The Building Advisor

Does this man look like he wants to read a blog?

AirAdvice’s public relations professional asked the above question 13 days ago, and the comments haven’t stopped yet.

So far, responses are disparate but engaged, even passionate. Not about the published survey results part – that’s a pretty resounding ‘No.’

But on the idea of whether social media reaches the HVAC industry, experts are hedging their bets. HVAC pros may be “too busy outdoors,” working too many long hours to feel the need to catch up on industry news online when they get free.

Christine Cavaliero, CT Marketing Consultant / Specialty Internet Marketing wrote,

“…what I’ve observed with HVAC companies – traditional marketing is king. Social Marketing requires too much time for the average HVAC company with a single office.”

Aviv Scheinman, Business Development Manager at ADAR-Airtech in Israel, seconded that emotion: HVAC pros don’t use social media because “their customers aren’t motivated to look for their services there.”

Good point. Are there building owners and managers looking for HVAC chatter on social media, like Yelpers talk restaurants or retail? If so, The Building Advisor hasn’t seen it.

Here’s what some folks are having success with:

• Newsletters – Like, The Building Monitor per se. Are you signed up?
• Videos on YouTube – Eric Stromquist of Stromquist & Co in Atlanta, GA has had success with putting industry news out on Twitter and posting troubleshooting videos for their products to YouTube. However, one thing to watch for is companies banning employee access to YouTube. You may need to send your video on a DVD or jumpdrive instead.
• Faxing – Jon Mendelson, Director Inside Sales at Elgen Manufacturing Company, INC sends 3,000 faxes every Monday
• John Iwanski, Director of Publishing at RSES stands by the power of reader service cards and business reply cards.

Other interesting thoughts:

Snakes on a Trane, get it? Blame hvac talk...

“We’re trying to find ways to expand the use of our e-Learning programs for service techs, as well as share more about the NATE-examination prep offerings we have.”

- John Iwanski, Director of Publishing at RSES

“…we just released a video of our new facility and WOW it established us as players. I sent it to my customers and hot prospects and the phone rang off the hook for a few days. As a manufacture we have toyed with videos and actually giving away cheap mp3 players to run the videos and the idea was and is well received.”

- Jon Mendelson, Director Inside Sales at Elgen Manufacturing Company, INC

“How many of you thought Yelp or Angie’s list was a fad? IMO these two sites have taken over what the BBB use to do.”

- Christine Loughman, General Manager at Kappl Heating & Air Conditioning

Join the discussion at the LinkedIn HVAC Professionals Group.

Images courtesy Just Venting and hvac-talk.com.

A month ago,Chris H., Assistant Global Energy Solutions Manager at Solutia Inc., posted “Five Overlooked Building Improvements with Quick ROI that Increase Energy Efficiency” to myfacilities.net.

In it, he touches on a variety of utility-saving solutions, the most pertinent to The Building Advisor being number 3, Energy Management Systems.

He writes,

Greg Galusha of MacDonald Miller in Bellevue, WA

“An energy management system consists of a combination of building management systems and advanced software solutions that work together to control a building’s HVAC operations…The system ensures optimal energy usage, resulting in greater efficiency and lower utility costs.”

He then posted the post to the Building Owners and Managers (BOMA) International LinkedIn Group under the question header, “How can you increase energy efficiency and reduce utilities?”

To date, there have been 56 comments.

Some of them have been from blog spotlightees before, like Greg Galusha of MacDonald-Miller Facility Solutions (“MacDonald-Miller Finds BuildingAdvice Perfect Fit for Energy Efficiency in Small to Midsize Buildings“) and Zack Buquet, one of our own here at AirAdvice and a Building Advisor contributor.

The long and the short of it is this: talk of replacing HVAC units, building envelopes, window film, demand response, lighting, and reflective insulators, elevator motor “soft starters.” From the short and sweet to vociferously verbose, there is no shortage of ideas out there on how to save dough on energy. We just need to DO it.

Great comments from Gary Markowitz, President, Kilojolts Consulting Group, Inc. & KCG Energy LLC. Gary touches on culture – shifting the mindset of a company toward energy efficiency as a priority. Julius Walcyznski at Canada’s Pulse Energy has some great things to say as well regarding occupant engagement.

Zack Buquet, Energy Services Business Consultant at AirAdvice

But here at AirAdvice, we’re looking at the causes of energy waste in buildings, and work with HVAC contractors to attack the problem. Those contractors in turn work directly with the building owners and managers BOMA serves, the decisionmakers behind energy efficiency decisions. Until those owners and managers recognize that they are throwing money away unnecessarily, the building’s occupant engagement can’t happen.

BOMA’s LinkedIn discussion also contains quite a bit of chatter around energy benchmarking, assessments and audits; it’s great to hear these words being used with knowledge, even if it is within a fairly specific community.

Mike Zimmerman, CEO of BuildingIQ in Sydney, Australia, wrote:

Mike Zimmerman, CEO of BuildingIQ

“…Energy Reporting systems such as Lucid Designs provides energy-use metrics from meters and the BMS [Building Management System?]. There are also now Energy Optimization technologies that supervise how the BMS runs and and make the building much more intelligent. Our system, called BuildingIQ…is a Predictive Energy Optimization system that incorporates energy prices, weather forecasts and ASHRAE comfort models to optimize energy use, cost and comfort. This type of proactive system that interacts with the BMS can save 10-20% of total building energy and is paid for on a subscription basis…”

Throughout the conversation, claims of savings between 10-30% on utility bills are made.

Where do you think a realistic savings percentage average from the use of energy management systems looks like?

And is this savings driven more by occupants or building systems?

Drop us a comment!

Shell Ridge Property Management Co., Inc. maintains approximately 300,000 square feet of commercial space in the San Francisco Bay Area. Since 1980, Shell Ridge has specialized in asset management strategies for small medical offices. Its 15 buildings range from 40,000 to 100,000 square feet.

Shell Ridge’s medical office properties represent a desirable portfolio for mechanical contractors. Marina Mechanical, a 50-year-old company headquartered in San Leandro, Calif., began maintenance for a Pleasanton, Calif. Shell Ridge property five years ago. In the ensuing years of service, energy conservation was rarely discussed.

But when Marina began feeling heat from its competitors in the middle of a down market, it turned to its best customers to expand relationships.

Marina had obtained training on the BuildingAdvice energy services diagnostic platform in November of 2009, and began the process of leveraging its action-oriented reports as a differentiator.

Gamechanging Energy Services Offering

“We offered to show both the property manager and owner at Shell Ridge, some sample energy benchmarking and assessment reports,” says Denny Mann, Vice President of Service with Marina Mechanical, when explaining how he got the energy conversation started. “The property manager was actually very educated on energy benchmarking, and as a result, very interested. Once she saw the type of information the BuildingAdvice reports gave, she was extremely interested.”

“BuildingAdvice differentiated Marina from other mechanical contractors waiting to get their foot in the door,” says Denny.

Denny offered to do complimentary energy assessments on two Shell Ridge buildings. Shell Ridge has several buildings where Peak Day Pricing, a program of local utility Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E), would come into play.

Peak Day Pricing (PDP) is PG&E’s demand response program, which acts as an incentive for business owners to curtail their facility’s energy use during times of peak usage. During the summer, PDP substantially raises energy prices on “event days” (above 98 degrees); businesses have a 24 hour notice when there will be an event to lower their energy usage for that day.  By charging a very high rate on event days, PG&E motivates customers to invest in strategies that will lower their consumption overall, and especially on the peak days.

Peak day pricing is specialized to the PGE territory, but not a unique phenomenon.

“Peak day pricing is definitely acting as a market stimulator for energy services and spurs client interest,” Denny said. “I think soon people will be lined up to get involved with energy reduction conversations.”

Taking Action

In going over the results of the assessment reports, conversations began about what Marina could do to help Shell Ridge avoid demand charges across the company’s property portfolio.

Which led to a second meeting with the owner, and an agreement to generate Energy Benchmarking Reports on all of the Shell Ridge properties to determine Energy Star scores.

“BuildingAdvice reports marked our transition from just being their mechanical contractor to forming a partnership. It completely transformed the relationship,” says Denny.

With portfolio-wide benchmarks on the docket, Marina took recommendations from the first two properties’ energy assessments to Shell Ridge ownership.

“BuildingAdvice helped us identify that the building was running when it didn’t need to be,” said Denny. Supply and reset strategies were created, so that the building was not not pouring 55 degree air into the interior when clients were not there, all of which were identified in the report.

Two low- and no-cost recommendations were approved and completed April of this year. Shell Ridge made the decision to complete the service based on the return on investment outlined in BuildingAdvice’s Energy Assessment Report. In addition to revisions to lighting and HVAC schedules based on peak day pricing, the report showed a seven-year payback on a demand control vent.

“We’re letting those changes take effect,” said Denny. After a 12-month period, savings achieved will be tabulated.

Next Steps and the Advent of Mandatory Energy Disclosure

As of late June, Marina wrapped up the energy benchmarking process on all of the Shell Ridge portfolio. Based on buildings’ Energy Star scores, Marina will make recommendations on which properties need energy assessments.

Looking ahead, the mandates of California’s Assembly Bill 1103 (AB 1103) state that non-residential business owners or their agents are required to input energy consumption and other building data into the Environmental Protection Agency’s Energy Star Portfolio Manager system, which generates an energy efficiency rating for the building.

As of January 1, 2010, AB 1103 mandated disclosure of a building’s energy data and rating of the previous year to prospective buyers and lessees of the entire building or lenders financing the entire building. That deadline has since been pushed back, and the task of devising a disclosure schedule has fallen to the California Energy Commission (CEC). The CEC is in the process of drafting a new compliance schedule; January 1, 2011 is speculated to be the new required disclosure date.

New York City, Washington DC and other regions have adopted similar required energy data disclosure. Smart owners and managers are on the move to meet deadlines.

Net Impact

The ability to offer energy services differentiates providers. Marina knew a competitor was making an aggressive play for service agreements in Shell Ridge’s multiple locations. Yet, in the same timeframe Marina stayed in discussions with Shell Ridge by centering their meetings around energy services through BuildingAdvice.

“After going through BuildingAdvice training, we quickly realized that being able to offer our customers a systematic, low-cost / no-cost approach to reducing their energy consumption would change the way we were viewed.”

BuildingAdvice has “helped us retain current business and significantly raised the bar on the services we offer.”

Summer must be here because it’s even hot in Oregon. All over the country, HVAC technicians are working their fannies off to keep tenants cool.

And news of worldwide efforts to increase energy efficiency in commercial buildings keeps rolling like sweat down an AC technician’s temple. Such as Australia’s Labor Party announcing that it will offer a 50% tax deduction bonus for “green building work” from July 1, 2011 completed for buildings of two stars or less to bring them up to four stars or higher. This from The Fifth Estate, which called the energy efficiency sector “his consistently touted as offering the cheapest and fastest route to greenhouse gas reduction” and quoting the Labor Party’s web site estimate that the incentive will offer a $1 billion boost over the life of the scheme.

Last week Pike Research issued a report estimating that a full $41.1 billion could be saved in energy expenses every year by instituting a 10-year retrofit program, Environmental Leader reported and BEPN picked up. Pike’s report states that more than 80% of commercial buildings in the US are over 10 years old, and a 10-year retrofit program would cost only $22.5 billion. That’s almost a 50% profit margin – not a bad bet.

Last week, ASHRAE President Lynn G. Bellenger testified on optimizing federal building efficiency before the U.S. House Subcommittee on Government Management, Organization and Procurement to help them examine the federal government’s role in greening buildings.

And The Building Advisor’s poster child of the week award for asset stewardship goes to Brandywine Realty Trust, a REIT that owns, develops, and manages commercial buildings. It earned two U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Energy Star labels for its 5 Greentree Centre, Marlton, New Jersey project and its Concord Airport Plaza – a project in Concord, California. Although both buildings had previously earned Energy Star ratings, they were re-commissioned and re-certified again for 2010, according to a press release.

Bring it on, Summer of 2010! BuildingAdvice is ready when you are. And if you’re into coil cleaning, take a deep dive with Green Life Style Magazine’s “Huge energy savings in your commercial HVAC” post. It’ll make you want to get into parts of your air conditioner you never knew you had.

Final reminder that our next free webinar series, “Energize Your Service and Retrofit Sales,” starts tomorrow. This three-part series offers HVAC contractors concise sales strategy on using BuildingAdvice to build business. You can register in under 1 minute here.  Topics include:

Part 1: Use Energy Services to Ensure Maintenance Agreement Renewals

Thursday, July 22, 2010 1:00pm Eastern (10:00am Pacific)

Understanding your service business metrics. What are energy services and how do they fit into a planned maintenance program? What to do in advance of your service renewal date. Meeting with your client prior to next service date anniversary. Qualifying your customers’ interest with automated ENERGY STAR™ benchmarking. Adding energy services to existing service agreements.

Part 2: Winning New Service Business With Energy as the Differentiator

Thursday, July 29, 2010 1:00pm Eastern (10:00am Pacific)

Sales management: getting your team ready. Targeting prospects who you can help with your energy services. Getting a meeting with the right person. Successful prospect meetings. Qualifying prospects up-front with energy benchmarking. Selling an energy assessment. Writing winning proposals.

Part 3: Use Energy Services to Drive Project Revenue

Thursday, August 5, 2010 1:00pm Eastern (10:00am Pacific)

Targeting the right accounts and the discovery meeting. How to ensure retrofits continue to drive savings. Monitoring and verification. Selling an energy audit, closing retrofits using the audit report and partnering with your local utility.

If you’re considering adding energy management to your company’s service offerings or are looking to improve an existing energy service offering, start with this educational series on starting an energy management conversation and building valuable client relationships through a focus on energy cost savings. Register for free here.

How has BuildingAdvice helped other contractors? Read MacDonald-Miller Finds BuildingAdvice Perfect Fit for Energy Efficiency in Small to Midsize Buildings.

Quick, what do these three articles have in common?

All these buildings will need to report their energy efficiency ratings.

Commercial property owners must prepare for new regulations (smartcompany.com)

Australia prepares for its Commercial Building Disclosure scheme, dictating that owners and lessors of commercial office space of 2,000 m2 or more must disclose the energy efficiency rating to prespective buyers and tenants when the space is sold, leased or subleased (similar to California’s laws passed January 1, 2010).

Taking Energy Star Challenge

Health Care REIT, Inc. Partners with EPA’s ENERGY STAR Program (Financial Post)

The aptly named Health Care REIT has got on the EPA’s Energy Star Challenge bandwagon, planing to improve its overall energy efficiency by 10% or more through energy benchmarking, following a resulting plan consistent with Energy Star guidelines, and spreading the gospel.

HVAC Awareness: Is Your HVAC System Energy Efficient? (greenexitsigns.com)

Chiller maintenance in action.

Blog underdog GreenExitSigns.com came out of nowhere with a very concise post on how supersized chillers / fans and inefficient oil, electric and gas boilers “lead to a building incurring thousands of unnecessary dollars in annual utility costs.”

Thousands of unnecessary dollars, the man says.

Ok, the answer to “What do these three articles have in common?” is: not a lot, in some ways, which is kind of the point.

Energy efficiency should be topping your radar BECAUSE the forces behind it are coming from such disparate places. These articles represent reasons to increase energy efficiency for reasons of legality, corporate leadership, and cost savings.

Also check out greenexitsigns.com’s excellent post, “Four Reasons Not to Avoid Scheduling an Energy Audit of Your Building.”

But only if you’re ready to face your fears.

"No! Not an energy audit! I'm afraid of what I'll find!"

Images courtesy ChinatownConnection, NYSE.com, Just Venting, Goodway’s HVAC industry blog (best blog name ever), and norway.com.

Energy. It’s what AirAdvice is all about: how buildings can most efficiently use this natural resource to operate, and how a focus on energy services can improve the bottom line of the businesses of our contractor channel partners while helping the building owners and managers they serve.

Starting July 22, we’ll be walking our talk in our next free webinar series, “Energize Your Service and Retrofit Sales.” This three-part series offers HVAC contractors concise sales strategy on using BuildingAdvice to build business. Topics include:

Part 1: Use Energy Services to Ensure Maintenance Agreement Renewals

Thursday, July 22, 2010 1:00pm Eastern (10:00am Pacific)

Understanding your service business metrics. What are energy services and how do they fit into a planned maintenance program? What to do in advance of your service renewal date. Meeting with your client prior to next service date anniversary. Qualifying your customers’ interest with automated ENERGY STAR™ benchmarking. Adding energy services to existing service agreements.

Part 2: Winning New Service Business With Energy as the Differentiator

Thursday, July 29, 2010 1:00pm Eastern (10:00am Pacific)

Sales management: getting your team ready. Targeting prospects who you can help with your energy services. Getting a meeting with the right person. Successful prospect meetings. Qualifying prospects up-front with energy benchmarking. Selling an energy assessment. Writing winning proposals.

Part 3: Use Energy Services to Drive Project Revenue

Thursday, August 5, 2010 1:00pm Eastern (10:00am Pacific)

Targeting the right accounts and the discovery meeting. How to ensure retrofits continue to drive savings. Monitoring and verification. Selling an energy audit, closing retrofits using the audit report and partnering with your local utility.

If you’re considering adding energy management to your company’s service offerings or are looking to improve an existing energy service offering, start with this educational series on starting an energy management conversation and building valuable client relationships through a focus on energy cost savings. Register for free here.

How has BuildingAdvice helped other contractors? Read MacDonald-Miller Finds BuildingAdvice Perfect Fit for Energy Efficiency in Small to Midsize Buildings.

Image by Whitney for Congress.

So, you want to increase your commercial building’s energy efficiency. You’re finally convinced that efficiency is the first fuel, that 40% is too much for commercial buildings to suck out of the US’ total energy production, and that the benefits of increasing efficiency reach not only the environment but to your business’ bottom line.

Maybe you’re not quite ready to ask your building’s mechanical, HVAC, or energy engineer about BuildingAdvice’s Energy Benchmarking, Assessment, or Audit Reports, but you want to know what a few things you can do right now are. Does The Building Advisor have a Top Five list for you!

Top Five Ways to Increase Energy Efficiency in Commercial Buildings

1. Curtail overventilation – The number one culprit in the fight against energy waste. Lucas Klesh wrote a comprehensive post on overventilation here, soon to be accessible on Sustainable Facility. He goes into detail on the value of a property functioning economizer and damper system.
2. Adjust lighting schedule – Does your lighting schedule match your tenant schedule? Matching the two more closely allows you to get the most out of the energy usage when you need it.
3. Eliminate competing HVAC systems – As crazy as it sounds, many buildings run heating and cooling systems simultaneously. What’s even richer is that mechanical service providers often aren’t aware that this is happening. Stop your building from fighting with itself and reap the benefits in your utility bills.
4. Re-evaluate HVAC when space configuration changes – Have you downsized your staff? Put up a wall or other internal partition in a large office area? If there are  unoccupied areas of your property or changes in your space configurations, most likely your HVAC systems aren’t up to par for the changes made. Re-assess the space’s needs by evaluating control points and air distribution locations.
5. Take weekends off – Unless your office or commercial building is in full swing seven days a week, make sure you’re not running air conditioning when there’s no one there to benefit from it.

Go a favorite energy efficiency tip for commercial buildings? Share it here!

Images courtesy anton khoff and Grant MacDonald.

Superstar giant Octus Energy got our attention with their Smartenergyworks blog post on the Building Owners and Managers Association (BOMA)’s announcement to start the BOMA Energy Efficiency Program (BEEP) in San Francisco. We are already BEEPing quite a bit in Portland, Ore.

BOMA’s press release on the San Francisco program cunningly points out:

“Nationwide, the commercial real estate industry spends approximately $24 billion annually on energy. Yet energy consumption represents the single, largest controllable operating expense for office buildings. BOMA anticipates BEEP will reduce energy consumption by as much as 30 percent in participating commercial properties.”

So here’s the question: if BEEP’s “innovative series… teaches commercial real estate professionals how to reduce energy consumption — and related costs — with proven, no- and low-cost strategies for optimizing equipment, people and practices,” is there a need for products like BuildingAdvice?

The Building Advisor is going to go with “Yes, and…” on this one, and we’ll tell you why.

There are always going to be people who don’t want to, or aren’t able to, “do it themselves.” BuildingAdvice is designed to be used by commercial HVAC professionals, energy consultants, and engineers – a different group than real estate professionals such as brokers, property managers, and owners who tend to be associated with BOMA.

Building contractors are trusted professionals who can go to their clients and initiate discussions about energy management. If the clients are educated in advance by a BEEP seminar beforehand, that conversation can be even more productive.

In other words, the energy efficiency candle can be burned from both ends for greatest all-around benefit to the built environment and those who manage it.

Images courtesy Binary Studio, smartenergyworks and gfpeck’s photostream on Flickr.

“We’ve been around for 90 years,” says Dave Stroh, co-owner of Wolin Mechanical Electrical in West Des Moines, Ia. “We know what affects operations.”

Dave’s a straight shooter. And what he’s talking about is the difference between a free energy assessment from a utility company, which might measure power usage and draw, versus BuildingAdvice’s ability to reduce energy costs in the commercial buildings he services by making specific recommendations for adjustments and improvements.

Dave, who added electrical services to Wolin Mechanical after purchasing the business in 1996, acquired the BuildingAdvice program seven months ago. By April, his BuildingAdvice sensors were booked out three months in advance. He told The Building Advisor, “Frankly, I’m having a hard time keeping up with customer demand for energy services as a result of running BuildingAdvice’s Energy Assessment Reports. It just sets the table for everything.”

As Dave says, the Energy Savings Assessment report says to his customers, “here’s how we can help you.” How does he know it’s working? “They can see it in energy bills. I see it in smiles, in dollars, and in repeat business.”

Preventive Maintenance services aren’t like a yard, Dave explains. You can’t see that it’s mowed when you’re done. “But, with BuildingAdvice, I’m able to quantify and show how beneficial these services are,” he explains. “It’s the ability to put a tangible into an intangible market.”

“None of my peers offer anything like this,” he adds. “Our building managers have been thrilled with the results.”

Another thing Dave’s happy about is the customer service he gets through the BuildingAdvice support team. Dave reports to always being able to reach a customer service representative on the phone, and most often gets the answer he needs while he has that person on the phone – not 24 hours or more later. “From the top down, the AirAdvice culture is really customer service oriented,” says Dave. “I’m really impressed with where the rubber meets the road.”

Dave Stroh is co-owner of Wolin Mechanical Electrical in West Des Moines, IA. Image courtesy Wolin Mechanical Electrical.