The University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah
Investment Grade Audit Review
Investment Grade Audit Review
The University of Utah is involved in a major construction and infrastructure project at the Health Sciences Campus that will include demolition of three buildings and construction of three new facilities including the School of Medicine. The new buildings are expected to have a cooling load greater than the capacity of the existing plant and two of them will be completed before the old School of Medicine is demolished creating a further increase in load, even though it is temporary.
Rather than adding more chillers to its plant, the University decided on a strategy that included energy efficiency improvements in existing buildings and optimizing the chiller plant to recover the needed capacity. As part of this strategy, the University’s objectives also included maintaining the current plant redundancy, reducing operating costs and a ten-year payback from the measures bundled into a packaged program.
E/S3 was engaged to perform a review of the contractor's Investment Grade Audit to evaluate whether the contractor’s approach, assumptions, calculations, and so forth were correct, the results reasonable,and both the capacity and economic needs of the project were met. E/S3 performed a review of the Investment Grade Audit and all of its major components at the 90% level with rigorous attention to details, particularly in the areas of savings calculations, commissioning plans, operation and maintenance considerations, and inclusion of meaningful training for the University’s staff by the contractor.
The E/S3 team provided a report to the University with in-depth discussion of our observations, issues noted with calculations, and recommendations for improvements to be incorporated by the contractor in the 100% submittal. To document the issues noted, responses from the contractor, and progress toward closure E/S3 prepared a Comments Log which was also provided to the University. We then completed our review and report on the contractor’s 100% Investment Grade Audit submittal.