Jim Wilson thinks that, in their haste to make their schools modern and efficient, some school districts are installing energy management systems that are overtaxing the ability of their maintenance staffs.
Wilson owns JFW Inc., a 25-year-old project management company in Gaithersburg, Md. Most of the K-12 work he does is with private schools like Sidwell Friends, the Quaker school that President Obama’s daughters attend. Wilson says that Sidwell’s middle school has 3,000 contact points that have to be monitored, which puts a significant burden on the facility’s maintenance staff.
He says energy codes keep raising the complexity level of what’s being installed. Maintenance crews are having trouble keeping up with EMS technology that has jumped by leaps and bounds over the past 10 years. “We didn’t have all of these [air exchange] requirements that we do now,” he says.
Wilson recounts one school’s head of maintenance who was so flummoxed by the facility’s systems that he operated the building as if it were occupied 24/7 so he didn’t have to deal with the controls. “I got a call from the school asking why its electric bills were running sky high,” says Wilson.
Jim Deluge, a Project Executive with Turner Construction, believes that maintenance staffs have a responsibility to “catch up” to the sophistication level of these new EMS systems. On the flip side, HMC Architects’ Sandy Kate thinks problems could be reduced if maintenance staff were included in early planning meetings before construction begins.
School district officials who recognize this potential problem but still want state-of-the-art operating systems will sometimes outsource the monitoring. DRL Group’s Jim French says his firm’s engineers have the ability to remotely monitor a client’s systems and let that school know almost immediately if anything’s askew.
“You have to be careful not to get too exotic,” says Fanning Howey’s Chuck Tyler. The design firm recently worked with a school district in Belleville, Mich., that demanded the systems for a 320,000-sf high school be simple enough for the district’s current maintenance personnel to manage.
Wilson contends that some schools simply don’t need the high-octane systems they specify. One project he worked on called for a $180,000 EMS. What ultimately got installed, he says, was a $40,000 system “that can do pretty much what’s needed in the building” and matches the skill set of the maintenance team.
When school districts demand the latest and greatest, they need to think about how those choices will impact the district’s facilities employees. On one recent project in Connecticut, Wilson had the contractor conduct six months of training sessions for the maintenance staff. “You can’t learn this stuff in two days of classes.”
Related Stories
Giants 400 | Sep 1, 2022
Top 70 K-12 School Engineering + EA Firms for 2022
AECOM, Jacobs, WSP, and CMTA top the ranking of the nation's largest K-12 school sector engineering and engineering/architecture (EA) firms for 2022, as reported in Building Design+Construction's 2022 Giants 400 Report.
Giants 400 | Sep 1, 2022
Top 160 K-12 School Architecture + AE Firms for 2022
PBK, DLR Group, Huckabee, and Stantec head the ranking of the nation's largest K-12 school sector architecture and architecture/engineering (AE) firms for 2022, as reported in Building Design+Construction's 2022 Giants 400 Report.
| Aug 24, 2022
California’s investment in ‘community schools’ could transform K-12 education
California has allocated $4.1-billion to develop ‘community schools’ that have the potential to transform K-12 education.
Giants 400 | Aug 22, 2022
Top 90 Construction Management Firms for 2022
CBRE, Alfa Tech, Jacobs, and Hill International head the rankings of the nation's largest construction management (as agent) and program/project management firms for nonresidential and multifamily buildings work, as reported in Building Design+Construction's 2022 Giants 400 Report.
Giants 400 | Aug 22, 2022
Top 200 Contractors for 2022
Turner Construction, STO Building Group, Whiting-Turner, and DPR Construction top the ranking of the nation's largest general contractors, CM at risk firms, and design-builders for nonresidential buildings and multifamily buildings work, as reported in Building Design+Construction's 2022 Giants 400 Report.
Giants 400 | Aug 22, 2022
Top 45 Engineering Architecture Firms for 2022
Jacobs, AECOM, WSP, and Burns & McDonnell top the rankings of the nation's largest engineering architecture (EA) firms for nonresidential buildings and multifamily buildings work, as reported in Building Design+Construction's 2022 Giants 400 Report.
Giants 400 | Aug 22, 2022
Top 80 Engineering Firms for 2022
Kimley-Horn, Tetra Tech, Langan, and NV5 head the rankings of the nation's largest engineering firms for nonresidential buildings and multifamily buildings work, as reported in Building Design+Construction's 2022 Giants 400 Report.
Giants 400 | Aug 21, 2022
Top 110 Architecture/Engineering Firms for 2022
Stantec, HDR, HOK, and Skidmore, Owings & Merrill top the rankings of the nation's largest architecture engineering (AE) firms for nonresidential and multifamily buildings work, as reported in Building Design+Construction's 2022 Giants 400 Report.
Giants 400 | Aug 20, 2022
Top 180 Architecture Firms for 2022
Gensler, Perkins and Will, HKS, and Perkins Eastman top the rankings of the nation's largest architecture firms for nonresidential and multifamily buildings work, as reported in Building Design+Construction's 2022 Giants 400 Report.
Giants 400 | Aug 19, 2022
2022 Giants 400 Report: Tracking the nation's largest architecture, engineering, and construction firms
Now 46 years running, Building Design+Construction's 2022 Giants 400 Report rankings the largest architecture, engineering, and construction firms in the U.S. This year a record 519 AEC firms participated in BD+C's Giants 400 report. The final report includes more than 130 rankings across 25 building sectors and specialty categories.