One of the best assets a facility manager can possess is the willingness to learn from peers. When reducing energy costs and greenhouse emissions in their institutional and commercial facilities is the goal, the potential solutions are endless.
As part of its Better Buildings Challenge, the Department of Energy (DOE) has set up the Better Buildings Solution Center to help managers access projects from across the country that peers have completed to meet their energy saving goals. More than 3,000 solutions have been posted to the site from across the country from facilities ranging from retail stores to small school districts.
At the website, managers can search for facilities similar to theirs and learn what their peers are doing and emulate them when it makes sense.
“If you go to the Solution Center, and if you’re at a school district, and you want to see that there are other people who may not look just like you, or maybe there’s a commercial office building that may have the same problem you have, and you can see the solutions they deployed, that might be things you’ve never thought of doing but might be just as germane for you,” says Maria Vargas, the director of the DOE’s Better Buildings Challenge.
“That’s the thing we’re trying to do with Better Buildings, is learn from each other. It’s really allowing networking and sharing of solutions with the idea being if everyone has to figure (energy savings) out on their own, we’re never going to get there.”
