MacDonald-Miller, Microsoft, and King County Join Forces to Improve Energy Efficiency

What do Microsoft, King County, and MacDonald-Miller have in common? All three companies are working to make buildings energy efficient.

This year, the three leaders are uniting forces for the largest U.S. local government energy smart building program, in which MacDonald-Miller is installing Microsoft software to five King County approved buildings: Ryerson Transit Base, Bow Lake Recycling and Transfer Station, Brightwater Center, East Transit Base, and Chinook Building (pictured above).

Perry England, MacDonald-Millers Vice President of Building Performance, explains more about the implications.

What is MacDonald-Millers role in the King County Energy-Smart Buildings program?
Were the Systems Integrator responsible for the complete, turn-key deployment of the ICONICS Facility and Energy Analytics software on the Microsoft Azure cloud platform.

Whats the goal of this initiative?
To identify the operating inefficiencies in buildings immediately, have the solution at the facility managers fingertips, and cut out energy waste.

How does it work?
The brilliance of ICONICS software technology is how it pulls from existing data sources to show facility managers where and why they are wasting energy, and most importantly, how they can fix it. The fast detection is shown in easy-to-read dashboards, which is revolutionary in contrast to past approaches consisting of engineers looking for answers in spreadsheets of data.

This turns it from a needle-in-a-haystack approach to a data-driven, problem-solution, management system.

Why is this significant?
This is a game-changer for building management because it sets up facility managers who have historically only operated on a reactionary level to be proactive in their approach.

How does King County benefit?
King County is eager to launch an energy-smart buildings program as it directly aligns with the goals of climate action and responsible government. Their objective is to reduce energy consumption, carbon emissions, and electricity bills, without costing local taxpayers.

What are the implications for other Washington businesses?
The financial benefits are immediately obvious. The model has already been proven at Microsofts campus in Redmond, with the technology installed on more than 125 buildings with approximately 58,000 employees, bringing in approximately $1 million of annual energy savings.

Staff has been able to identify issues by sorting the faults of a building from greatest to least, identifying solutions that, for example, can save their building $22,000 in 30 seconds. Thats powerful data.

As an industry leader in Building Performance, MacDonald-Miller designs, builds, and optimizes, saving energy costs for our customers. With optimal energy performance, the utility costs of a building can be trimmed by 50%. Not only does this eliminate wasteful spending, it reduces unwarranted harm to the environment. Plus system tune-ups extend equipment life and improve reliability. To receive a customized energy audit on your building, contact Perry England, Vice President of Building Performance, at [email protected].