Sauer Scores With Energy Efficiency for Health Care
September 2nd, 2010 by Kevin Skurski
Sauer Incorporated's HQ in Jacksonville, Florida
If the existing building stock of commercial real estate in the U.S. is an agreed-upon goldmine for energy savings, hospitals and health care facilities represent a pot of gold at the end of the efficiency rainbow.
Hospitals use about 2.5 times the amount of energy as a similar-sized commercial building, according to a 2009 estimate published in Environmental Leader. “As a sector, hospitals and health care facilities account for a disproportionate amount of energy use and emissions, EL’s article “Hospitals Due for Energy Efficiency Overhaul” states.
Ed Brady made the healthcare / efficiency connection with BuildingAdvice. Brady, a Service Account Representative for mechanical contracting company Sauer, Inc.’s Columbus, OH location, started using BuildingAdvice in early 2010. In only a few months of using the efficiency platform for commercial buildings, Brady had quoted $750,000 in energy efficiency retrofits to Fayette County Memorial Hospital, a two-building, critical access hospital in Columbus.
“Fayette was ready to think more seriously about their energy spend,” Brady said by phone in August.
Sauer, a four-branch company with an annual revenue of $478 million, had committed to pursuing energy services as part of its overall corporate strategy this year. Sauer, Inc. sister company Ruthrauff Sauer, based in Pittsburgh, PA, recommended BuildingAdvice to Brady and his associates in January of this year. The following month, Brady was putting AirAdvice’s industry-leading energy services platform to work.
“We needed a competitive edge to both maintain existing service agreements and expand new ones,” said Brady. He worked with his AirAdvice support representative, Zack Buquet, to discuss and design a marketing strategy around the product. Together, they agreed that offering free benchmarking was the strategy that best fit Sauer’s needs.
Fayette County Memorial Hospital
“The contract customers weren’t biting on the energy services,” said Brady of his existing client base. “We found that by offering free benchmarking, you will definitely get potential new clients and some nice first meetings,” Brady said. “It doesn’t really take that much of my time to do the benchmarking.”
Brady had done roughly seven benchmarks for a variety of property types when he approached Fayette County Memorial Hospital, whose leadership showed a very favorable reaction to the energy benchmark – especially considering one building scored the lowest on the EnergyStar ratings scale possible, the other very low.
After performing a complete canvas of all mechanical equipment, Brady and associates found boilers from 1974, outdated cooling towers, and rooftop units near ASHRAE end-of-life. Sauer budgeted replacement costs, estimated paybacks and used a BuildingAdvice Energy Audit to propose, among other retrofits:
- $500,000 to replace old boilers and pipes
- $185,000 for rooftop unit replacement
- $20,000 for lighting
The meeting went well, and the hospital is seeking funding by to pay for the bulk of the work by early 2011. In the meantime, the hospital will use in-house resources to address the low-cost recommendation from BuildingAdvice’s Energy Assessment to replace the lighting system. Savings from these upgrades will be show results to be evaluated in January, particularly in electrical usage. The hospital is then eligible to push the lighting retrofit through the local utility to become eligible for rebates.
Brady is clear that his relationship with Fayette is due 100% to starting the energy conversation and following up with BuildingAdvice reports. Doing the assessment allowed him to get in the door, survey the entire facility and identify all of this project work.
Ruthrauff Sauer, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Moreover, Brady has discussed ongoing continuous energy monitoring – another service available through BuildingAdvice – after the hospital has its equipment replaced, to monitor, manage, and ensure ongoing energy savings “in real time,” as Brady puts it.
“BuildingAdvice not only gets people’s attention, it’s useful,” said Brady. “We have had some great successes already.”
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