Facilities maintenance and engineering managers take steps all year round to prepare their buildings for extreme weather. Unfortunately, when the weather arrives, it immediately exposes the shortfalls in these efforts. The hot weather that has plagued the nation in recent weeks is no different.
In Tucson, facilities departments with the Tucson Unified School District have more than 520 open maintenance tickets requesting air conditioning repair, and nearly 400 of those were submitted in recent weeks, according to KGUN. Greg Meier, the district's director of facilities, said despite having a full team, "It's a lot of real estate," with 231 square miles of campuses to maintain across the district. Facilities has nine HVAC technicians on staff and four partnered contractors to fulfill air conditioning needs.
Technicians were working non-stop — even through weekends — to clear the hundreds of work orders, prioritizing the high-traffic areas of schools first, like classrooms and cafeterias. Meier said that the age of the cooling systems poses issues, and they are made worse by the extreme temperatures.
In Austin, Texas, HVAC issues have plagued schools for years, and this summer has been no different when it comes to taking steps to keep schools cool.
“We have to go to rental equipment, use emergency funds, some of those pieces of equipment are $10,000 a month,” says Michael Mann, the district’s executive director of construction management.
Last November, voters approved a historic $2.44 billion bond package, according to KXAN. The money will go toward modernizing schools, adding new technology and addressing HVAC issues, which are a high priority.
“Over the summer we have about 15 schools, 16 schools that have HVAC repairs that will be completed,” Mann says. These fixes come as Austin is seeing record temperatures, but not all the work will be done by the time school starts.
“We have another five (schools) that are in the bidding process,” Mann said. “We have plans for another 15 or so for next summer.”
Dan Hounsell is senior editor for the facilities market. He has more than 30 years of experience writing about facilities maintenance, engineering and management.
