Massachusetts Institute of Technology
OP-3: Building Operations and Maintenance

MIT Sustainable Design Standards reference the LEED v4 rating system.

Office of Custodial Services is responsible for approximately 9,000,000 square feet of campus space and has established a green cleaning program which includes protocols for green cleaning practices and lists of approved green cleaning products.

Energy Benchmarking MIT’s campus consists of 165 buildings of various types and ages. Most are not like commercial office or other space types represented in databases like CBECS or Labs21. Since 165 is a reasonable population, MIT prefers to benchmark against itself. The Energy Use Index (EUI) from MIT’s newest and best performing facilities for each building type (if such a facility exists) is used as the benchmark EUI for that type. Where new or newly renovated facilities are not available to benchmark against, we will use a national database instead, (i.e. CBECS or Labs21) for assessing these facility types until a new or renovated building is completed. The purpose of a benchmark is to indicate how a building is performing as compared to other similar buildings, rather than only focusing on how it is performing as compared to itself in the previous year. Select buildings with EUIs above their benchmark building are considered for an Energy Efficiency Measure (EEM). MIT's entire academic campus in our boundary is subject to this program.

MIT uses the EPA's Portfolio Manager Program to track and benchmark building-level energy and water use. All of MIT's academic portfolio within our reporting boundary are included on this benchmark program. EPA's ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager is an online tool used by organizations to measure and track energy and water consumption, as well as GHG emissions. It is used to benchmark the performance of one building or a whole portfolio of buildings, all in a secure online environment. Forty percent of commercial building space in the U.S. are benchmarking in Portfolio Manager.

Indoor Air Quality Management: MIT has a standard operating procedure (SOP) that documents the process of initiating, auditing, and resolving indoor air quality concerns. The SOP covers occupants in MIT buildings and in leased buildings with MIT employees. First, the SOP provides a mechanism for occupants to register indoor air quality complaints or concerns. An individual may call 617-452-3477, or email environment@mit.edu to initiate the process with the Industrial Hygiene Program in the EHS Office. EHS assigns a lead and opens the investigation. Second, the SOP provides an action plan to implement corrective measures in response to the audits. In accordance with the severity of the case, the SOP prescribes the required interventions. Interventions may include: * Walk-throughs * Interviews * Time series monitoring of temperature, humidity, CO2 and VOCs * Built environment and HVAC investigations * Particle monitoring for printer emissions or construction dust Aside from the safety procedures implemented by the SOP, MIT regularly monitors CO2, temperature, and humidity in tens of thousands of places on campus via Building Management Systems (BMS) and vendors (e.g. Aircuity and KGS). Although the SOP is the primary means of conducting indoor air quality investigations, the BMS sensors provide some automated corrective measures to promote indoor air quality.