The Situation
A national commercial property management firm with a portfolio of Class A and B office buildings was under pressure from ownership to reduce operating costs and improve ENERGY STAR scores across their properties. The portfolio included 12 buildings totaling 2.1 million square feet, spread across 4 states in the Southeast and Mid-Atlantic regions.
Each building had been managed independently, which meant a patchwork of lighting types, HVAC vintages, and maintenance approaches. Some properties had already done partial LED upgrades in common areas, while others hadn't been touched in over a decade. HVAC systems ranged from relatively modern chillers to 20-year-old RTUs running well past their expected useful life.
The property management team wanted a single partner who could assess the entire portfolio, develop a standardized approach, and execute across all 12 sites — with consistent reporting so ownership could see the results at the portfolio level.
What We Did
We started with a portfolio-wide assessment: every building got a full facility walkthrough, utility bill analysis, and equipment audit. This gave us a complete picture of where the opportunities were and allowed us to prioritize sites by ROI and urgency.
Standardized LED Program
- Common areas: Lobbies, corridors, stairwells, and restrooms upgraded to LED across all 12 buildings. Occupancy sensors added in all non-continuously-occupied spaces.
- Tenant spaces: Where leases allowed, tenant suite lighting was upgraded to LED panels and troffers with dimming capability. Tenant improvement projects were coordinated with lease turnover schedules to minimize disruption.
- Parking garages: 4 of the 12 buildings had structured parking. All garage lighting converted to LED with occupancy-based dimming — fixtures dim to 40% in unoccupied zones and ramp to full output on motion detection.
- Exterior: Building facade, landscape, and parking lot lighting upgraded across all sites.
HVAC Optimization
- RTU replacements: 3 buildings had aging packaged rooftop units that were replaced with high-efficiency units featuring economizers and demand-controlled ventilation.
- Chiller plant optimization: 2 buildings with central chiller plants received staging optimization, condenser water reset, and chilled water reset strategies.
- VFD installations: Variable frequency drives added to supply and return fans, chilled water pumps, and condenser water pumps across 8 of the 12 buildings.
- Controls reprogramming: All 12 buildings received BMS schedule optimization, including proper holiday schedules, after-hours setback, and optimal start/stop programming.
Centralized Reporting
We built a portfolio-level energy dashboard that aggregated utility data across all 12 buildings. The property management team and ownership can see energy performance by building, compare sites, track savings against projections, and monitor ENERGY STAR score improvements in real time.
Execution Strategy
Rolling out a program across 12 occupied office buildings in 9 months required careful coordination. We developed a site-by-site execution plan that accounted for tenant sensitivity, lease terms, building access constraints, and seasonal HVAC considerations.
Each site followed the same playbook: pre-construction meeting with building management, tenant notification, phased installation by floor or zone, commissioning, and post-installation verification. We ran 2–3 sites concurrently at peak, with dedicated project managers for each building.
Utility incentive applications were submitted in batches by utility territory, which streamlined the process significantly. In one utility territory covering 5 of the buildings, we negotiated a custom incentive rate that exceeded the standard prescriptive offering.
The Results
The portfolio-wide program delivered $1.4 million in combined annual energy savings — an average of roughly $117,000 per building per year. Individual building results ranged from $68,000 (a smaller Class B property where only lighting was addressed) to $195,000 (a larger Class A building that received LED, HVAC, and controls work).
Total utility incentives captured across all 12 sites came to $485,000, spread across 4 different utility programs. The average net payback after incentives was 2.1 years.
ENERGY STAR scores improved at every property. 8 of the 12 buildings achieved a score of 75 or higher after the upgrades, qualifying them for ENERGY STAR certification. The remaining 4 saw improvements of 10–15 points and are on track to reach 75 with minor additional measures.
The centralized dashboard has become a core tool for the property management team's quarterly ownership reporting, replacing the manual spreadsheet process they had been using previously.