Cal Poly Humboldt
OP-4: Building Operations and Maintenance

Cal Poly Humboldt values sustainability and works in a variety of multi-attribute practices throughout Operations and Maintenance of buildings in an ongoing and consistent way. While we do not maintain certifications for these practices nor are they documented in campus specific plans outside of the CSU policies for buildings standards and procurement, and maintenance, the CSU has a set of building standards that they provide to contractors when building new buildings such as occupancy controls, which inform ongoing maintenance and practice. To this end, the campus operates and maintains buildings in accordance with what we consider to be a multi-attribute, sustainable management policy/program, but not certified under an O+M rating system.

The most complete coverage program is the Green Cleaning operations of custodial services. This program covering campus and residential housing uses Green Seal Certified products for nearly all chemicals employed, along with long-life microfiber materials.

As part of a comprehensive water reduction strategy for the campus over 85% of the buildings were retrofitted or reset to meet water use requirements for 2018 CA Green Building Standards and all ongoing repairs or retrofits meet or exceed those standards. Ongoing monitoring for leak or excessive process use of water is a standard practice for Building Service Engineers along with user education reminders to submit work requests for leaks and malfunctioning fixtures.

The campus has a long history of implementing comprehensive waste recycling and diversion programs that range from single stream capture of common recyclables, capturing non-perishable past best-by-date market place items for use at a campus food pantry, to diverting a large percentage of dining food-waste to a vermicomposting facility. Construction and Demolition waste is tracked and diverted to CSU-wide specifications from remodel and construction activities, with vendors for materials reviewed at least annually. These activities result in a CalRecycle State Agency Reporting Center (SARC) waste report disposal rate of 1.59 and 0.28 pounds/person/day for employees and students, respectively.

Additionally, in recent years Cal Poly Humboldt has started recommissioning buildings for energy use and building systems, with approximately 21% of the square footage completed. Since the beginning of 2018 we have also started to prioritize installation of full building-level metering for utilities with 53% of building sq. ft. installed. These systems are integrated into our new Energy Information System (EIS) to automate data collection and analytics for these utilities. Automated building controls have recently been installed on 10 existing buildings, combined with the 7 buildings that already have controls, this accounts for 39% of the total square footage of campus buildings now have automated building controls and the additional functionality of controlling the building systems.

To ensure maintenance activities for the campus are scheduled and tracked efficiently, Cal Poly Humboldt uses a modern Maintenance Management System with thorough preventive maintenance (PM) tasks setup to keep everyone on task and informed of reactive, scheduled and predictive maintenance needs.
Related to energy efficiency, the campus has also recently completed several lighting updates, including the Library retrofitting 50% of square footage with LEDs and lighting controls. The Marine Lab and Sci D have recently undergone updates to make all interior and exterior lighting LEDs. For exterior lights on campus, the institution has a goal of retrofitting every single exterior lamp to LED by the end of 2023 calendar year; at the time of submission of this report, approximately 50% have been completed.

One item not directly in the O&M process, but which has a great affect on the buildings is the procurement of materials to outfit the functions of those buildings, such as Group II Equipment: this equipment includes department bought items such as whiteboards, furniture, microscopes, anything that is not affixed to the building. The University Contracts and Procurement Office (which is the central point for processing orders) flags these items and they are subject to Facilities Management O+M review and approval. This affords O+M the ability to deny purchases that are in conflict with the CSU Sustainability Policy, such as personal heaters, desk lamps, fans, personal refrigerators, microwaves, etc. This also allows us to limit non-essential utility consumption on campus.
Taken as a package of processes and strategies, these actions provide a good framework for a comprehensive sustainability O&M program and we look forward to iterative improvement with the growth of campus into a robust Polytechnic University.