Facility Departments Honored for Accomplishments
Smithsonian Institution
Office of Facilities Management and Reliability
The goal was to develop a comprehensive strategic plan aligned with the Smithsonian's strategic plan.
- The plan has four goals: "Care for Smithsonian," "Support OFMR Staff," "Commit to Customers," and "Advance Best Practices." Having helped create goals and measures, employees have been motivated to meet goals.
- Metrics — which include safety, customer satisfaction, productivity, trend of trouble codes, facility condition, turnover, unscheduled downtime and total cost of ownership — are presented to executive leadership quarterly.
Texas Children's Hospital
Facilities Operations
The goal was to build a fully functional outdoor emergency center space to quickly isolate suspected cases of H1N1. The deadline: 8 hours.
- Initial planning began April 29, 2009; the project was completed the next day.
- Wait time in the emergency room fell from 5 hours, 11 minutes, to 3 hours. The percentage of patients who left without being seen fell from 18 percent to 1.2 percent.
University of Arizona
Facilities Management
The goal was to upgrade the chilled water system for the 180 buildings on the main campus and Arizona Health Sciences Center campus — roughly 13 million sq. ft. of space.
- All campus chilled water pumping is done with 11 pumps. Differential pressure last summer was only 14 pounds.
- Chilled water temperature was lowered from 45 degrees to 40 degrees. Delta T has been as high as 20 degrees.
- In 2008-09, chilled water was distributed at .683 kW/ton (including all cooling tower and ancillary equipment), and only 13,000 gallons of water were used for make-up.
University of Illinois — Urbana Champaign
Retrocommissioning
The goal is to retrocommission 2 million sq. ft. of space each year.
- Metered energy savings have been 241,958 million Btu over the last two years.
- In one lab, encouragement to close fume hood sashes saved $30,000 in one month. In one office building, willingness to schedule air handling systems cut building electricity use in half, saving 13,106 million Btu.
University of West Georgia
Campus Planning and Facilities
The goal was to create a Lean Six Sigma initiative to support school- and system-wide efforts to improve business process efficiency.
- Initiative contributed to a 12.9 percent drop in average monthly Btu use from July 2004 through June 2009.
- Work order effectiveness increased 21.7 percent from July 1, 2008 to July 1, 2009.
- Compared to the previous year, gasoline consumption was reduced 10.5 percent and diesel fuel use fell 14.7 percent, producing a 24.5 percent cost savings ($17,525).
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