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Business View Magazine
One of the Plan’s stated goals is to “Transform the physi-
cal environment and infrastructure of the university and
expand the university’s position as a nationally recog-
nized leader in sustainability.” Action steps articulated in
the plan will help Southern reach that goal and include:
expanding upon and promoting best practices in waste
reduction and recycling; extending the life and energy ef-
ficiency of existing facilities; and integrating LEED plan-
ning concepts into all aspects of the university’s built en-
vironment, requiring that all major new construction and
renovation projects are to be at least LEED Silver Certi-
fied.
LEED Certification is something that is very-well known to
Eric Lessne, the college and university system’s Associ-
ate Director of Planning and Engineering for the past 17
years. He talks about Southern’s many sustainable build-
ing projects: “We have a brand new science building that
is in the process of going through LEED Certification, and
we believe we’re going to hit Gold on it.” (That science
building also has a 40,000 gallon, underground cistern
to collect rainwater from the roof to be used for non-po-
table building purposes and irrigation.) “Our School of
Business is certified Gold, and with all our major projects,
we strive for 21 percent efficiency or greater in design,”
he continues. “That alone saves us operating costs and
helps to lower our carbon footprint. We’ve done a bunch
of lighting retrofit programs, going into gymnasiums and
classrooms to install as much LED (Light Emitting Diode)
infrastructure as possible. We’ve done induction lighting
in buildings and some of the parking lots, which is very
cost-effective.
“Right now, our biggest efficiency projects are ‘retrocom-
missioning,’” he adds. Retrocommisioning is a systemat-
ic process for identifying less-than-optimal performance
in a facility’s equipment, lighting, and control systems
and making the necessary adjustments. Southern has
partnered with United Illuminating and Ameresco to use
Building Dynamics wireless sensing and online analytics
to optimize all of the automated settings and building
controls in two large buildings. Lessne continues: “We’ve
done our Student Center and we’re in the process of
recommissioning our largest classroom building, Engle-
man Hall (200 thousand square feet). Next we’ll take
a look at a project that had a two-phase construction
