Overall Rating Silver - expired
Overall Score 45.39
Liaison Olivia Herron
Submission Date March 6, 2013
Executive Letter Download

STARS v1.2

Miami University
OP-1: Building Operations and Maintenance

Status Score Responsible Party
-- 0.00 / 7.00 Jeremy Davis
Dir. of Building Maintenance
Physical Facilities

This credit was marked as Not Pursuing so Reporting Fields will not be displayed.

Miami is pursuing a number of initiatives that align with LEED EBOM, but as yet these are not captured as comprehensive written guidelines or policies. Therefore, we do not qualify for this credit.
1.) In the area of water conservation. We have identified WATTS
OneFlow as our preferred method of treating domestic water. This
eliminates the need for water softener regeneration which sends a fair
amount of fresh water to drain. The main reason for us doing is this
is because it does not require the use of salt. As we discussed
earlier this significantly reduces our carbon foot print as a
consumer.

We are replacing conventional water softeners as they come up for
replacement and are specifying these in new construction.

On this same topic, we are now collecting condensation on chilled
water coils from select buildings to supplement our future irrigation
efforts.

2.) HVAC operating parameters. We do
have nonadjustable set-points for heating and cooling during the
occupied mode. We also reduce the amount of air exchange during times
that a space is unoccupied with the use of occupancy, vacancy and CO2
sensors. This coupled with our standard of shutting equipment off
during nights and weekends has significantly reduced the amount of
energy consumed by the university as a whole.

3.) HB251. We are actively engaged in multiple different efforts
that are related to House Bill 251. As you know we are charged with
reducing our energy consumption by 20% during the year of 2014, using
2004 as a base line. This is an aggressive goal but one we are
tackling with multiple different initiatives. Retro-commissioning is
a big piece of this. We are systematically going through our older,
less efficient buildings and basically giving them a tuneup. We are
calibrating the older systems and ensuring they are working as
designed. We are then looking at the design itself and seeing if it
makes sense to apply current technology to reduce energy consumption.

Another area we are addressing to reduce energy consumption is
insulation. Energy conservation is at the top or our list. If we
paid to create steam we want to conserve that energy as much as
possible until it is at the point of use. Extra
insulation was added to a great deal of the steam lines in the tunnels.
This has had a significant impact. We are also identifying steam and
hot water lines inside buildings during our retro-commissioning
efforts that need to be insulated and having that addressed.

We are also constantly maximizing our Building Automation System to
reduce energy consumption. The programming for each space and each
specific piece of equipment is unique and needs to be programmed that
way for maximum efficiency. We are systematically going
through each building and making improvements to this system on a daily
basis.

4.) On the operation side of things we are constantly trying to
increase our efficiency and effectiveness. One of the things we are
doing that has a significant impact is the planning and scheduling of
our maintenance activities. Historically we would provide the
technician with the work request and allow them to self manage the
work. They would drive out to the job and identify what parts were
required to make the repair. they would then drive back to the store
room to pick up the parts and then back to the job again. Repeat the
sequence 40,000 times a year and there is a significant amount of
waste. We are changing the way we operate so that now when we provide
the technician the work request the parts are ready and the requestor
is expecting them. We schedule the work in a manner that a technician
might only make one trip a day and make multiple repairs in one
building or one area of campus. The main reason for this is to be
more efficient and provide a better service but a significant side
note is the cost avoidance on the fuel consumption and the reduced
amount of vehicle maintenance.

Parallel to the above mentioned efficiency we have also developed a
second and third shift for building maintenance. This allows us to
perform some of the significant activities that are necessary and hard
to perform on first shift. We now can access classrooms and offices
with out needing so schedule the activity with the occupants. While
the main driver for this was efficiency improvements it is worth
noting that as a result we now need less vehicles. The vehicles are
shared from shift to shift thus reducing our overall operating cost.

On PFD's vehicles we installed idle timers to reduce the amount of time a vehicle can sit
and idle. This has had a significant impact.

The information presented here is self-reported. While AASHE staff review portions of all STARS reports and institutions are welcome to seek additional forms of review, the data in STARS reports are not verified by AASHE. If you believe any of this information is erroneous or inconsistent with credit criteria, please review the process for inquiring about the information reported by an institution or simply email your inquiry to stars@aashe.org.