Last week Performance Solutions had the opportunity to participate in the Energy Efficiency Roundtable Event, hosted by the Kansas City Energy Project, Greater Kansas City Chamber of Commerce, and USGBC Central Plains.
Discussion was centered around an area we are passionate about: how to optimize facilities for high performance. A few topics really hit home with participants and we had to share.
ROI
Seems pretty straightforward: Return on investment. Not quite. When thinking of ROI, we look at it from a different perspective. The Performance Solutions team sees Return On Investment but also, Risk of Inaction. If you ignore the signs of equipment starting to fail, you will experience serious downtime. For those operating critical or high traffic areas, this is not something to be taken lightly.
The Myth: A New Building Doesn’t Need Recalibration
Each group we met with asked this question: a new building doesn’t need to be recalibrated? To many participants’ surprise we discussed how a new building can be out of parameters in a matter of months from being built. We see this often during change of building ownership. Often the technicians involved in setting up the controls schedule leave the facility and new maintenance staff come in. Not knowing what was originally done, the schedules go unchanged month after month causing unnecessary equipment wear.
Recommissioning and Repairing VS. Replacing Equipment
The most common solution to deferred maintenance is to replace equipment. However, replacing equipment is costly and often times unnecessary. Many pieces of equipment have a life cycle of 20 years when repaired regularly. Our team highlighted the importance of understanding the current condition of all equipment and its life cycle cost management. For more information on how we dig into current operations read our article on Understanding Your True Cost of Operations.
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