National Parks Services

The National Park Service’s portfolio of buildings within several national parks was suspected of poor energy performance. Seeing the opportunity to optimize the buildings and set an example for resource efficiency, the National Park Service set out to understand the performance of more than 325 of their buildings in select national parks.

Heery was selected to perform the facility assessments, including energy and water audits and commissioning services, for three different National Park Service regions located in Alaska and the Western continental regions of the United States. Included in the audits were baseline energy usage calculations, including water, fuel oil and propane, as well as electricity consumption during three baseline years. Heery then produced recommended Energy Conservation Measures (ECM) for implementation to improve facility energy performance and reliability, using a value engineering principle to determine best return-on-investment for each of the proposed ECMs. Heery calculated benefit-to-cost-ratio in both energy usage and dollars that took into consideration life cycle cost. The team then identified best facility candidates, for retro- or re-commissioning based on survey findings and also reviewed established building operating procedures and staff’s actual operations of the facilities, looking for ways to improve on energy performance. Potential sustainability opportunities were also evaluated as well as additional metering opportunities to better monitor and document facility energy and water performance.

Covering facilities at Death Valley National Park, Kings Canyon & Sequoia National Parks, Mesa Verde National Park, and Glacier Bay National Park, the final energy report provides the National Park Service with identified energy conservation measures that can be considered for implementation in reducing overall energy consumption. In addition, the Furnace Creek visitor’s center project achieved LEED Gold certification and Heery provided validation monitoring of the facility to determine actual savings achieved through the remodeling efforts.