FROM THE EDITOR

There's something about reconnecting with a good friend with whom you’ve lost touch that is just so satisfying. Similarly, as a journalist, revisiting a story you worked on years ago to find out what’s happening now can be equally enriching. For the December issue of Building Operating Management, I’m working on story updating readers on two high-performance buildings we covered in issues past.  

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But the reason for this story isn’t just journalistic edification. It’s to see if the promise of high-performance is panning out years after the doors first opened.

Spoiler alert: The news is good! In both cases, the answer is yes – the buildings are still operating as efficiently as they were designed.

The first building is the National Renewable Energy Laboratory’s Research Support Facility in Golden, Colo. We’ve covered this building several times over the years, but it got the most ink back in October 2012, when we used it as a myth-buster that net-zero energy buildings are small, boutique, not-repeatable buildings. These days, the RSF is still achieving its net-zero energy goals – impressive for a 360,000-square-foot building with a 20,000-square-foot data center.

The other building is the Federal Center South building near Seattle, a building that’s headquarters for the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers Northwest District. (Recently, the VA has taken some space as well.) This building, which we covered in June 2014, was notable for its contract structure – the designers staked 0.5 percent of the contract that performance would meet design levels one year after the doors opened. The guarantee worked, and continues to pay dividends as the building, despite some occupancy changes and changes to hours of operation, has the same Energy Use Intensity now (about 25 kBtu/sqft/yr) it did in January 2014, when the performance period ended. Part of this is due to a continuous monitoring and analytics system called GSALink that alarms facility managers when energy use falls out of spec. “It’s a proactive approach to finding deficiencies,” says Marty Novini, mechanical engineer at the building.

And that’s the rub – keeping a building performing well is not a spectator sport. A not-resting-on-your-laurels, proactive strategy is needed. And these buildings are doing just that.

So look for the complete story on these two buildings in December. And, as always, I'm interested to hear from you. How do you ensure your buildings don’t drift? How do you maintain the motivating to keep them operating efficiently? 

 

Cheers,

Greg Zimmerman, editor  

 

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