Building EQ Evaluation - U12-012 Temperature and Humidity Light Recorder

Ruairi Barnwell of Chicago's Building Dynamics Group discusses how his company uses data loggers for holistic building assessments. Barnwell also describes the Building Energy Provider Pilot Program initiated by the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating, and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE). He selected 17 engineers across the country to participate in the pilot project. John McCormack Barnwell evaluates Architectural EQ for state-owned buildings in Boston.

Building Power Group offers a unique service where your building appraisal covers more than just energy. What differentiates BMG from competitors?

We conduct three levels of building assessments, each exceeding the basic requirements of ASHRAE Level II or III audits, respectively.

Similar to an ASHRAE commercial building energy audit, our building performance assessment involves detailed consideration of the building's energy use. But we also evaluate indoor environmental quality, resource efficiency, and driving comfort. We provide a detailed report of findings and recommendations for achieving Energy Star, LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design), High Performance, and Zero Energy status.

We combine building science, energy modeling and commissioning skills to provide building owners with a unique perspective on how their buildings are functioning. This enables us to make holistic recommendations to optimize the building's performance, helping to develop a sustainable roadmap that fits the owner's budget.

If capital improvements are required, our modeling analysis explores investment opportunity selection options and provides owners with the information needed to make confident decisions about the risks and rewards of advancing construction performance improvements.

We present business cases, financial strategies, relevant proposals for capital improvements and detailed back-up information, providing confidence in our proposals.

What factors do you consider that determine indoor environmental quality?

We evaluate the envelope from indoor air quality, lighting quality, building acoustics, and possibly IEQ issues. Basically we review all the factors that can affect the occupant's comfort, health and productivity.

How do you collect this information in your assessment?

We discovered a lot through working with building engineers, but also through our own experience with building systems and how they interact. is irreplaceable. But we also started using HOBO data logger U12-012 to trend key indicators such as temperature, relative humidity, CO2 TEL-7001, lighting level. We will represent the entire building space and data loggers usually get them within seven to ten days.

The information we can compile from these devices gives us great insight into how buildings are operating, standing in terms of indoor environmental quality.

The data we build into key dashboards that owners can appreciate and understand. For example, we can easily tell when CO2 or strays are outside the comfort temperature level limits set by ASHRAE. Once we see specific metrics outside of a banded range that's why we can usually make very accurate chargebacks. For example, high concentrations of carbon dioxide in a space may mean that the system does not respond fast enough to an increase in the number of passengers in that area. This would indicate that we should check the control and actuator services of the air distribution system. These types of system anomalies, which affect indoor environmental quality, are often overlooked during standard building energy audits. But we were able to pinpoint and fix those flaws very effectively.

How did you get involved in building emotional intelligence?

ASHRAE's requirement that its members submit qualifications is considered an EQ operational procedure for the role of ad hoc assessors in rating pilot construction. I was selected as ad hoc assessor because of my background in engineering and building science, my experience working with existing buildings and rating systems (such as LEED and Energy Star), my knowledge of standards like ASHRAE, and my familiarity with the European Union Labeling projects, but also my industry qualifications, such as being an ASHRAE Certified High Performance Architectural Design Professional.

ASHRAE actually developed a building energy rating specifically for the Building EQ assessment certification program. Earlier this year ASHRAE launched a building energy rating specifically for the Building EQ Modeling Professional Certification Program.

How does building emotional intelligence differ from the federal Energy Star" label?

The ENERGY STAR program provides homeowners with a tool to monitor their energy consumption and recognize the top 25% of buildings. But because its size is based on commercial building energy consumption survey (CBECS) data for existing commercial building stocks, there is no easy way to identify buildings that achieve extremely low energy use.

The advantage of the building EQ program is that it provides greater differentiation of high performance buildings and a greater emphasis on better performance. ASHRAE has intentionally made it tough on its scoring system as part of its aggressive energy efficiency goals, ultimately driving the market toward zero energy operations.

The Building EQ program should provide an easier scale to communicate building energy use to the public than the current Energy Star. The label itself will be the most obvious aspect of the program. It will be easy to understand and aimed at the public. It can be used to display energy usage for posting in building lobbies and to comply with the requirements of many programs being developed at the state and local levels.

Another important difference between the two rating systems is that, unlike ENERGY STAR, Building EQ ratings require an on-site assessment, which will provide the building owner with construction-specific information and recommendations that can be used to improve the building. The site assessment will verify the building's indoor environmental quality without compromising the pursuit of energy efficiency and energy savings. The assessment will include physical measurements to ensure the building complies with ASHRAE standards such as 55 & 62.1 to address occupancy thermal comfort and ventilation acceptable for indoor air quality.

How does EQ build for LEED certification?

Part of the building EQ program is to check that concerns raised by the industry have been obtained by the industry regarding a building's energy use to obtain a LEED rating. There seems to be a disconnect between how these buildings are designed and how they actually function. The USGBC has been exploring ways to improve the performance of LEED buildings, relative to their design, to address these issues.

Future versions of LEED will have some form of ongoing assessment of the characteristics that constitute a green building, such as energy consumption, water efficiency, and indoor environmental quality. The 2009 version already requires submitters to provide energy and water data.

The building EQ program may be a good tool for continuous evaluation of LEED energy use and indoor environmental quality rating buildings.

How did you assess the architectural emotional intelligence of the McCormack Building?

The first thing we did was analyze the utility bills for the previous two years to determine the energy use index (EI) of the building. We also recorded the characteristics of the building, such as total floor area, total conditional area, etc.

We then sat down with the building's operations management to discuss building systems and how they function and communicate day-to-day.

As part of our build assessment, we took measures in five representative areas, examining CO2, relative humidity, temperature, and light levels to assess the comfort of occupants in these spaces.

Confirming compliance with standards such as ASHRAE 55-2004 (which pertains to thermal environmental conditions for human occupancy) we measure air flow to assess thermal uniformity and developed radiant temperature asymmetry for each space. We also provide a quick, comprehensive assessment of the building's lighting quality and measure the brightness levels representative of the space on-site to determine whether lighting system performance is adequate. To confirm compliance with ASHRAE standards such as 62.1-2007 (Acceptable Indoor Air Quality Ventilation), we measure the volume of outdoor air in each intake air handling unit serving the representative area. We then verify compliance with the ventilation rate process in Standard 62.1. We calculate actual building EQ ratings by determining the ratio of normalized energy use in McCormack buildings to the energy use of the building type, in accordance with the ENERGY STAR Goal Search program.

What did you find in your assessment?

We found that the operators at the McCormack Building did a good job implementing their own energy saving measures, given their budget and manpower constraints. They've solved a lot of so-called low-hanging fruit and achieved significant energy savings over the past four or five years.

The most obvious constraint relates to building energy efficiency with the single-panel and metal-frame construction envelope, which is inherently inefficient. Other big challenges they faced were an outdated pneumatic control system and an aging air distribution system.

All of these factors combine to make the day-to-day challenges of setting up operations, team meetings and tweaking systems manually satisfying.

However, there are persistent experience issues in areas and regular hot and cold complaints. These are the areas we focus on in our assessment.

How important will building EQ be to improve the nation?

The data collected will be key in addressing how the nation's buildings can reduce their energy use through the Building EQ program.

Mandatory energy disclosure labeling requirements are already in place in the European Union, California and Washington DC. The Architectural EQ program will be a powerful tool and a consistent model.