing verification through LEED certification. The first phase in the green building process is called integrated design, which requires a team of professionals who understand that the use of the building, its indoor and outdoor conditions, will vary over its lifetime, and the team must plan for every reasonable contingency.

Will the building be used in the same way forever? Will a coffee shop open on the first floor? Will the ventilation system satisfy the requirements of any potential tenant? The building must perform optimally in a variety of future scenarios. The first phase team will envision, complete and test the building before ushering it into a second phase (i.e., ongoing operations and maintenance) and a new team, with different skills and goals.

LEED drives this integrated approach building by asking teams to identify and simulate the best combination of design strategies for an energy efficient, healthy performing building and occupants. However, the green building process and LEED cannot rely on performance simulations alone – merely simulating building operations will not ensure high performance operations.

The only way to ensure high performance operations is to listen to the building. Operators must collect useful feedback from the building while it is in use and fine-tune all the building systems based on an understanding of the inherent capabilities of the design and the needs of the occupants. Are the occupants comfortable? Or, do the lights stay on far after the last person leaves for the night? Operators should always be asking questions and getting answers – fine-tuning - in order to keep the building performing at its design potential.

Every time a building goes through the tuning process, the design performance information gives the user an idea of how their green building should perform. Operating teams can use the tools that LEED provides – LEED for Existing Buildings, Building Performance Partnership, etc. - to track, benchmark and verify energy use, water use, occupant satisfaction, transportation and other key aspects in ongoing building performance. USGBC empowers the teams that use these tools to fully understand the operating intent of the building, to fix issues they identify, and to educate and inform occupant behavior in their building. The act of collecting and understanding the operating data produced by green buildings and their occupants is the best way to make sure the building continues the green process.

When starting out with LEED, think of each phase of the green building process as a new stage of life; many buildings will experience growing pains, adjustment periods and identity crises. If the building does not receive the attention it needs, its support systems (e.g., ventilation and water systems) may function improperly and the building will suffer. Maintaining awareness of the building’s systems - tracking their ups and downs - is the longest phase of the green building process and should never end. USGBC recognizes that this phase of the green building process is critical to ongoing efficiency and continues to devote time to supporting teams in their operations and maintenance efforts.