Who should be involved?
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Ideally, someone from your Facilities Department will support the program. This could be someone from your HVAC controls group or anyone that has knowledge of your HVAC system and controls.
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Communicators! Every campus has a communications department, and we've found it's best to stick to the brand guidelines laid out by your campus. It's best to bring someone on early on, this person should focus on maintaining consistency across your promotions and outreach.
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A project manager is very helpful. This person doesn't have to spend all of their time working with your PTS system, but one person having ownership of the system is key to its success long-term. Ideally, this isn't a student because they graduate and move on to new roles.
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Students! At UC Davis we rely on student interns/employees to promote our PTS system and to do data analysis on uncomfortable rooms. Students can have any background, although we've found environmental students bring a lot of passion to the project.
Refer to the following buttons below to learn more about each of the categories identified above and find examples of what's been successful at UC Davis.
Triage Team
In order to understand the causes of comfort issues, identify energy inefficiencies, and communicate to get problems fixed, triage should be performed by someone knowledgeable about campus energy systems and well-connected with campus HVAC technicians. We've identified key responsibilities and requirements for a successful triage team.
We're identifying a triage team because it is beneficial to split the responsibilities across several individuals, each bringing a unique skillsets to the group. Feel free to mix and match the responsibilities to the skillsets of those on your team.
Key Responsibilities
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Read incoming feedback and checking the mechanical system for the corresponding space, making notes for later reference or other team members
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Addressing/fixing malfunctioning equipment in the BAS, or passing the information along to HVAC technicians as needed
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Weekly reviews to check room temperatures and setpoints for rooms where feedback was submitted
Key Requirements
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Technical knowledge of HVAC systems on campus
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Collaborative relationships with HVAC techs in Facilities
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Access to Building Management System(s)
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Access to building floor plans and mechanical drawings
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Access to the campus traditional work order system
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An Example from UC DavisJohn Coon is a project manager in the office who performs triage and short-term analysis on PTS data. He spends roughly 15% of his time on TherMOOstat related work. In real-time, he fields PTS submissions and checks against the HVAC controls system for broken or malfunctioning equipment. At the end of th week, he spends 1-2 hours a reviewing feedback and trending data as needed. John's well-suited for this role because he has 20 years of experience with campus buildings, and is well acquainted with their comfort issues as well as what is "normal" for a particular building.
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The Role of Building Maintenance ServicesAt UC Davis, the Building Maintanance Services (BMS) group is a sister to the Energy & Engineering group (which is the home of TherMOOstat). In other words, we are two of the several branches within the Facilities Management Department. The HVAC technicians in the BMS group aren't involved in the triage of PTS data. This choice was strategic because the HVAC technicians have their work orders to handle, and that is their main focus. To insure the PTS data doesn't add to their workload, John investigates PTS data in the HVSC controls system and only 1 issue every 2-3 weeks is passed on to the HVAC technicians (who are responding to at least a dozen work orders in any given week).
Building Your Brand for Engagement
Ongoing promotion of your PTS program is crucial to inform and engage potential users and to sustain rates of feedback submissions. For consistency, you will want one person on your team to lead these efforts, whether it is someone within the Facilities Department, someone in the campus sustainability office, or someone from your communications department.
Key Responsibilities
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Create promotional items with program branding to display around campus
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Attend campus events (e.g., student or new employee orientations) to promote, and/or offer content to other groups to promote the PTS program
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Reach out to professors on campus to seek student interns and/or provide them with PTS data for use in course projects
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Send emails to users with updates or information about the HVAC system related to their feedback (e.g., if they leave comments)
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An Example from UC DavisJohn Coon is a project manager in the office who performs triage and short-term analysis on PTS data. He spends roughly 15% of his time on TherMOOstat related work. In real-time, he fields PTS submissions and checks against the HVAC controls system for broken or malfunctioning equipment. At the end of th week, he spends 1-2 hours a reviewing feedback and trending data as needed. John's well-suited for this role because he has 20 years of experience with campus buildings, and is well acquainted with their comfort issues as well as what is "normal" for a particular building.
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The Role of Building Maintenance ServicesAt UC Davis, the Building Maintanance Services (BMS) group is a sister to the Energy & Engineering group (which is the home of TherMOOstat). In other words, we are two of the several branches within the Facilities Management Department. The HVAC technicians in the BMS group aren't involved in the triage of PTS data. This choice was strategic because the HVAC technicians have their work orders to handle, and that is their main focus. To insure the PTS data doesn't add to their workload, John investigates PTS data in the HVSC controls system and only 1 issue every 2-3 weeks is passed on to the HVAC technicians (who are responding to at least a dozen work orders in any given week).
Key Requirements
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Knowledge of how the PTS system works and key messaging is essential for creating branding, promotional materials, and other communications
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Experience in customer service is helpful, as well as communicating technical information without relying on the technical jargon
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Graphic design skills and/or a communications background are a big help for designing promotional campaigns
What to do with your crowdsourced data
Long-Term Data Analysis:
Key Responsibilities and Requirements
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Analyze PTS data on a quarterly and annual basis. Lots of patterns will only emerge with aggregate, accumulated data. This should amount to about 1 day of work for one person per month on average.
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Analysis should involve triangulation with other data sets, such as room temperature, building metadata, and outside air temperature, so access to those additional data sets is required, as are data handling skills, including file-merging.
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If these analyses are performed by someone other than the person who conducts short-term analysis (a student intern does much of the long-term data analysis at UCD), there should be close collaboration between the two.
Your PTS program will gather a wealth of data, with many possible applications. In addition to triaging incoming data, you will also want team members paying attention to the bigger picture, which includes digging deeper to understand issues, collecting more data, and making decisions about energy efficiency projects based on insights from longer-term data analysis. The human resources required for this aspect include long-term data analysis and project management.
Project Management:
Key Responsibilities and Requirements
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Someone who has experience with project scoping and implementation is required to fully leverage PTS data for major projects, e.g., ceiling fan installation to address hot complaints
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Collaboration with engineers and project managers
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This role is not continuous, but as needed. At UC Davis we use at least a year of data to inform a new energy project, and to inform current projects we look at PTS data during and directly following implementation.
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At UC Davis this role is performed by a project manager, but could also be performed by an engineer if they have projects out on campus and need PTS data.
Working with
Student Interns
Student interns are a great way to supplement your team’s existing human resources for a PTS program. They can help with promotions or assist in analyzing and responding to PTS comfort votes. Look for certain majors based on the tasks you need done. For example, engineering, economics and/or statistics students do well in data analysis roles, while communications, design, and english majors do well in communication roles; environmental science students are perhaps most versatile.
Responsibilities students can take on:
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Conduct site visits and speak with PTS system users
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Utilize data loggers for room temperature data collection and
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Analyze PTS datasets and investigating incoming votes
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Writing summaries of PTS votes to share with the campus community
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Promoting your PTS system across campus or targeting specific buildings
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An Example from UC DavisJohn Coon is a project manager in the office who performs triage and short-term analysis on PTS data. He spends roughly 15% of his time on TherMOOstat related work. In real-time, he fields PTS submissions and checks against the HVAC controls system for broken or malfunctioning equipment. At the end of th week, he spends 1-2 hours a reviewing feedback and trending data as needed. John's well-suited for this role because he has 20 years of experience with campus buildings, and is well acquainted with their comfort issues as well as what is "normal" for a particular building.
-
The Role of Building Maintenance ServicesAt UC Davis, the Building Maintanance Services (BMS) group is a sister to the Energy & Engineering group (which is the home of TherMOOstat). In other words, we are two of the several branches within the Facilities Management Department. The HVAC technicians in the BMS group aren't involved in the triage of PTS data. This choice was strategic because the HVAC technicians have their work orders to handle, and that is their main focus. To insure the PTS data doesn't add to their workload, John investigates PTS data in the HVSC controls system and only 1 issue every 2-3 weeks is passed on to the HVAC technicians (who are responding to at least a dozen work orders in any given week).
In November 2013, President Janet Napolitano announced the Carbon Neutrality Initiative, which commits UC to emitting net zero greenhouse gases from its buildings and vehicle fleet by 2025, something no other major university system has done.
Created by Facilities Energy & Engineering at UC Davis
Get in touch with the team by contacting Kiernan Salmon at kmsalmon@ucdavis.edu
See our guides to Campus Comfort, as well as TherMOOstat Success Stories on Campus Comfort 101 site.