 ThinkTek-Awayi, Civil Engagement, lives here. ThinkTek-Awayi Code Green, do we have an excellent program for ourselves to do this afternoon, Les and Janice Tanayama, and they have more initials and back of their names than I can possibly shake a stick at. But what they do is keep buildings very, very efficient. Buildings, especially the complex ones, are much more complex than cars. And you and I know what happens if we just get into our car and drive and drive and drive and drive and drive and don't take it to the shop periodically. My shop insists that I come in every six months and it's no longer just oil change. It's like something like a 16-point checklist that they go through, so complex are our new cars. Buildings are much, much more complex. And one reason our buildings are working so well is because of Janice and Les Tanayama. So welcome to the program and thanks so much for being here. And if you hadn't gathered, they seem to be related in some way. Now, how do they keep buildings running very smoothly? And let me do a little side note. I'm the energy codes guy for the state. And we have a whole process that we go through in designing energy efficient buildings and maintaining them. And right at the end of our checklist is something called commissioning. That means when a building is built, there's usually a third party who goes in and checks everything. A lighting guy goes in, checks all the lights. The air conditioning guy goes in, checks all the AC. And you're not going to believe this. But since there were all of these trades, you know, the carpenters, the plumbers, the electricians, the IT guys, going in one after the other after the other, and things were always in a rush, not everything gets put in exactly as it should and not everything is operating exactly as it should. The result are glitches and my pet peeve energy inefficiency. So that's where Janice and Les come in. And what they've done to ensure that we have a cadre of young people coming up through the ranks who are able to maintain these extremely complex buildings is they have founded the Hawaii chapter of IFMA. IFMA is not on your consciousness list. It is the International Facilities Management Association. And Janice especially founded the BA program at UH West O'ahu. And they're just about to graduate their first crop of young, would you call them engineers or facility managers? So Janice, why don't you jump in and tell us how in the world you started this program and you got it through. I mean, this is state government also. I happen to know how slowly state government works. And you apparently got it through in two and a half years. Okay. I really didn't do it all by myself. There's a lady named Sherry Propri at West, she was at West O'ahu. And I brought the information to her from the IFMA Foundation, which is different from IFMA. IFMA is the organization for membership, but the foundation is what we do for education. So we went originally back in 2013 to World Workplace in Arizona. And we learned that they had an accreditation program. So the following year I was sent back by our chapter to San Antonio to bring back information for Sherry to start the program. And that's where it all began. And then somebody in West O'ahu had to look at this and say, yes, let's do it. Sherry did all of that. And so she put everything together and got the program going. And we accompanied Sherry and Hawai'i Energy to World at New Orleans just to get them familiar with the process. The following year we accompanied Sherry and Hawai'i Energy to World at San Diego. That same year Sherry hired Dr. Jeff Rogers from Rochester University to head up our program here. And 2017, we started the FM concentration at West O'ahu. And soon we will be having some graduates. I'm not sure how many. I think there's about 13 or 14 in the program. But as soon as we get our first graduate, we will be able to start our accreditation program. Let me jump in and say that you mentioned Hawai'i Energy twice. I think they helped to bankroll the educational sector. Yeah, they helped. They helped also the Office of Naval Research. Office of Naval Research also put in my name to help us start the program. Well, let me interject there. Hawai'i Energy, the purpose of Hawai'i Energy is to use its dollars to promote energy efficiency in giving the most bang for the buck. And I think the Navy is in there because at one military meeting I was in, I think it was a low level general, said as far as I'm concerned, energy waste is an act of treason. The military as a whole is very, very interested, especially in Hawai'i, since we're a good test bed for this in achieving complete energy self-sufficiency, which means ramping up the renewables and bringing our energy use down through efficiency. So I think that's the connection. So both of them see the absolute importance of really, really good building maintenance. So now you got the program started. Were either of you the teachers there or? Neither of us. Neither of us are teachers. Dr. Jeffrey Rogers is the head of the program. Yeah, he's the professor we brought in from Rochester Institute of Technology. He transferred from New York to come to Hawai'i. And Rochester University, I happen to know, is a great technical university. Absolutely. It was originally founded, I think, by the Kodak Corporation to train their engineers and then expanded, expanded. So let me expand a little bit about the program because this is really in our hearts to bring up these young facility managers to help us with the program because we were lacking as an engineer, as a design engineer. I was putting out some projects of energy efficiencies of 30% reduction, 40% reduction. Compared to the base energy code? No, not the base energy from the previous baseline. Because I believe in measurement. But what I found is I didn't know how to make it simple. And, you know, we got the guys with the rag in his back pocket and like I mentioned to you, flip phones in this iPhone X world trying to maintain it and operate it and they were having a difficult time. And 50% of those facility managers throughout the United States is within five years of retirement. I find within the a lot of aspects of building management maintenance you talk to the county guys who do the plan checking and the site inspections. I think a big chunk of them are also within five years of retirement. So we need this young crop of people coming up, yeah. David Bassigal. Yeah, David Bassigal is our poster child if you may, for his month. He graduated from a college with a degree in facility management. He came to Hawaii. He was the assistant chief engineer for Halikoa Hotel. Today, officially he is the director of engineering for Halikoa Hotel. He rose up through the ranks. No, at the ripe old age of 28 years old. So, you know, I'm proud. I almost feel like a dad watching that. The program growth to this, you know. We are bringing in people with knowledge and young energy. And he's in charge of our student chapter. Chapter, yeah. Yes, we got some motivated people here. So, student chapter, is that just the students at West Oahu? Right now, yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, there's one other aspect because we also got Ingersoll RAN, which is a very large corporation to invest in this program because they see the value. And the other thing that we had, we started a advisory board and it's made up of people from throughout industry. And when I say industry, I'm talking about the director of engineering for Queens Hospital. We're talking the director of engineering for city, Pacific Health as well as city and county, hotels. Unbelievable people have come forward to support us. Because they see the value in this. They know that they're going to need this young blood coming in. And I think they're all about my age. So, you know, they have some interest for future legacy. Beautiful. That's exciting. So, you feel like proud parents here. Yeah. So, this organization along with Sharon Moriwaki and her University of Hawaii program thought enough of the program that they awarded us an award two years ago. So, we're glad that we're being recognized for our efforts. Yeah. Yeah. Well deserved. Well deserved, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, this is one of those classic plant the seeds type of instances. It's going to take a while for that plant to come sprouting through the soil, but it's just beginning to know. By the way, as of 2018, we were just informed not too long ago. It's a permanent curriculum at the campus. So, it's a permanent concentration of facility management. Two pathways in. Yeah, we also have two pathways. One through the Bachelor of Arts in business. And the other one is applied science. So, you have two pathways in and many pathways out because you know, between IT and facility management and security and landscaping. You know, there's many avenues you can project your way out of that degree program into different careers. Yeah, somehow. I'm trying to calculate the average salary if these people stop at the bachelors and go into the job market. I'm just, I'm thinking of all the high rises, you know, including the new high rises in Kakaako that there are in this town. And I'm thinking the average young person signing up for a job is easily going to start making in the 50s. And he may ratchet up to the 60s and 70s pretty darned quickly. Well, we have an international IFMA does have a posting for job markets. And we have seen some studies and the about 98% of those coming out of our colleges with an FM degree are actually performing in that duty. And their starting salaries have been around for the last two years, 60,000. Yeah, so 100%, nearly 100% of those graduate who get just many or many offerings. So that's exciting. That's exciting. And that's going to inspire other kids because the word's going to get around. Hey, this is, it's an interesting job too. Well, you know, it's amazing. I talked to kids and we asked them what is a facility. So they start to understand that every box on the ground is a facility. And I said, you understand that someone has to watch over it and take care of it. And it's not getting simpler to do. So these kids are smart. They're very bright. So IFMA rules the waves, that's a beautiful way to take a break. We will be back in one minute. Think Tech-A-Way code green. Crazy world, so caught up in the confusion, nothing is making sense. There's got to be solutions, how to make a brighter day. I'm Ethan Allen, host of Likeable Science on Think Tech Hawaii. Every Friday afternoon at 2pm, I hope you'll join me for Likeable Science where we'll dig into science, dig into the meat of science, dig into the joy and delight of science. We'll discover why science is indeed fun, why science is interesting, why people should care about science, and care about the research that's being done out there. It's all great, it's all entertaining, it's all educational. So I hope to join me for Likeable Science. Welcome back to Code Green, Think Tech Hawaii. I have as my distinguished guests, guests who are planting the seeds for the future since this little crowd here is, well, Dennis doesn't have any gray hair, but some of the rest of us still. I cheat. We realize at this stage of our life that we need to cultivate a whole new generation, in this case an energy efficiency, and that's exactly what you're doing. So congratulations on that. And let's get to some specific projects that you, Les, as an engineer, are doing. And UH Manoa happens to be near and dear to my heart since I'm a university lab school graduate from 1st grade to 12th grade. So there's an affiliation. And then I did a little bit of undergrad, and I have my master's degree from UH. Oh, and my almost PhD, so lots of connections there. So Moore Hall, tell us what in the world you were doing at Moore Hall? Well, I don't know if you know the gentleman, Blake Iraqi. He's a personal friend of mine. He runs the facilities on campus at that time. I've met him quite a few times. Yeah, he was trying to get me to do projects at the University of Hawaii. And I told him, I said, you know, Blake, your procurement laws prohibit me to be flexible enough to provide for a energy efficient project without going through that procurement. Because what you really are getting at the end of the day is really the least expensive project because that's how contractors are awarded by the lowest price. I know that only too well. Yes, so I kept denying him and denying him. And he said, I think I found a way. And I said, well, let's talk about it before I commit. So we talked and basically what came out of that long conversation or many conversations is this. He allowed me to, which I'm trying to coin, provide for what we call performance design as opposed to performance contracting. This is performance design. And basically what performance design is and he allowed me to develop this is to be able to create an energy efficient project both from the controls and automation portion as well as equipment but not have to deal with the procurement issues after a bit. So we did it before. So we would evaluate equipment based on how it was to be used and literally earmark was shortlist the equipment that can be qualified for this project. And so that took the wiggle worm out of the contractor's hand and we got taking a severely discounted price for the cheapest piece of equipment that doesn't meet the criteria for efficiency for the project. So we developed that design protocol and we followed it through now for like six or seven different projects and it's working fine. We're averaging about 30% reduction in baseline usage. No, this is for retrofit projects. Retrofit only, yes. And can you give some examples of that? Well, more hall, one of the first things that I do is number one measure. We measure energy use and cooling capacities that are being provided for the particular system. What I also do is do an energy audit and when I first went to the building, after visiting two or three rooms I went back down to my car and I came back with, I do lighting audits as well and we have those little clickers that counts and I literally, as I was walking around every single room of the entire building I noticed that there were a bunch of sweaters on the back of chairs and I was counting them, they were over 50. What I also found was two under the desk heaters. They were over cooling the space. So I felt if my design was just to control proper cooling and comfort, I would save energy because I'm providing less. And that was my first start. So we also use this data for our design so we're not designing based on ruler thumb or one for one replacement. We're designing for how the equipment is to be used on the building. And that has, at times, in fact we were able to reduce that particular chiller used for cooling by almost 30%. But because it was adapted to a loop Blake wanted me to keep the maximum capacities at 190 tons so that we could accommodate what ifs for redundancy. So there was a lot of thought process. It's a lot more effort. It probably costs more in the design fees but the payback of the design fees are well within a year. It's a lot less expensive to have you sitting at a computer or walking around observing than it is to have construction guys banging and clacking and installing things only to find that they don't work so good. Well I think the advantage that Blake saw is that I actually have installed automation systems so I'm very familiar with the design, the installation and the operation of automation. In fact I'm an electrical engineer in a very mechanical world. So it was natural for me to hug the energy side of design and operations. So that's what I targeted. See how I could efficiently provide for a system first based on function. I never forego function. And then we see what we can do to make it more efficient. So the last thing is he allowed me to include in my fees one whole year's worth of what we call commissioning. And what that commissioning effort does besides the initial after post installation is the actual years worth of tweaking of the system because it never is what it was designed for. So you have to adapt to changing conditions. And the other thing that we were doing where we were training the operators the facility workers at the University of Hawaii to maintain this equipment so that I want to come back a year later and find things overridden and disconnected and taken apart and abandoned. I've heard horror stories like that. Yes, yes. And a whole year of data collection. Oh yeah. I believe in a lot of that. You talk about big data. We were doing it back then and I think that was around 2010. So the net result is 34% reduction of original baseline use. And much of that was conservation because we're overcooling the space. None of the variable frequency drives for all the air handlers were connected to automation. So guess what? They were on 24-7. So now we got to schedule it and turn it off at night. Turn it off on weekends and even participate in what we call Green Days at the University of Hawaii where we go through a program where we get to shut down equipment all over campus. So I'm participating as part of that design group that, you know, taking care of those initiatives. Have you gotten as sophisticated as measuring CO2 levels? Yes. Absolutely. Because if we bring an outside air, especially with a strong corner wind, we've got to remove that moisture out of the air. So what we do is we call demand ventilation. Is we're measuring the CO2 outside and we're comparing it to what's in the recirculated space and we prevent it from exceeding a certain level. Yep. And we only provide extra outside air if the CO2 levels get too high. And just by way of explanation, CO2 carbon dioxide, that's what we exhale when we breathe. That's right. We expire it. And naturally, the more people you have in a given space, the more CO2 they're going to produce and you don't want those levels to get too high. Otherwise people get sleepy and they don't get enough oxygen. Well, and it's challenging at an institution like that of higher education because as you well know, being well educated and matriculating at the colleges, that you have conference rooms and classrooms that you would have 30 people in one hour and nothing the next minute. So we have to make these adjustments and it's sometimes challenging, but we need good automation to do that. We need smarts. Good automation, and then people well trained. This is complicated stuff you're talking about. Well trained in being able to spot, you know, people are leaving the building. Is the CO2 level going down? Is the VAB going down? Well, you know, the big problem is today's facility managers existing that have worked through the ranks over the last 30, 40 years, they go into this new chiller plant or this new system, they can't find a start button anymore. Yes, yes. You have to use a keyboard and some understanding and therefore IFMA, you know, we need to we need to raise that bar. Yeah, which is exactly what IFMA does. I just heard a story in another conference I participated in where a bunch of managers were assigned to a given project, an energy efficiency project and they were given instructions and oh, this was videotaped and this is locally and apparently they're looking around and where are they? A few cuss words and they were mainly guys our age but there was one young man around there. So the calling card or the cry became where's the kid? Where's the kid? He was the only one who could figure this out. So, you know, after we're done with More Hall and we've maintained it over the last three years, in fact we're saving more energy today than we did at the time we turned it over. So, you know, I think the biggest thing in sustainability is not cardboard and paper, it's really how to sustain your energy efficiency from year to year to year and if we can do that, I think that's the greatest goal that you can achieve in sustainability. We need to leave but I will point out that in any given year, even in a construction boom like we're having, there's only a 1% replacement of buildings in any given year that means we have 99% existing buildings so we really, really, really need to go after those existing buildings because they have this huge, huge, huge potential for energy savings and if we're going to achieve 100% clean electrical energy by the year 2045, these are exactly the buildings we need to go after and we need these young people from IFA coming up so they can understand systems and then the old guys can just say, where's the kid? Where's the kid? You're supplying the kids. So, on that cherry note, we have to bid fun adieu. Listen, Janice, thank you so much. It's been very, very entertaining, very educational and we will be back again with Code Green. Think, take away. Good afternoon.