Clarksville Community School District

Challenge

Having replaced its inefficient, 50-year-old boiler the previous year, Clarksville Community School District turned its focus toward upgrading its elementary school's aging controls system to improve energy savings. The district sought to replace the inaccurate thermostats in its classrooms, and implement upgrades that would enable them to efficiently program and monitor system performance from a single point, something they were unable to do with their current outdated controls.

Solution

Having provided the previous year’s boiler replacement, as well as service and maintenance for the district’s existing HVAC equipment, Trane knew the controls challenges at the facility. Trane was also aware of the district’s budget and time restrictions. To help the district overcome its challenges, Trane suggested the use of cooperative procurement to complete the controls upgrade.

Leveraging purchasing power

Cooperative procurement helped Clarksville Community School District mitigate costs and implement a faster, easier resolution to its upgrade. The process allows large and small government entities such as schools, colleges, cities, and non-profits to leverage their purchasing power to ensure they are getting a good value on products and services. All contracts are competitively bid and evaluated by a government entity and awarded to national vendors based on quality, proven performance, customer satisfaction and pricing. Cooperative procurement provided Clarkesville with a means to directly negotiate procurement, which greatly reduced change orders and costs.

Enabling faster upgrade, increasing peace of mind

Using cooperative procurement, Clarksville Community School District was able to significantly reduce the traditional six to eight week vendor selection process, which includes developing specifications, bidding out the project, evaluating proposals, selecting a supplier and negotiating price. The streamlined purchasing process freed up facility staff to address other building needs, and enabled the district to more quickly upgrade its control system to help increase energy savings. By selecting Trane, a preapproved network vendor, the district was also able to reduce its supplier selection risk, giving the district increased peace of mind.

Reducing energy consumption

Clarksville Elementary School's new building automation system allows the facility director to manage and  program the school's boiler and other HVAC equipment from a single computer, both on site and remotely. The facility director uses the controls system to implement energy saving strategies, such as setting different parameters for day and night temperatures to help the district reduce energy use, while maintaininig comfortable classrooms. Programmable Tracer UC400 unit controllers added in the classrooms work with the school’s building automation system to enable the district to manage and reduce energy consumption.

Results

Using cooperative procurement, Clarksville Community School District was able to overcome budget and timing challenges to upgrade the controls system in its elementary school to improve the learning environment and reduce energy costs. The upgrades have also created a healthier learning environment for students and faculty, with fresh air dampers that automatically open if CO2 levels rise in the classroom and close to a minimum position when the room is unoccupied to save energy.

“Any time you can control temperature and system operations more efficiently, you are going to save on energy costs. This has certainly been the experience of Clarksville Community School District,” said Bob Bartlett, Facilities Director, Clarksville Community School District. “We have been thrilled with Trane’s service and the performance of the control systems they installed. We hope to someday replace the control systems in the Middle and High school wings as well.”