2015 NCAPPA Conference - Call for Presentations

The North Carolina Chapter of APPA is calling on you to help make this year's conference the best one yet. March 10-12, 2015 is your opportunity to come together and network with business partners and colleagues at UNC Chapel Hill.

We are looking for presentations that highlight current best practices in Higher Education Facilities Maintenance and Operations.

Facilities Managers and (especially) Supervisors-Please take a moment to reflect and recall those accomplishments made in the past year. Did you reinvent the wheel, or just come up with a better and more effective way of doing something? Did you implement a new recognition or rewards program? We've all watched our employees come up with more creative ways to solve day to day problems. Tell us about them! Have your customers acknowledged your efforts and those of your staff? Have you or your staff developed a new form, program, process or procedure for which to complete your work? Tell us your story!

Business Partners-What materials and products are new to the market? What are the benefits? Does your product save time, money, effort or produce a better result? Please take this opportunity to partner up with a facilities member at a school where your material or product has been implemented and let your customer help tell the story.

All of these experiences and stories are of interest to your peers and colleagues. We all work and strive to solve similar problems at our campuses every day. Please take the time now to go to the website and submit an abstract of your experience. If your abstract is selected by the committee, you will be given the opportunity to submit a one hour presentation on your topic. Most presentations work well if given in 45 - 50 minutes with time for questions. If your presentation is more formal and hands on, please describe the hands on experience.

I look forward to receiving your presentations telling the creative and innovative ways we, as Higher Education Facilities Maintenance and Operations folks, get the jobs done every day with fewer resources.

Please submit your application toDecember 19, 2014.The Education Committee will notify successful applicants byJanuary 20, 2015.

Applications should include an abstract of your presentation, the audience you think your presentation will appeal to, the learning outcomes expected, and a short bio for the presenters.

Thank you for your interest and your support of NCAPPA.

Rich Hassard

NCAPPA Director of Education

North Carolina State University

Raleigh, NC 27695

919-515-9901

ABSTACT FOR NCAPPA PRESENTATION

Title: Are you comfortable commissioning existing buildings?

Commissioning is an important aspect of new building construction to assure facilities directors and end users that they are getting what they paid for. Commissioning existing buildings can yield surprising results including significant improvement in occupant comfort, improved building performance, and energy savings.

The objective of our work in the two case studies that we are presenting was to retro-commission these buildings, located on different campuses for reasons other than occupant comfort. Essex’ objective was to understand intended operation of the building compared to actual operation, evaluate facility performance based on those criteria and recommend changes to obtain desired building performance. One of these buildings was commissioned during construction and was less than five years old, the second building was never commissioned and was 10 years old.

Methods used to arrive at our conclusions involved a diagnostic approach to review all possiblefactors affecting equipment operation fromowner’s requirements, design intent, equipment installation and operation and equipment maintenance. We evaluated maintenance staff understanding of operation and their means of maintenance.

We learned the following:

  • Certain components of building design were not appropriate for the use of the building.
  • Control equipment that was effective for similarly designed buildings did not work for this building.
  • Building pressurization problems were left unresolved from original commissioning
  • Building operation was less effective from a lack of understanding of the system design
  • Numerous deferred maintenance items and short-cuts around automated control strategies hampered system function.

Case Studies:

The Paul D. Coverdell Center for Biomedical and Health Sciences located at the University of Georgia has multiple zones requiring pressurization isolation such as a 24/7/365 vivarium operation involving long term animal studies, an MRI requiring specific and critical temperature control, and areas housing research laboratories and offices for researchers. This building was fast-tracked for occupation. We determined that the control system isn’t fully functional and components of the control system were poorly selected. Further, the design strategy did not fully accommodate intended facility operation. The building control system requires substantial rework, which has prompted consideration for complete control system replacement. Airflow sensors were prone to blockage from airborne dust, and building pressurization was not controlled with an introduction of outdoor air but by relative pressurization between adjacent spaces. Currently, no work is being performed to retrofit or modify the building systems. Building pressurization was improved by manipulating airflow. Refitting this building to improve operation and occupant comfort is not currently possible under a maintenance budget, but we suspect the initial construction budget could have delivered desired operational results. The results of our efforts on this project did not yield comfortable commissioning.

The Hargray building located at the University of South Carolina Beaufort is a combined administrative office and classroom facility. The Chancellor’s office is also located in this building. There was inadequate transfer of knowledge from designer and equipment manufacturer to facility operators after initial construction as shouldhave occurred if the building was originally commissioned, the control strategy did not match equipment capability and equipment maintenance was inadequate. The results of our study enabled an initialannual savings of 200,000 kWh or $16,000. The most significant benefit was a vast improvement in the Chancellor’s comfort through temperature control.