CH-18-C016 -- The BAS/HVAC Office: Organizing People to Use BAS to Optimize Building Performance

Building occupants can experience poor indoor environmental conditions. Building Automation System (BAS) and operators can find Heating Ventilating and Air Conditioning (HVAC) system deficiencies. Trades can fix things. Management can allocate resources. Finance can count money, but how do you connect all of these things? With an annual HVAC energy budget over seven million dollars and a similar sum spent on operations and maintenance, our organization, the main campus of a Canadian national laboratory, struggled with this issue, and in 2015/16 organized a BAS/HVAC office within our mechanical operations section. Our BAS/HVAC office is an interdisciplinary team that includes a professional engineer, technicians, non-technical staff, a dotted line interface to the shift operators, and a supply arrangement with a BAS service provider. The team is centered in a control room where once-per-day we gather to review BAS alarms and operator log entries. Together we trouble-shoot, formulate dispositions, request work from trades, track work cost and maintain an asset management program of strategic upgrades. Acting as BAS/HVAC equipment owners, we interact with the building tenants, site trades, long-term contractors, procurement branch, finance and projects teams to deliver indoor environmental conditions suitable for facilities ranging from laboratories, to offices to heated sheds. We describe the mandate of the HVAC/BAS office, how it is staffed, the techniques we use, and how we fit into our company’s organization. Readers will be challenged to consider how they can similarly exploit the capabilities of BAS, operator reports and routine inspections to target their maintenance efforts and achieve the best indoor environment for their people and processes.