As maintenance and engineering managers focus on the effort to make their facilities more energy efficient, they can also have an affect on the bottom-line.
The Quilcene (Wash.) School District aims to make its facilities more energy efficient over the summer and has partnered with an engineering firm to map out a plan over spring break. Quilcene Superintendent Frank Redmon says the district had applied for small school modernization grants but had not been selected to receive state money, according to The Leader.
“We decided we’d try to get it done anyway,” says Redmon, noting the district put out a request for proposals from contractors and energy service companies. “We’ve prioritized those energy-efficiency measures that would have the greatest impact on student learning.
“We started with a ballpark estimate of $800,000, but we hope to knock that down quite a ways as we sharpen our pencils. We need to address the ventilation and heating in our high school building, which is the oldest structure on campus, and the HVAC control systems in the elementary school.”
In addition to making students more comfortable and removing distractions, Redmon says the district can anticipate savings on energy bills with better-designed heating and cooling systems.
“The enhanced student comfort would be reason enough to do it, to my mind, but it always helps when we can show taxpayers that we’ll be making more efficient use of their dollars,” Redmon says. Redmon intends for the energy-efficiency enhancements to benefit his students in another way, as ATS has agreed to allow the students follow their professionals during their work over spring break and summer vacation.
Ryan Berlin is digital content manager of Facilitiesnet.com.
