At the EPA's Region 8 headquarters in Denver, custodial crews perform all of their cleaning tasks during daylight hours. Janitorial teams working among the building's office workers empty trash cans, disinfect kitchen areas and even clean carpets using quiet, backpack-style vacuum units.

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It is a mild inconvenience for tenants that pays off in energy savings to the tune of $250,000 per year, according to property manager Amy Smith, who estimates the daytime janitorial arrangement is saving 80 cents per sq. ft. in utility bills annually. Smith is a senior property manager at The Opus Group, which built and now manages the building that the EPA leases.

“Because the janitors work 8 to 5, we literally are able to shut off every light in the building except emergency lighting at 6 p.m., and we are not open on weekends,” Smith says.

Commercial landlords are learning that sustainability has as much to do with management as it does with architectural design. By refining their own green operations, Opus and other innovative property managers are lighting the way for the nation's landlords to minimize the impact of their commercial buildings on the environment.

“You can have the most technologically advanced building, but if that building is not properly managed, it's not going to perform well,” says Jiri Skopek, managing director of sustainability at real estate services provider Jones Lang LaSalle. “You can also have some buildings that are old clunkers, but they have excellent managers who know how to tweak them. Those buildings might actually perform better than new buildings.”

Command performance

Rethinking a building's operations has the potential to increase an asset's value. At a Morgan Stanley office building in New York, a new approach to the heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) system reduced utility costs while adding a state-of-the-art mechanical system that is expected to cut power consumption there by 900,000 kilowatt hours annually.

Hines Property Management realized the 17-year-old central chiller used to cool Morgan Stanley's 750,000 sq. ft. building lacked the efficiency of newer systems, and asked Piscataway, N.J.-based energy service company Trane Inc. to come up with alternatives. Trane helps landlords plan and implement efficient heating, ventilation and air strategies.

Trane's solution, completed last year, is a thermal storage system that creates ice during the night and then uses that ice to cool air during peak usage hours when power is most expensive. The New York State Energy Research & Development Authority (NYSERDA), the local utility provider, charges a reduced rate for the building's consumption during off-peak hours. The high efficiency provided by a relatively new mechanical system slashes overall energy consumption.

To help Morgan Stanley reduce its demand for electricity during peak hours, the utility company provided $314,500 in incentives for the project, says Scott Lenger, director of commercial real estate and lodging markets at Trane. “The project reduced NYSERDA's carbon output for consumption at the building,” Lenger says. “They equated it to planting 1.5 million acres of trees.” It also saves Morgan Stanley more than $550,000 annually.

For a client in California, Trane is installing an automation system that will give property managers greater control over its HVAC and lighting systems. Rather than heat or cool the entire building on weekends, the client can now provide air conditioning only to the floors where tenants are working.

Sensors monitor carbon dioxide levels to let building managers know when it's safe to slow down the ventilation system and use less power, just as light receptors turn the lights up or down to supplement sunlight coming through the windows.

Green teams

Most conventional office buildings must run their lights and climate control machinery for night cleaning crews well after their tenants' working day has ended. Daytime cleaning yields the ultimate savings by eliminating the need for power usage strictly for cleaning.