[music] Wayne: I've come to realize that there's a
symbolic advantage that comes from this that makes it a better place to work, a place that
we're all proud of, because the place that we work is really consistent with our values.
We had a building that was 30 years old.
It was starting to age.
We were needing to consider all kinds of replacements in the building.
That really was beginning to come to ahead in about 2008, 2009, 2010.
What drove this was our bills were going up for maintenance.
Our bills were going up for power, and for gas, and for water.
We wanted to bring those into line.
We wanted to bring the building back into the modern era.
What we had was a great coming together of two needs, the need to do replacement and
the executive orders about sustainable buildings.
In that timeframe, we were able to put those two together, and do some great work on our
building.
The Provo Area Office needed to be assessed because all buildings over 5,000 square feet
needed to be assessed.
We'd already budgeted quite a bit of money to do retrofitting.
That money that we'd already budgeted provided the seed money, then, to receive some additional
funds that were backing up the sustainable building effort.
That's really the way that we were able to get it done.
The guiding principles are governmentwide guidance for the construction of new buildings,
for the upgrade of existing buildings, that guide us not only in our construction, or
remodeling efforts, or replacement efforts, but also in the way that we do business in
terms of procurement, in terms of waste management.
They've been very helpful to us in this effort, particularly with upgrading the building,
upgrading the building's systems.
Shane: Utah ranks as one of the driest states in the nation.
To make better use of what limited water is available, the Provo Area Office decided to
go with a less water consumptive design in the irrigation system and the landscaping.
For landscaping, we decided to switch out the grassy areas that we had here.
We had large, grassy areas in the front and sides of the building, and in the back, and
replaced that with xeriscaping.
For the irrigation system, we switched out what was sprinkler heads that watered large
areas for the grass with a drip irrigation system.
These measures were used to reduce the amount of water that we were using.
During the summer months, we were using about a million gallons of water, which would be
equivalent to you take a swimming pool that's 267 feet long by 50 feet wide by 10 feet deep.
That's the amount of water we were using each month.
Wayne: In addition to the folks who made up the team the team that was responsible for
the changes that we've made to the building we tapped a wide range of other capabilities
that we have in this office to help us with our effort.
We have a canal automation team.
This is a group that does innovative work in terms of automating canals in a low cost
way.
It's that team that designed our rain capture system.
They relied upon our construction crew to bring in the heavy equipment operators to
do that work.
It's really, even beyond the team, been a collaborative effort.
Scott: Starting with about five or six years ago, we replaced the roof.
The roof needed some maintenance.
In part of that replacement, we looked at energy efficiency options.
One of the first things that we did was reducing the energy demands on the building by changing
out the roof, which added a white, reflective coating, and then also added in insulation
to the roof.
There are these wave designs that are built into the roof, provide aesthetically pleasing
values from the outside.
Also, it allows natural light into the building with the windows.
It causes some challenges with the heating, because this warm air during the winter then
rises into these higher portions of the building.
These higher portions are not everywhere in the building.
You have a temperature differential that's really warm in these higher areas.
The chillers, they have a refrigerant that's in the system.
Those chillers, it's a selfcontained system with the piping and the chilled coils that
contain the refrigerant.
It goes out to the west side of the building, where these new chiller compressors are located.
That's where the fluid is basically recycled through the system on a continual basis to
provide the cool air for the building.
Previously, we had a single large boiler.
It has been replaced with two high efficiency, smaller boilers so that they can operate independently
as needed based on the heating demands of the building.
One of the really important aspects of changing out the LED lights from the fluorescents was
the actual controls for these.
The lights in the building previously were operated on an antiquated timing system.
We'd had people in offices that would have lights turn off intermittently.
Part of the process of doing this, and improving the lighting system in the building, was to
put in a new control system that would allow the lights to be controlled based on occupancy.
The lights also have the additional feature that we'd planned for, knowing that we were
going to go to LED lights, which have the capability to dim.
We installed sensors and relays that would allow dimming capabilities based on available
daylight.
Lights, often times in the building now, will be off if there is sufficient light from the
windows outside.
The solar panels, the project there entailed installing up to what the city would allow
for the Provo city requirements.
They would allow up to 25 kilowatts of power that we could provide.
The motivation for us to install that was energy reduction, and to provide a clean,
renewable energy source here for the building, and to meet the guiding principles.
We piggybacked off of the landscaping and xeriscaping project that was done.
At the same time as they were removing the grass in the back of our building, we installed
108 solar panels to provide the 25 kilowatts worth of power.
Ran their conduits and the necessary wiring into the building, and it all ties into the
grid through the city's distribution system.
There's a net meter that was installed as part of that.
Currently, with the system that we have, on a nice, cool, sunny day, we'll provide up
to about 24 kilowatts of power on the net after the efficiencies of the solar panels.
The system itself, the inverters, there's three inverters that are installed as part
of the solar system.
The inverters are telling us that we have reduced our CO2 emissions by 140,000 pounds
at this point.
We have seen a reduction in our utility bills in conjunction with the solar panels, the
HVAC system improvements, the lighting improvements.
We've reduced our energy bills anywhere from 30 percent up to 50 percent, depending on
the time of year, and the heating and cooling demands that are needed on the building.
It's been a huge benefit to the office that way.
Wayne: The creativity and leadership really came from the team.
It really didn't come from the upper management of the office.
We turned it over to them, and they provided that.
We brought together a group of great people with a wide range of skills.
Shane: The formation of a green team was a requirement of meeting the guiding principles.
We had a good mix of people on the team, between staff and managers, which made it a lot easier
for the job to get done, and things to get moving forward, because we had buyin from
both sides.
The rest of the staff learned about the building's features through all employees' meetings that
we would have, where the upgrades were presented to the staff, and basically described the
reason we were doing them, and gave an overview of what we were going to be doing.
As the new features were installed, we would get questions from staff on what we were doing,
and why we were doing it.
Those were other ways that the staff was involved in the process.
Wayne; I wasn't excited about the project.
Upgrading the building was going to be expensive.
It was going to take a good chunk of our budget, a good chunk of our money.
In terms of cost benefit analysis, I spent a lot of time concerned about that.
I show this building off to visitors, and talk to them about our rain capture, and our
change in our landscaping, and the changes that we've made in the heating and air conditioning
system, the solar panels that we have out back.
This has been a great effort.
Our effort on the building has received a Federal Energy and Water Management Award,
a governmentwide award for the efforts that our employees here in Provo have done.
We're really pleased with that.
It's at this stage that I'd like to toss a little confetti into the air in celebration
of what they've done and what they've received.
I like the fact that the building becomes a symbol of what we expect of our partners.
Provo Area Office has 17 projects.
That means we've got, with our transferred works, more than 17 partner organizations.
We expect of them efforts toward conservation.
We expect them to be responsible with respect to operations, maintenance, and replacement.
Now, we reside in a building that exemplifies all of those things.
I feel like this place that we do work now is consistent with our expectations, and is
consistent with our mission in terms of both water and power.