Issue link: http://digital.corporatepress.com/i/143540
By Jiri Skopek ESAT Under the Hood Effective management of sustainability in a campus setting presents a challenge to both campus executives and facilities managers. While sustainability ideals are now already very much part of students' mindset, the hardest work remains with facility staff, who are constantly searching for effective strategies to manage campus operations. There is a good reason to look at energy and sustainability as the capital investment—savings that they can achieve through energy conservation and other sustainability measures can help offset increasing deferred maintenance and capital renewal costs. Sustainability improvements and the associated bottom-line benefits also need to be managed and measured. The first generation of green building tools such as LEED or Green Globes has traditionally focused largely on rating a facility at a single point in time focused on aspirational goals or best practices. As sustainability becomes the new norm, the focus now is on continuous benchmarking and cost-effective asset management. This requires metrics to baseline and measure progress. APPA's Energy and Sustainability Assessment Tool The APPA Energy and Sustainability Assessment Tool (ESAT) provides a dynamic database that can be used to track key energy and sustainability performance indicators, with respect to campus management and infrastructure as well as individual buildings. Since its launch in December 2012, over 175 campuses have visited ESAT online; yet only a handful has engaged in the full assessment. The objective of this article is to explain how ESAT works and the benefits of using it as a part of the campus management process. ESAT was initially developed in 2010, through work at Carleton University, to evaluate the entire campus portfolio of 41 main buildings The project helped the facility staff to develop and test a streamlined, practical, and budget-sensitive benchmarking program, which supports a roadmap for continuous improvement for the campus. This successful pilot eventually led to an enhanced Energy and Sustainability Module, which became integrated with the APPA Facilities Performance Indicators (FPI) program. The addition of ESAT has greatly enhanced APPA's annual FPI report. FPI is the only report readily available on the costs and practices of facilities operations at educational institutions. The report is based on an annual survey of colleges, universities, K-12 organizations, and other educational entities. It allows comparisons of average costs for different types of space and Facilities Manager | july/august 2013 | 37