Building data drives efficiency improvements and cost savings for county government

Using data to get a clearer picture of portfolio-wide performance

The county’s facilities team manages a diverse portfolio of 12 buildings that support everything from judicial and public health services to law enforcement and corrections. Some facilities serve a relatively predictable population of public sector employees, while others experience significant changes in occupancy as constituents come and go and populations within institutional facilities fluctuate.

The buildings also vary widely by age, with the oldest dating back to 1896 and the newest constructed in 2008. That makes understanding what constitutes normal energy performance – and where potential problems or opportunities exist – particularly challenging.

When Washington state passed new building performance and environmental reporting rules in 2019, the county's facilities leaders knew they would need to upgrade some systems and equipment to help them comply. The county, which was already using the Metasys building automation system, implemented building intelligence platform OpenBlue to help evaluate equipment and energy performance and pinpoint areas for improvement.

“We have some energy performance standards we’re required to meet,” said the county's director of facilities and maintenance. “OpenBlue has allowed us to get an overview of energy performance in these buildings and establish what’s normal and what’s outside of normal in terms of energy use.”

OpenBlue Net Zero also connects and synchronizes utility data directly to ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager, helping simplify building performance reporting requirements. Previously, facilities staff had to manually collect utility information and maintain spreadsheets for reporting.

“Once it’s set up, we’re able to just let that occur in the background,” the director explains.

Seeing where resources are going

In choosing to deploy an intelligent portfolio platform, the key question the facilities team wanted to answer was whether their building equipment was operating at peak efficiency.

“We started evaluating our equipment and mechanicals, and the question was, are we working efficiently?” said the county's assistant director of facilities. “Where is our utility usage going? We need to monitor it. We need to collect that data in order to know where everything is going.”

That visibility enables the team to compare buildings, understand seasonal changes in electricity and natural gas consumption and identify facilities or equipment that need additional attention. Over time, the county expects that information to help guide decisions about equipment replacement, building improvements and future capital projects.

Making the financial case for improvements

For a county government with limited resources and competing priorities, identifying an opportunity is only part of the challenge. The facilities team also needs to demonstrate to county commissioners that proposed investments make financial sense.

OpenBlue Equipment Performance gives the facilities team data they can use to connect building performance with dollars and cents: what it costs to operate existing equipment, how an improvement could save the county money, and how long it could take for an investment to pay for itself.

That capability will become increasingly valuable as the county pursues projects involving lighting, solar energy, water conservation, insulation and equipment upgrades. As these projects move forward, the team anticipates OpenBlue will be a powerful tool to help document before-and-after performance improvements and quantify the resulting savings.

For the director of facilities and maintenance, that ability to turn facility data into financial evidence is especially important when competing for public funds.

“When we go to the commissioners, they are financially responsible for a lot of these decisions, and they’re getting requests from all over the county,” he said. “As we’re able to present the data with return on investment, when they recognize that our intent is to lower current expense, they’re very open to that.”

Building a foundation for what comes next

The county is still early in its OpenBlue journey, but it is already developing the baseline information it needs to evaluate future improvements.

That makes the county’s original compliance requirement potentially valuable in an unexpected way. Reporting requirements prompted the team to become more proactive about understanding building performance. Now, the same information needed for compliance can help the county uncover inefficiencies, prioritize investments and demonstrate the financial value of improving its facilities.

“We’re developing data, and data is very important for us to move ahead,” the director of facilities and maintenance says.

For a portfolio encompassing buildings constructed across more than a century and serving dramatically different purposes, that foundation can help the county evolve from simply tracking what it costs to run facilities to uncovering the greatest opportunities for improvement.

About the county government
Located in Washington, this county government provides public services to tens of thousands of residents across a geographically diverse area.