Perspectives Are Energy Audits and Retro-commissioning a Waste of Your Money? 

Energy audits and retro-commissioning have emerged as go-to solutions for improving building performance and guiding future operations and maintenance decisions. However, the standardization and commoditization of existing building work frequently leads to a one-size-fits-all approach, focusing on data collection and equipment updates. While these methods offer valuable insight, they may sometimes produce data that is difficult to interpret and overlook crucial factors affecting a building’s efficiency and occupant productivity.  

The Traditional Value of Energy Audits and Retro-commissioning 

Energy audits and retro-commissioning play a critical role in assessing how a building operates, where it excels, and where it falls short. They provide a comprehensive snapshot of a building’s energy performance, highlighting areas for potential improvements.  

At their core, energy audits and retro-commissioning provide several undeniable benefits: 

• Performance Insights: They help building owners understand how their facilities perform and identify gaps between current operations and optimal functionality. 

• Actionable Data: By collecting detailed information on system operations, audits and commissioning provide a foundation for actionable items that can improve building performance. 
• Operational Alignment: These processes ensure that building systems are functioning as intended or are updated to meet current needs, offering a basis for future initiatives and facility planning. 

Fine-Tune the Scope: Seeing the Bigger Picture 

While energy audits and retro-commissioning lay a solid foundation for improving building performance, their ASHRAE defined scopes may limit the potential for more comprehensive, meaningful enhancements.  Fine-tuning the scope means looking beyond the traditional and considering a broader range of factors that influence building efficiency, the well-being of occupants, and the impact on organizational level goals.    

Maximize the Impact 

A good starting point for owners’ representatives and/or facility directors is to look at the required deliverables for these scopes and ensuring that they apply the effort towards actions that further the Owner’s goals. Mountains of technical documentation can appear valuable (and expensive), but the true objective should be to condense any results into easily consumable insights that are crafted based on defined Owner objectives. Following the same spirit of retro-commissioning and energy audits, teams should look for efficiency in the scope of these services and eliminate work/reporting that does not further their goals. 

Buildings Should Work for People 

Understanding how occupants use and interact with a space can provide valuable insights that go beyond standard technical assessments. Ethnographic studies, which involve observing and analyzing behavior in the actual context of the building, can reveal patterns and preferences that might not be evident through traditional data collection methods. These insights can inform more user-centric design and operational decisions, leading to spaces that better meet the needs of their occupants. 

Consider this: while traditional energy audits can target an average energy savings of 10-40% and reduce carbon emissions, a 1% occupant productivity increase can be more impactful to the financials of operating a business.  

Enhanced Occupant Experience 

As an inherently subjective benchmark, occupant experience can be a frustrating component to building optimization. It requires a holistic approach that looks at the interactions between building systems and how spaces are used. The result can be surprising solutions that are easy to implement and support energy efficiency. Using thermal comfort as an example, teams should determine the root cause of complaints and explore strategies to implement that align with any suggested equipment modifications. Could the inclusion of blinds or adjustment of diffuser airflow patterns result in a space that provides a better experience while allowing for a wider setpoint range and reduced energy consumption? 

Aligning with ESG Goals 

Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) criteria are becoming increasingly important for businesses, building owners, and the public that occupies these buildings. Focusing the scope of energy audits and retro-commissioning to work towards ESG considerations can help teams meet corporate sustainability goals, enhance a building’s marketability, and contribute to a broader societal impact. This might include measures like operational carbon considerations, energy benchmarking, and identification of building features required for sustainability certifications.