Case Study: Communication and Information Systems and Technology

Two Shades of Green: Balancing Sustainability and Savings

Organization saves $65 Million and achieves LEED Certification

Facilities:
750,000 square feet
“With FM:Interact, we’ve turned our team into a well functioning and collaborative network,” stated the facilities manager for the organization.   “Instantly upon implementation we saved $65 million and were able to better track the data necessary for LEED certification.”

Client Since:
2005

Background
The company is a market leader in business aviation, land and expeditionary combat vehicles and systems, armaments, munitions, shipbuilding and marine systems.

With more than 10,000 employees worldwide, the company is a leading integrator of secure communication and information systems and technology. The company specializes in command and control, communications networking, space systems, computing and information assurance for defense, government and commercial customers in the United States and abroad.

Facilities and Property Overview
Headquartered in Scottsdale, Arizona, the company’s 750,000 square foot dual facility houses manufacturing and office space for 5,000 employees. The majority of square footage exists on a single floor of a single building.

Challenges and Requirements
Like most organizations, it used the traditional methods of space tracking – manually with Microsoft® Excel spreadsheets.  This process took countless hours to accurately assess space needs.  The company’s facilities team knew it needed a better way to track space and occupancy and manage internal customer requests.   

From a technical perspective, the team wanted an open system that could integrate data from a diverse set of existing systems, such as human resources, finance and its existing maintenance system.  Also, as a group that continuously seeks process improvements, it needed a highly configurable system that could map to existing requirements and easily be configured to support process change.  
The facilities manager for the organization was approached by executive management to research, identify and implement a Computer Aided Facility Management (CAFM) system that could gather, maintain, track and organize space data as well as integrate with other systems already in use within the organization. 

Another initiative of the company was to attain LEED-EB certification for their buildings.  The facilities department had been using sustainable practices for several years, but they began the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design – Existing Buildings (LEED-EB) certification process in 2003.  Developed by the U.S. Green Building Council (USBGC), LEED-EB recognizes organizations that have achieved and maintained sustainable standards for their office buildings. Organizations are rated on criteria such as cleaning, maintenance, chemical use, indoor air quality, energy efficiency, water efficiency, recycling programs, and exterior maintenance programs. To qualify, candidates are rated on a checklist of these various conservation requirements, with quantifiable results needed to receive LEED rating.

This is an important effort as organizations begin to realize the environmental impact of their office buildings.  According to the U.S. Green Building Council website, in the United States, buildings account for:

•    72% of electricity consumption
•    39% of energy use
•    38% of all carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions
•    40% of raw materials use
•    30% of waste output (136 million tons annually)
•    14% of potable water consumption.

While the facilities team had been pursuing sustainability initiatives for years, the absence of an enterprise-wide tracking system resulted in time-consuming, sporadic data collection, making certification a seemingly out-of-reach goal.  “The key to the successful LEED-EB certification process for a building is access to data,” said the facilities manager.      

Solution
After selecting FM:Interact, the company configured it to connect space and occupancy data to floor plans. The facilities operations department had traditionally tracked energy and water use, managed equipment efficiency, and supervised the campus-wide recycling program manually or in its maintenance management system. Now FM:Interact is used to further automate the tracking of these initiatives, ensuring ongoing sustainability efforts and that cost savings and cost avoidance goals are met. In addition, the sustainability information is now integrated with spatial and other data and can be easily viewed on the floor plan – giving the team greater visibility into sustainability initiatives and their results.   

For example, the company now uses FM:Interact to track its initiative to reduce the carbon footprint related to employee commuting.  The system allows the facilities team to:

• Assign telecommuting status to participating employees to track reduction in commuting
• Identify workstations to validate use of telecommuting
• Track assigned lockers and locations of staff that commute by bicycle and need shower facilities
• Track car/van pool assignments and users
• Track alternative fuel vehicles

The company also uses FM:Interact to manage user requests, enabling them to quickly provide responsive and efficient service to the organization, streamline communications and reporting, and better track service request information.

Results and Accomplishments
In 2005, the company received the first USGBC LEED-EB certification for the largest industrial facility in the world.  The implementation of FM:Interact quickly revealed that current CAD plans were inaccurate. Connecting the space management database to the floor plans enabled the visualization of space use, showing a significant amount of vacancies that were previously unnoticed. At the time, the company was well underway in planning for a new multi-million dollar facility to accommodate perceived space needs, when the system showed that another 800 employees could be accommodated at its present facility.  Within the first 48 hours of implementation the company realized an immediate savings of $65 million (the amount planned for what would have been a new building), as well as saving 45M lbs. of oil, 53M lbs. of coal, and 21M lbs of natural gas in emissions. By eliminating the facility expansion and improving sustainability, in 2007 the company realized an:

• 11 percent reduction in annual energy usage
• 8 percent reduction in annual water usage
• $380,000 in infrastructure savings
• $80,000 in maintenance labor savings
•  $70,000 in recycling refunds

The company expanded its recycling efforts to include electronic equipment, and reduced the need to drain and refill fire risers.  It also reduced house-keeping costs, pre-demolition audits and post-construction cleanup costs and materials. 
The system introduced several benefits to the facilities team, such as the ability to: 

• Update site interior layouts
• Validate actual space availability
• Confirm department space assignments and allocations
• Identify vacate, assigned and occupied space

Continuously pushing the envelope, the facilities team maximized its access to data to be able to: 

• Discover new opportunities to expand the use of data

• Assist in capital and strategic planning
• Integrate current databases to allow facilities personnel access to current and accurate data
• Remove emotions and ambiguity from decision making
• Input relevant and applicable sustainability data and information

Once the company realized some of its sustainability goals, internal enthusiasm for the project grew.  Various groups introduced their own recommendations on how to store and use pertinent data. As they brainstormed, a transformation occurred; the engineering and construction team discovered that proper commissioning practices minimized operations maintenance service calls and reduced energy; the strategic space planning team discovered they had a profound impact on construction debris and recycled content materials by how they proposed site interior renovations; and the building site and tenant services team discovered the success of its green cleaning initiatives extended into the construction scope programming phase.

“With FM:Interact, we’ve turned our team into a well functioning and collaborative network,” stated the facilities manager.  “Instantly upon implementation we saved $65 million and were able to better track the data necessary for LEED certification.”