This past March, I facilitated a panel discussion at the 2012 Northeast Sustainable Energy Association (http://www.nesea.org/), which had the theme, “Can energy-conscious design include a one-year guarantee from the designer and the builder?” The panel consisted of Bob Biggio, vice president of facilities and support services, Boston Medical Center; Paul Hanbury P.E., MEP department manager, DPS Biometics; Bill Aalerud, project executive, Columbia Construction, Inc.; and Jim Listen, P.E., Suffolk Construction, Inc., along with participants sitting in on this open forum. My goal was to discuss the practicality of changing the warranty phase to the performance phase.
I chose the topic based on my own experience as an HVAC design engineer who has used energy software in the past to determine design engineering capacities, identify the choice of optimum HVAC systems for the application, and to project the annual operating cost for the building. My past experience also included being responsible for technical services for an O&M outsource company where one of my responsibilities was to monitor our 24 million sq ft of building energy usage in the northeast.