Heat waves, Perfect theme for today! Thanks Jory. We all have air conditioning, right? We live in Columbia, South Carolina…of course we do! We are not strangers to these summer time heatwaves. Ironically, my new job deals directly with the heat. With this new role, I am not only making people comfortable, but ultimately helping companies put more money to their bottom line. My intention with this talk is that you clearly understand how Total Comfort Solutions is different and is helping optimize hundreds of buildings and budgets…even during these waves of heat.
Businesses are faced with many challenges in today’s marketplace, impacting not only the way their business operates, but the comfort and productivity of their occupants. The trends I’m seeing in the marketplace are:
- Rising energy costs
- Shrinking resources
- Decreased funding
- Aging buildings and infrastructure
- Unpredictable operating budgets
- And Reduced building efficiency
The solutions I’m primarily proposing include proactive and preventative maintenance. We work with businesses across the southeast to reduce their owning and operating costs with the goal of making buildings more efficient, safe, and sustainable. The energy usage of commercial buildings has an enormous impact on our world today. Environmental issues, the escalating cost of energy, increased economic challenges, and social responsibility are all at the forefront of public and private initiatives.
Our approach is different than what most people think. Most people start out thinking I work for just another run-of-the-mill HVAC company and often try to put me in that box… as a commodity. However, that is simply not the case. My approach is to systematically examine every aspect of a building’s operating costs, evaluating what they are spending today, seeking out inefficiencies and clearly identifying areas for improvements.
Did you know energy represents 30% of a typical building’s costs and is a property’s single largest operating expense? Half of that energy cost is directly contributed to heating and cooling the place. According to the EPA, 30% of all the energy consumed in buildings is used inefficiently or unnecessarily. What a waste!
The beautiful part about my new job at Total Comfort Solutions is that I get to help clients:
- Reduce owning and operating costs
- Improve equipment reliability and uptime
- Increase building comfort and indoor air quality
- Enhance responsiveness and service
- And Increase energy efficiency and sustainability
Typically, the people who partner with us value uptime and reliability and they recognize the business costs or the cost on the business when systems go down. The differentiator is how we do maintenance. Our maintenance process is very thorough, and we do it for uptime and reliability. Our business model is set up to make money on the maintenance agreements, not the emergency calls and equipment replacement projects. Most companies ironically get rewarded when they do poor maintenance, and the equipment tears up because they get to make the service call and emergency installation or repair. To be proactive in keeping the systems up and running help clients get extended life out of the equipment, often times far past their life expectancy.
My job is to look for waste when working with a new client. I focus my efforts on the entire Building Performance instead of just HVAC alone. I do an energy benchmark on aging facilities by looking at their past 13 months of power bills. I take their square footage and benchmark them against other buildings in that vertical. That means for example if they are a church, I compare, or “benchmark”, the energy spends and their square feet against national averages for churches with similar spaces. It is a powerful tool to tell if the building is operating efficiently in the green or expensively in the red. My goal is to see if I can lower owning and operating costs.
The longer people go with the reactive approach, something is going to break, and it will finally breakdown most likely during the middle of a heat wave. We take care of about 800 buildings in SC, NC and GA. Our goal is to make buildings work and work efficiently. Its amazing to me that “the basics” such as making sure coils are clean, belts are aligned and running smoothly, not causing drag on the system and that filters are change on a quarterly basis alone can contribute to a ten to thirty percent savings in energy spend. If something breaks, we cover it with the Guaranteed Professional Maintenance program.
People are often excited to hear about our newer, “phase two” offerings. Phase 2 deals with drilling deeper into energy cost savings with LED lights, motion sensors, smart controls, and even solar power. However, while all those sounds wonderful and exciting, we must remember that 50% of commercial buildings energy spend is directly contributed to Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning. So, let’s first deal with these heat waves by getting these mechanical environmental systems stabilized and operating as efficiently and sustainably as possible. Phase 1 is getting more buildings on a quarterly Guaranteed Professional Maintenance program.
