back to PPLSA Market Sectors

Business Situation

Tufts Veterinary School, one of the nation's newest veterinary medicine institutions, is also among the world's most renowned. Located just west of Boston, Tufts Veterinary School's 634-acre campus includes a hospital for large animals, an outpatient clinic, an Equine Sports Medicine Program, diagnostic laboratories and a 250-acre working farm. The school offers leading programs in Animal Emergency and Critical Care Medicine, Oncology, Radiology, Surgery, Behavior, and Infectious Diseases.

A few years ago, Tufts purchased a building dating from the 1920s/30s from the Massachusetts Mental Health Facility.

Tufts named the building 20 and converted it into a research facility. After a year of operation, Tufts found that it was spending more money than anticipated on energy costs. Tuft's own Building and Grounds personnel deduced that the problem arouse from Building 20's antiquated HVAC pneumatic controls, which did not support temperature adjustment during the building's off hours.

Tufts awarded the job of installing new energy-saving controls to SavageALERT, a PPL company.

"I've been dealing with SavageALERT for 15 years," says Joe Chilton, Director of Grafton Campus Facilities. "When we bid this particular project out, and Savage was the most competitive company, we were comfortable hiring them. They've worked on our other buildings, so we were confident they would do a good job."

BUSINESS OBJECTIVE

• Furnish and install a new HVAC control system to bring about energy savings.

BUSINESS SOLUTION

SavageALERT replaced Building 20's existing pneumatic HVAC control system with a new system have 180-200 point of control, back to a bench PC that Tuft's mechanic was trained to operate. The result has been that Building 20's temperature can now be checked on a regular basis, with adjustments made as needed. The system also provides proof that temperatures necessary for research and teaching are being maintained. By printing out readings, Tufts satisfies the building's occupants that their requests are being met.

"The work SavageALERT did on Building 20 was very professional," notes Chilton. "This particular building has a lot of exposed mechanicals and very few suspended ceilings, so all the work had to be relatively neat. In most cases, SavageALERT was able to hide the controls and wiring they installed from the average person. The workmanship is high quality."

Chilton adds, "We needed to take control of the building and the new system allows us to do that. Before SavageALERT upgraded it, the building's ventilation system was running full tilt and we had no way of slowing it down after hours or on weekends. It was a very expensive building to operate. In fact, SavageALERT did a study and found that it was one of the most expensive buildings on the East Coast to operate. Thanks to SavageALERT, we were able to turn the corner on that, and cut our energy expensive way down."

"We measure this project's success on the energy savings we achieved", Chilton recalls. "We wanted to capture the savings, and we have, to the tune of recouping our investment in 2.5 years."

SavageALERT continues to build on its strong relationship with Tufts through bi-monthly meetings to evaluate energy expenditures. "SavageALERT has a hands-on relationship with us here at Tufts," concludes Chilton. "They've developed a great knowledge of our facility and the equipment over the years. Our good relationship continues to develop as time goes on."

back to the top

© 2004 PPL SavageALERT