A very prevalent theme among attendees at this year's NFMT so far has been what to do if plans to go green, especially to pursue LEED for Existing Buildings certification, are curtailed by a sudden budget cut due to the poor economy. More than a few facility executives seem frustrated that they'll have to put plans they worked so hard for on hold.
At a panel discussion at NFMT this morning, Bob Hascall, VP of Campus Services at Emory University in Atlanta; Bob Gross, a principal of facility management at the Vanguard Group; and Lenny Jachimowicz, vice president of engineering for Marriott International offered some advice on things they've done to keep green plans moving full throttle ahead.
At Vanguard, Gross has developed a system of categorizing all the credits in LEED-EB by those that a building already achieves (green), those that wouldn't be that difficult or are low-cost (yellow), and those that are cost-prohibitive or just impossible (red). He says that you don't have to go from zero to certification all at the same time. Instead, do the easy things first now while money is tight, keeping your eyes on the end goal. That way, you're at least making some progress toward improving energy efficiency or indoor air quality. LEED-EB is not an all-or-nothing proposition, he says. The goal should be to ingrain a "green" mentality throughout the organization.
At Emory University, Hascall takes a similar tack. He had been working on an initiative to certify systematically all buildings on campus with LEED-EB. But when the economy tanked, Hascall says he had to re-think those plans and consider how to conserve funds, yet still prepare to continue plans when things get better. That's the key, he says - continuously keep the eye on the prize. To that end, Hascall is continuing with energy audits on the buildings and continuing to identify candidate projects so that when the money is available, he'll be ready to certify.
At Marriott, Jachimowicz says the acceptable ROI for energy projects has been reduced from 3 years to 12 to 18 months. So Jachimowicz is searching for ways to drive out energy through operational changes instead of capital upgrades. He's currently studying 30 hotels to look for ways to improve operations. Best practices gleaned from that study can then be instituted portfolio-wide.
So, as the strategies of these three facility executive show, all is not lost. There's still plenty that can be done. Don't let a budget cut get you down. Go, go, go GREEN!