Salas O'Brien News

To Salas O’Brien clients, the word “commissioning” means energy savings, lowered operating costs, and optimal environments—but a lot goes on behind the scenes to achieve these amazing results.  The field is constantly evolving, so having a trustworthy, communicative expert by your side through the process will make all the difference.

Sophisticated property owners aim to construct a building as economically as possible, and for good reason. Financial pressure is intense.

But yet, over a 30-year span, a building’s utility, maintenance, service, and system replacement costs can run between 50 to 80% of the facility’s total cost (including construction costs). The more complex the building and the more energy it uses, the higher that percentage will move within this range—especially in regions with high or increasing utility costs.

Salas O'Brien's merger with T-Squared Professional Engineers has brought us a team experienced with military projects—yet the word "military" includes a wider variety of projects than you might think. For example, a child development center owned by the U.S. Navy received engineering and LEED consulting services and achieved Silver Certification. In another case, we provided mechanical and plumbing design and LEED consulting for the U.S. Navy Fleet Numerical Meteorology and Oceanography Center. Monitoring weather or sea conditions and children require vastly different equipment and facilities, but our team proficiently accommodated both.

As Bermuda’s second largest employer and its only hospital, King Edward VII Memorial Hospital (KEMH) provides state of the art healthcare facilities for the 65,000 residents of the island nation as well as its many annual visitors. Its isolated location in the Atlantic Ocean demands self-sufficiency: KEMH provides a remarkably comprehensive range of services, and its facilities must grow to meet any increase in demand.

Improving the efficiency of large institutional buildings has been a core part of Salas O'Brien's work and history since its founding in 1975. While others worked for the good of the environment in a variety of ways, we knew that we could have a dramatic impact through the quiet, behind-the-scenes work of making buildings operate more efficiently and reliably.

The Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority (MARTA) is the main public transport system in the city of Atlanta and includes both rail lines and buses. Demand for MARTA buses is at an all time high—making it time to update the bus “mobility stations” throughout the city.

The Century Plaza Towers are one of the most well-known office and residential buildings in the Los Angeles area. Completed in 1975 by architect Minoru Yamasaki, the towers resemble Yamasaki’s other “twin towers,” which fell in New York on September 11, 2001.

In late 2016, a major but little-noticed shift in commercial building code happened in Texas: the state adopted the 2015 International Energy Conservation Code (IECC).

It's a maxim of project management that you have any two of quality, speed, and cost. If you need a project done as soon as possible (preferably yesterday), then it's either going to cost you a fortune or will have sub-par quality.

When it comes to building projects, commissioning can prove the maxim wrong. With commissioning, you can save money, build better, and do good in the process.

Is that a bold claim? Sure. But there's a reason that more and more states and local jurisdictions are requiring commissioning on every building project.

In a prior article we defined commissioning and went over the basics of what it accomplishes. We also overviewed where it's required by law, and why you might consider it even it's when not required by law.

Buildings operating at less than peak efficiency cost building owners money—lots of money in many cases. The EPA estimates that commercial buildings waste 30% or more in energy. And this doesn't even begin to include costs associated with lost employee productivity.