In a period of growing energy costs and increasing environmental awareness, sustainability has never been more important in the built environment. Energy efficient designs offer long-term benefits including lower energy usage and expenses, improved operations, and better occupant comfort.
As a sustainable design leader, RTM Engineering Consultants works with building owners to provide a well-researched strategy with an emphasis on the economic value through detailed payback analysis. We launched our Sustainability Studio to focus specifically on providing clean, efficient solutions to owners.
One of the services offered through our Studio is performing assessments using criteria from Building Energy Quotient (bEQ), a rating program based on American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air–Conditioning Engineers’ (ASHRAE) methodologies that provides standards to improve the operational and financial performance of a facility. It calculates how a building uses energy and how owners can weigh costs and payback to make efficiency improvements, while maintaining occupant comfort levels.
The bEQ program uses two assessments to measure energy efficiency and performance:
- AS DESIGNED – A standardized energy model to evaluate potential energy use as compared with benchmarks for similar buildings.
- IN OPERATION – Focuses on a building’s actual metered energy use from the past 12 to 18 months, providing specific recommendations for improving energy performance.
“RTM uses bEQ to help owners realize a building’s full designed potential,” said RTM Principal Mitesh Smart, P.E., CxA. “For example, as part of a Green Works initiative program in Orlando, our team performed As Designed evaluations for over 30 buildings, including City Hall, Amway Center and multiple fire stations, to incorporate energy efficiency upgrades. Occupant comfort is important so metrics, such as air temperature and relative humidity, are taken, and savings in the form of reduced energy consumption are not to jeopardize indoor air quality.”
RTM is one of the only actively contracted firms in the nation providing As Designed ratings on such a large scale to create energy benchmarking models for comparing buildings independent of operational and occupancy variables.
To see the full list of services provided by our Sustainability Studio and to learn about their benefits, download our whitepaper, Sustainable Design Priorities for Energy & Cost Savings.