Higher Education New Construction

Deliver Buildings that Matter to Students, Faculty and Staff

How can facility managers ensure new buildings and systems will attract students, delight faculty and operate with predictable costs and reliability? Integrate high-performance systems thinking and independent expertise with your project team to support them in designing and building efficient buildings that operate at peak performance with minimal disruptions or downtime. In an era of ever-compressing schedules and budgets, Cx Associates’ capabilities and independence help remove construction and operational uncertainties and reduce your risk.

Setting the Goal (OPR)

Articulating the goals of your new construction project is critical to a successful outcome. Cx Associates has years of experience facilitating discussions to clearly define project objectives which we document in the Owner’s Project Requirements (OPR) document. The OPR focuses the team on your stated goals serving as the foundation for successful design, construction, commissioning, and operations. Whether your goals include meeting campus sustainability targets, delivering low ambient noise classrooms, minimizing life-cycle costs, or anything else, this approach helps you identify areas of improvement allowing you to drive up your Facility Performance Indicators (FPIs) and/or your ENERGY STAR Rating as a result of your construction project.

A Second Set of Eyes (Design Review)

Cx Associates’ design review team includes engineers with a long history designing and commissioning building systems to meet ASHRAE Standards 90.1 and 62.1. Design expertise coupled with significant experience commissioning designs from dozens of world-class design firms gives Cx Associates a unique ability to identify what makes engineering approaches successful in terms of budget, energy efficiency, constructability, end user satisfaction, and ease of operations and maintenance.  Because we identify true value engineering improvements that deliver the required services efficiently and effectively with lower first and operating costs, our design review typically pays for itself.   Improvements include ensuring air-change rates in research labs, right-sizing equipment, streamlining duct layouts, using daylighting controls effectively, optimizing building controls and reducing lighting fixture counts. When you are building for the future, it’s important to get it right from the start.  Having an independent third party conduct thorough and constructive design reviews is a critical step in achieving success.

Sustainability and Energy Efficiency (Energy Modeling and LEED)

Colleges and Universities need to offer facilities that reflect your commitment to sustainability in order to attract top students and faculty.  Cx Associates is a sustainability consultant with deep experience navigating the LEED certification process. Going beyond managing LEED credits, we work with clients and project teams to set priorities, establish targets and select cost-effective strategies to meet them. Our experienced energy modelers help you assess energy efficiency options and trade-offs early in the process so you can make informed decisions about which investments will help meet your energy performance, greenhouse gas emission reduction, comfort and reliability goals.

Buildings that Work (Commissioning)

While Cx Associates offers much more than building commissioning, we have commissioned over 150 facilities.  Our capabilities and experience enable us to identify and remedy issues “behind the walls and above the ceilings” before you own them.  Left unchecked, these issues can increase operating costs, decrease comfort, and undermine campus sustainability goals. During construction, we will be on site to identify issues early and provide solutions. By collaborating with the entire team, we work to implement the optimal solution and ensure the facility meets your goals.

Seeing is Believing (M&V Planning)

Metering and data analytics are the window into modern higher education facilities and a critical part of 21st-century building design and operations. Cx Associates knows you cannot save what you can’t measure, that temporary changes need long-term fixes, and that you want to control and plan for resiliency. A properly implemented M&V system is much more than some meters tied into your BAS. We’ve designed, commissioned, and tested M&V systems that provide operators with key performance indicators enabling them to tune and refine operations using real-time feedback. We integrate with your design team to specify the right hardware, software, and algorithms with the right variables for metering. During construction, we verify hardware, the information feeding into the BAS, and the usefulness of the data outputs. Post occupancy, we calibrate the building energy model to verify actual performance and identify opportunities to obtain missed or even new energy savings.