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There are many benefits to EnergyWitness™ and the
IDS program beyond those defined in the
financial
model. Some will have a measurable financial
component over time, while other benefits are more
qualitative than quantitative.
What we see repeatedly is that working in a world
with data changes facilities operations. Highly
interactive access to operational information is
required to dramatically alter business processes,
but once that happens, the benefits are great:
Improved Building Comfort and Indoor Air
Quality
Despite the current attention on skyrocketing
energy costs, comfort and IAQ remain of the utmost
importance. You have a contract, whether explicit or
implicit, with your customers to provide
safe, comfortable, healthy conditions. EnergyWitness
provides the information to manage comfort (and its
correlated costs) far better—orders of magnitude
better—than your control system or other energy
management tools.
Become Proactive—Not Reactive
Today’s lack of immediately accessible
information limits you to operate reactively. But,
change the information access equation and you have
a systematic way to transform into a proactive
organization. Spot issues before they affect
comfort, make better decisions, and fix real
problems instead of just treating symptoms.
Reduction of Hot/Cold Calls
Improved comfort and proactively addressing
issues will reduce the number of hot/cold calls. The
data will show technicians comfort levels relative
to desired conditions. You can determine the cause
and solution to the problem through the data,
whether a setpoint needs adjusting or there is a
sticky heating valve. Again, you cannot accomplish
this with other systems because the data is usually
not there and/or the time to review it is
prohibitive.
Customer Management & Department Credibility
EnergyWitness is a powerful communications tool.
It’s a new mechanism to show your customers
operational (comfort and cost) information to forge
better alliances with them. With better
responsiveness, fewer comfort complaints, and
information to share with customers, the facilities
team will gain credibility. The information provided
by EnergyWitness is unparalleled in the industry.
Budget Justification
While on one hand you are keeping customers
comfortable, on the other you strive to meet the
cost curtailment demands of upper management and
finance. Most, engineering justifications are based
on theory, as the acquisition of facts is too time
consuming. With IDS you’ll have an extraordinarily
powerful tool to justify budgets—with measured
facts, not estimates. You can strengthen you
negotiating position and credibility with finance.
Unparalleled Accountability
EnergyWitness will enable you to hold
control companies, engineering firms, commissioning
agents, construction contractors, and employees
accountable for their work. You will have facts to
measure the work of outside vendors and employees in
a fashion never before available. No more hand
waving and unsupported claims—if the emperor has no
clothes on, it will be obvious for all to see.
Exploit More Building Automation System Capabilities
Most organizations cannot fully exploit the
capabilities of their control systems for the simple
reason that without information, they are too hard
to manage. It is virtually impossible to see how
they really operate. Now you can handle increasingly
complex BAS strategies effectively, for example,
deferred load management or trinary occupancy logic
(occupied, unoccupied, and standby). You can
actually use all the sophisticated capabilities your
BAS vendor sold you.
Quality of Design
Most of today’s mechanical systems are over designed
resulting in extra energy costs, less than
satisfactory comfort, and excessive maintenance
costs for the life of the equipment. This occurs
because design engineers don’t have the data to
design accurately. While design costs can be
lowered, resulting in a financial savings, a completely separate
benefit is the ability of design engineers to
provide better, “right sized” designs.
Construction Avoidance
Some construction
projects can be completely avoided with
operational fixes. Without information, engineers
can’t see that an operational solution exists and
therefore design construction solutions. This is certainly
not a factor in every construction project, but when
it does occur, you can waste millions of dollars and
spend months on a completely unnecessary effort.
Bring Buildings On Line Sooner
Construction is nearly done but there are still a
few months to go before the building is commissioned
and ready for occupancy. There are financial
benefits to speeding up the commissioning process,
but that does not
account for the other benefits of getting the
building on line sooner—new facilities, relief of
overcrowding, or just coming in on or ahead of
schedule.
Process Changes
In most businesses, process changes are required to
trigger significant productivity improvements.
Facilities are no different. You can change
processes for hot/cold calls, preventative
maintenance, and reactive maintenance to name a few.
Accessibility of information makes it possible to
revamp how groups interact and work together, how
efforts are prioritized, and how the processes
themselves are streamlined.
Internal Communications
We’ve mentioned the benefits of better
communications with your customers, finance, and
upper management. Internal facilities communications
benefits as well. Everyone, from each part of the
group, has a common basis and language to discuss
operations. You can use it as a management tool, for
example, to show an area mechanic how an air handler
efficiency and operating cost improves as a result
of maintenance they just performed.
See How You Can Benefit
To see a demonstration of how you can start realizing these
benefits, give us a call at 617-744-1091, or send an e-mail to
info@intdatsys.com.
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