Total Lifecycle Management
Minimal cost added up front
Process knowledge and new technologies have driven the first-cost premium of a high performance building to a nominal amount. In many cases, there may be no additional cost at all. According to U.S. Green Building Council findings, incremental construction costs for green buildings range from 0.66 percent to 6.5 percent, depending on building type.
Any added cost is quickly recovered. According to the U.S. Green Building Council, the lifecycle energy and operational efficiencies of high performance green buildings yield savings between 20 percent and 50 percent per year compared with conventional buildings.
Broader opportunities
Today the focus extends to existing facilities, where there is even greater opportunity for improvement. Over time, operating costs generally account for 60 – 85 percent of building lifecycle costs, significantly more than the original construction costs. Considering a typical building has an occupied life of fifty to seventy-five years, or even longer, existing buildings that are operating with aging technology and outdated practices offer much room for improvement.
Even buildings that were originally designed to high performance standards such as LEED® and Energy Star® must be properly managed and maintained to sustain the advantages. According to researchers at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) who studied nearly 650 facilities to assess the impact of commissioning on building performance, “…most buildings drift, often ‘invisibly,’ to lower performance over time, indicating a need for ongoing performance monitoring and fault detection and diagnosis during routine operation.”
In 2009, ASHRAE, the American Society of Heating, Refrigeration and Air Conditioning Engineers, concluded that a poorly designed building operated and maintained effectively will often outperform a well-designed building with poor operating and maintenance practices.
Shifting attitudes
Raising performance in existing buildings requires a shift in attitudes about day-to-day maintenance and operations from reactive—or “as needed”—to a technology-enabled, pre-emptive approach which:
- Embraces predictive building maintenance strategies
- Establishes and maintains sound operating metrics
- Adopts performance-based service concepts
LEED® for Existing Buildings and similar programs provide guidelines for raising performance in existing structures. The standards set by Energy Star, ASHRAE, the Department of Energy (DOE), the Collaborative for High Performance Schools (CHPS) and other organizations are generally used to define acceptable performance parameters.
