Facility Masters — Training for Educational Facility Professionals

Roger Young sits down with 3 school districts and an industry pro from SchoolDude to discuss the importance of benchmarking energy conservation efforts.  You can hear what Roger learned from each conservation and get some great take aways for your own school or district by downloading or listening to one of our free podcasts below!

Mike Ficalora of SchoolDude on Benchmarking (9) Conservation Series: Energy Conservation -Thoughts on Benchmarking from an industry pro.

John Dufay of Albuquerque Public Schools on Benchmarking (2) Conservation Series: Energy Conservation - Benchmarking at Albuquerque Public Schools.

Lisa Randall of Sante Fe Public Schools on Benchmarking (27) Conservation Series: Energy Conservation - Hear from Sante Fe Public Schools on how they Benchmark energy conservation.

Sue Pierce of Washing Elementary District on Energy Benchmarking (1) Conservation Series: Energy Conservation - Sue Pierce discusses the importance of Benchmarking with Roger Young.

Last week our blog discussed the importance of getting the entire school community involved to ensure success with your energy conservation plan.  To that note, we have gotten a few others involved to share with us just effective getting others involved can be.  Take a listen to our latest podcasts featuring:

John Dufay, Director of Maintenance and Operations at Albuquerque Public Schools
Lisa Randall, Energy Conservation Program Coordinator at Santa Fe Public Schools
Sue Pierce, Director of Facility Planning and Energy at Washington Elementary District and Owner of Pierce Energy Planning

Getting Others Involved With Your Energy Conversation Efforts to Ensure Success:

• Energy Conservation: Lisa Randall, Energy Conservation Program Coordinator for Santa Fe Public Schools Discusses Getting Others Involved (52) Conservation Series: Energy Conservation – Getting Others Involved
• Energy Conservation: John Dufay, Director of Maintenance & Operations at Albuquerque Public Schools Talks Getting Others Involved (2) Conservation Series: Energy Conservation - Getting Others Involved
• Energy Conservation: Sue Pierce and Roger Young Discuss Getting Others Involved (47) Conservation Series: Energy Conservation - Getting Others Involved

Managing energy consumption is a challenge. Without faculty and community involvement, energy conservation plans won’t succeed, but simple programs elicit high involvement. Sue Pierce, Director of Facility Planning and Energy at Washington Elementary District in Arizona and owner of Pierce Energy Planning consulting firm and Roger Young, Executive Director of Facility Masters, have recently hosted a series of conversations discussing best practices for energy conservation programs, including how to track energy data and how to create your energy plan.  Now you can read and listen to their thoughts on getting others involved—the next step for effective energy conservation programs in schools.

Who should you get involved in your program?

• Principal of each school
• Teachers and faculty
• Students

Let’s first cover principals.  Sue mentions it is critical to get principals involved because it will end there if the principal has not bought in. Also, ask the principal which faculty or staff is excited about the program. Once you have some names, meet with them. Discuss the campus, students, and brainstorm about how to get buy-in from the campus at large.

Faculty: The key is weaving energy conservation into teachers’ curriculum. They can use sustainability as a subject or lesson plan in core standards and other subjects. Teachers can weave energy conservation into science lessons when studying electricity and other related topics. Sue adds teachers often need to be trained on these topics—setting up training sessions with experts in the school system is beneficial.

Students: “My favorite to get involved are the students,” Sue said. “They are the most excited and can motivate teachers and the outside community.” Sue has various ideas depending on students’ age. For older age children, using energy units in the curriculum has been successful in the schools Sue has worked with. She recommends bringing in guest speakers on energy and assigning hands-on projects, such as energy audits. For elementary schools, she recommends implementing ‘Energy Police.’ This works by giving the Energy Police tickets to issue when they see something wrong, like a light left on when a classroom is empty. Students become engaged and feel empowered to write tickets. “This also creates awareness among teachers when they begin getting tickets!”

Sue has many success stories, but shared an example illustrating how involvement alone can make HUGE differences. A school’s new principal was a cheerleader for the district’s energy efforts. The principal helped train the staff and put together a student-run green team. By the next month, energy consumption had gone down 15% at that location, and continued to reduce energy by 15% or more each month consistently for a year.

Download the Free Podcast here!

Our last blog and podcast discussed the importance of tracking energy and utility data. This is at the core of any energy conservation program. Once you have energy tracking software in place, you can develop your initial plan. Sue Pierce, Director of Facility Planning and Energy at Washington Elementary District in Arizona and owner of Pierce Energy Planning consulting firm, and Roger Young, Executive Director of Facility Masters, provide tips and steps needed to develop a plan in their most recent podcast.

In every school or district Sue has worked with, she recognizes the importance of developing a well though-out energy conservation plan and writing it down! Without a plan in writing, it is easy to backslide and often won’t continue through the long-term. Here are Sue’s recommended steps for writing your plan:

1. Ensure your energy policy has support from the very top: Use a top-down approach.
   Go to your Superintendent and lay out your vision and goals. You should have a short-term goal and long-term goal. For example, make a one year goal to reduce consumption by 10% and a five year goal to reduce consumption by 40%. Once you have commitment from the board and/or Superintendent, it will be easier to get buy-in.
2. Take the policy to each school and principal: Ensure they are on board.
   Explain the policy, short-term goals, long-term goals and support you have from the Board and Super’s office.
3. Create energy teams in each school: Use teams to help create a plan.
   Choose the people for each team carefully. They need to be excited about energy conservation and know the school and district well. Only include items in the plan that will work based on the operations and culture of the school and district.
4. Write your plan: Use resources to help guide you.
   There are resources available that provide templates for energy plans. Sue Pierce has templates as well as checklists to ensure you are on target.

Though this seems like a lot, Sue advises not to become discouraged or overwhelmed. “An energy plan can start with behavior only,” says Sue. Simply teaching students and faculty about energy awareness are what we like to call the ‘low-hanging fruit’ of reducing energy consumption. Behavioral changes alone can go a long way and require no outside companies, complex programs, or new equipment.

Washington Elementary District uses SchoolDude UtilityDirect for energy tracking software.

Related Resources

 Conversation Series Podcast:
Developing Your Energy Management Program

Part I: An Energy Conservation Plan Starts with Effectively Tracking Your Utility Data

Energy is one of the largest controllable costs for schools, especially for K-12 budgets, but you have to attack energy in a smart way to reduce costs. Roger Young, the Executive Director for Facility Masters, spoke with Sue Pierce, Director of Facility Planning and Energy at Washington Elementary District in Arizona and owner of Pierce Energy Planning consulting firm, about how to tackle energy in schools—including how to track utilities, how to develop an energy conservation plan, and how to set benchmarks and goals to measure your success.

Today, we’ll cover why and how to track energy data: step #1 of implementing an energy efficiency and conservation plan.

If you don’t have data, you can’t measure the success of your program. In Sue’s Arizona school district, she began by taking all her utility bills and loading the data into software that could organize and track the information for her. She chose UtilityDirect from SchoolDude to capture load and cost of her utilities. Sue recommends finding energy tracking software that can:

• Track various types of utilities (electricity, gas, water, etc.)
• Handle a large amount of data that can be entered on a granular level — divided by building
• Compare results over time and compare building to building
• Produce robust, customizable reports that can be used in various ways

Sue began by inputting the last one to two years of bills establishing a baseline for comparison. Going forward, she continued to input her monthly utility bills to monitor usage and report on the information. “You must know the information to make any changes. Tracking energy usage is at the heart of my energy plans,” said Sue. She runs reports regularly for individual schools in her district, the board, the community, and even the media. Reporting allows the data to be shared in real-time so all constituents are aware of energy usage whether higher or lower, how much the district is saving, and actions that can be taken to combat usage spikes.

Tracking energy data is the key to:

1. Create a baseline—how much energy is used before a plan or program is put in place. This is how you measure results and success.
2. Build awareness—awareness is critical for an effective program. Huge savings can be obtained simply with behavioral changes. Awareness breeds behavioral change.

Now, you can start tracking energy too. Next time, we’ll cover how to develop an energy conservation plan, the next step in a sustainable, cost-saving energy efficiency and conservation program.

Download the Podcast! 

Having a formal process for Key Control, from assignment and distribution to inventory and retrieval, is essential to the security of your educational organization and the safety of administrators, students, faculty/teachers and staff.

In a recent discussion on the Facility Masters Listserv, our peers shared their best practices and key control processes.

My office manages keys for 8 buildings, and we have around 400 keys. We utilize software called “Key Organizer” which is very simple yet works very well for documenting the quantity of keys in storage, which keys go to which buildings/rooms/etc., who has which keys, also has a very simple key expiry date which notifies you when the key is due to be returned.

We have all requests go through my office, and one of my assistants handles all the key processing, but all key issues require my signature.

This system also provides an excellent way of seeing at any given time who has access to any space in our facility by showing who has a key to that room, who has a section master, who has a regional master, and in the end who has a grand master. This has been extremely valuable in certain incidents on campus.
Eric Roosma – Director of Facilities and Safety – Kuyper College, MI 

We use Best key system for our master key control. All keys are kept at my office. They sign for the keys when they get them (at my office). We do not have them turn the keys in for the summer because we have card access, and I control the access with the cards.
Ed Consalo – Derry Township School District, PA

We keyed locks a little different to cut down confusion, cost and to keep it simple. 

               1. One master key fits all locks and a “very few” are issued.

               2. The other master key fits classroom doors only. Teachers/administrative staff only.

We do not ask for them during the summer for returning teachers. They are responsible for the keys as well as the key cards. Departing teachers and staff are required to turn in both keys and keycards.  Not turned in…we charge. Lost keys and keycards, we charge. The option to pay to rekey the facility is always open…briefed to all…it helps!
Roland Jenkins – Facilities Director – Trinity Episcopal School, NC

We have the Best system, and we track keys via computer as they are assigned. Teachers are required to keep keys in their mailboxes at the end of the day, and during the summer the secretaries re-confirm the keys assigned. If a teacher leaves or is moved to another building the keys are returned to inventory.

One other thing I have done is to let the teachers know that if they are moving from one room to another for the next year within the same building, their lock core will travel with them so there is no reason to return or reassign keys. This places the security of their room squarely in their hands so they do not try and get keys copied for other people to use. This system has been in place for about 8 years now and is working well.
David Martin – Eden CSD, NY

We use a simple spreadsheet to track the issue, loss and re-issue of keys. With 25 buildings and the process of placing each lock onto the BEST lock system, it is critical to be able to maintain an accurate database. The process includes a manager’s oversight, our admin assistant to maintain and update the various daily entries, and the employee who actually cuts the keys. By eliminating access from the rest of the community and the other Facilities employees, we have been able to manage the system, avoid multiple input errors, and have an account for each asset.

We have also instituted a policy, that regardless of who loses a key, they will be charged $25.00 for a lost key. With students, a lost key immediately calls for the replacement of the lock core and issue of two new keys again for the charge of $25.00 for the student who lost the key. With Faculty and Staff, the impending charge often produces the “lost” key.
Corrado Paramithiotti – Director of Facilities Planning & Operations – Landmark College, VT

Both of our Listservs have been buzzing with suggestions about recovering the cost for custodial overtime for school related events.  Our members shared their best practices and reasons why you should consider charging for custodial overtime even for events for which you’re not charging a rental fee.

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“We charge all groups a custodial fee, regardless of whether we charge them a rental fee/event fee for use of the space, so we don’t lose money on our hard costs. For private groups, we charge $50/hr for custodial fees (which includes a buffer for overhead and overtime). For groups in our ‘inner circle’, we charge custodial fees as cost based on the individual’s hourly rate (plus taxes).”
Lauren Laio – Facility Rentals – The Rashi School, MA

“We charge school groups an overtime custodial cost for events on weekends, to cover the incremental costs. It runs about $30/hour (salary and benefits) and ends up encouraging school groups to have their events on weeknights.”
Amy Cullen – Community Service Coordinator – Shenendehowa Central School District, NY

“I usually  bring in custodial substitutes/part-time to cover that particular event, or I flex the custodian’s schedule to avoid the overtime. There are occasions where I have no choice but to pay for the overtime because our substitute list is really short. Believe it or not, my custodians like to have “days off” during the weekdays.”
Erica Saldivar – Maintenance Manager – Anthony, TX

Thanks to Janet Hurley, MPA, of the Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service School IPM team for sharing this helpful guideline document for designing educational facilities with pest intrusion prevention in mind.
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For years I have been asked – are there any IPM guidelines out there to help me with constructing a new building. I am so pleased to announce this new Pest Prevention By Design Guidelines document from Dr. Chris Geiger and Caroline Cox. I think you will find this document most helpful.

Pest Prevention By Design Guidelines is a new free resource for designing buildings to be resistant to common pests, such as rats, mice, pigeons and cockroaches. San Francisco’s Integrated Pest Management Program initiated the project after initial pesticide use reductions achieved by the program began to level off. Program participants suspected poor design was a key barrier to further reductions.

The resource aims to compile the current body of knowledge about preventing pest problems through building design and construction. Pest management professionals, architects, engineers, researchers, educators, green building experts, IPM consultants and public agency experts contributed.

The Pest Prevention By Design Guidelines are posted on the Department’s website.

The project was funded by the US Centers for Disease Control, coordinated by the Center for Environmental Health was contracted to coordinate the project, and the guidelines were reviewed by the International Code Council and a national, cross-sector team of experts.

Janet A. Hurley, MPA
Extension Program Specialist II – School IPM
Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service