Not savings, but profit.
Paul Ehrlich, an information systems consultant, presented a number of figures at his Building Intelligence Tour Seminar at the ASHRAE Winter Convention that can help building engineers convince their clients of the economic feasibility of creating and using information systems for managing building engineering systems.
He looked at scenarios for an owner-managed building and a developer-managed building.
According to Ehrlich's estimates, the cost of connecting various building utilities to the information system ranges from $3 to $5 per square foot for new buildings and from $4 to $6 per square foot for buildings undergoing renovation. For these scenarios, the average cost was $4 per square foot.
For a building with an area of 150 thousand square feet, the cost of creating an information system would be $600 thousand.
Only due to the reduction in energy consumption when using information systems, the savings are about $1 per square foot.
That is, the creation of an information system will pay for itself in approximately 4 years, and in 5 years the return on investment will be 95%.
As for indirect effects, such as increased productivity of employees in such a building, Ehrlich estimates that using an information system to optimize the management of building utilities will increase the productivity of people working in the building by approximately 1%, which will amount to $1.40 per square foot.
For the building considered in this example, the additional profit will be $210,000, i.e. the investment will pay off in 1.7 years, and the return on investment over 5 years will be 227%.
Not bad, Erlich said, but not particularly impressive.
Next, a commercial project was considered.
But, Erlich said, most commercial building developers are not interested in energy reduction issues, and in this case, a completely different approach is recommended, namely, focusing not on reducing energy consumption, but on how creating an information system will increase the income generated by the building.
With the same investment ($600,000), the savings from reduced energy consumption would be approximately $120,000 ($0.80/ft2), but much greater profits could be made by options related to increasing rent and the number of people working in the rented premises.
Each of these categories, Ehrlich said, would increase the building owners' income by 4%.»
These figures are based on a study conducted by the Building Owners and Managers Association (BOMA).
That is, people are willing to pay higher rent for the opportunity to work in a building equipped with «intelligent» control systems.
Thus, due to increased rent and the number of tenants, the additional income would be $300,000 per year.
This would result in a payback of 1.4 years, and a payback of 5 years would be 265%.
Alexey Lenin
Based on materials from the journal Consulting-Specifying Engineer (Reed Business Information)