Dan Hounsell: Honoring the 2014 FMD Achievement Award Winnerstest

By Dan Hounsell, Editor

November 2014

Rarely do maintenance and engineering departments get the recognition they deserve, so we created the Facility Maintenance Decisions Achievement Awards to address that oversight. Here are the 2014 award recipients:

Retrofits and Renovations

Alachua County (Fla.) A retrofit of a courthouse's HVAC system yielded annual savings of more than $20,000.

Day Kimball Healthcare, Putnam, Conn. A three-phase lighting and HVAC retrofit helped the rural healthcare organization save more than $3.7 million in energy costs.

Sustainability

Geisinger Health System, Danville, Pa. The facilities department used energy savings to fund infrastructure retrofits, lowering its facilities' costs to $1.69 per square foot and saving $10 million annually.

Munich Reinsurance America Inc., Princeton, N.J. A sustainability plan helped the company reduce electrical use by 60 percent via chiller replacements and the installation of variable-frequency drives and lighting controls.

Financial Management

Anchorage (Alaska) School District. Asked to trim custodial employee costs by $2 million annually and supply and equipment budgets by 20 percent, the maintenance and operations department developed KPIs that led to decreases in labor costs of $2.2 million.

Wake County (N.C.) Public School System. Tapping into its building automation systems during a period of extreme enrollment growth, the department held energy increases to 0.8 percent.

Personnel Management

University of Alabama. The maintenance staff addressed a shortage of skilled candidates by instituting a training program that uses on-the-job training with experienced tradesmen.

Western Michigan University. The maintenance and custodial departments collaborated to create a lighting sustainability program that designates specific custodial employees to change out lamps.

Dan Hounsell offers observations about trends in maintenance and engineering management and the evolving role of managers in facilities.

Agree? Disagree? Have something to say? We want to hear from you. Visit myfacilitiesnet.com/danhounsell, and start a conversation.