Introduction:
Ave Maria is a town 20 minutes east of Naples and then 10 minutes south basically in the middle of the swamps. We all know about the success story of Domino’s pizza. Well the guy who started Dominos got tired of collecting airplanes apparently up in cold Michigan, and decided to create a town with a Christian values from scratch. A friend of mine contacted me and asked me to come down and meet Bryan Mehaffey who this post will discuss frequently. I had heard stories about how Ave Maria was a show case for Smart Building design. So both Mark Hewitt and I got in the car and made the trek from Sarasota. Along the way we picked up Alex Vella; Alex had arranged the meeting. On the way Alex filled us in on some of the basic information about Ave Maria.
We arrived at Ave Maria where we turned off the main road to what looked like an entrance to any other community in Florida. The entrance was fairy unassuming, and the road you could tell that it was fairly new and certainly designed for a lot of traffic. As we drove in about 3 miles I’d guess we noticed roads going off into what looked like nowhere; but Alex explained that this was the future heart of industry. There we a couple of buildings and some under construction, but certainly not booming. Alex explained that the entire infrastructure was already there sewer, electric, and fiber. Step 1 of build it and they will come I suppose. Then came the residential section, where there appeared to be if not but sparse a fairly built out community. Again the entire infrastructure has been laid.
Coming into to town the campus of the Ave Maria University and the Cathedral (Oratory) come into view the cleanliness is very apparent, and a lack of people also. The town and university are laid out like a traditional European town (Piazza) with the Observatory as the center piece. We parked easily and walked across the street to the main campus building. Class must have been in session because there was hardly anyone there. Alex led us to the IT department, and through the first card based security. Where we entered what I would characterize as kind of a lair of hall ways to a conference room.
Meeting:
The conference room was very nice, and we began to look around for technology. Ah Cisco IP phones one, sensors for lighting another, the communication plates labeling was molded into the wall plate impressive. Noticeably absent no smart board or even projector. We did brief introductions, and began a tour of the facility.
NOC
Main Data Center
Secondary Data Center
Tour of a Lab to illustrate the effectiveness of using sensors to control air turnover because as we were returning from the secondary data center Bryan cited an example of efficiency. Where by law a lab has to have a turnover of the air in lab 12 times per hour; Bryan observed the fact that a very small percentage of the usage of a lab is actually operating as a lab. The standard classroom air turnover is only 6 times per hour, so by installing sensors on the “hood” (actually the doors that open the lab experiment area) a rule can be setup to change the behavior of the air handler for the room. Now there are several other factors throughout classroom sensors for motion to control lighting and signal thermostat. Thermostats are networked to regulated temperature.
We extracted other pretty incredible numbers as well. And found that the fell into three major categories: Initial Build, Operations, Personnel, and Value.
Build:
When Bryan came into the initial project the entire project was designed and costed out, but Bryan had other ideas and began to re-work the project under his vision. “Where Bryan took a holistic view.” In the original plan each building was a standalone system with everything mapped in the traditional manner. Through his approach combining and linking system using open source technologies he kept all of the buildings in their original state, but was able to reduce the projected cost to build by 11%. On a $200,000,000 project that equates to a savings of $2,420,000, yet he was still able to deliver the entire project on time and on budget.
Bryan bid the entire project out to three vendors to handle general contracting. He was able to do this by detailing the project into a 750 page document now referred to as a Division 17.
Operations:
We discussed an example of the Observatory where the initial energy cost was over $22,000 per month, and through tuning the building based on usage and various networked sensors and servos the month energy cost was reduced to only $1200. Wow a reduction of 18 times less or $249,600 per year; I’d say that would get any CFOs attention. Now can we extrapolate that to the remaining 8 buildings, where I’m going to make a pretty large assumption that on average each building consumes $100,000 annually in energy according to the original design specifications. So by applying the factor of 5% of the original that then equates to $ 1,005,964 savings annually.
Valuation:
A funny thing happened when the final building assets were assessed. It turns out that by leveraging the “holistic” approach to buildings and adding smart components not only lead did it cost 11% less to build, but it resulted in a 7.5% increase in value. So lets’ take a simplistic approach here, and assume that the original $200,000,000 is now increased to $215,000,000 or an additional $15,000,000.
Conclusion:
Even though we are only looking at Building, Operations and Valuation it becomes clear that there is a significant real savings by undertaking a connected real estate project rather than traditional development. Bryan was bold and courageous in developing his project, and it has really paid off. In the future the addition if energy production and more IT infrastructure control even more benefits can be achieved. Look for our next post on Cisco’s Mediator.
| Ave Maria Model Value | |
| Savings | Extension |
| Building Savings | $ 2,420,000 |
| Valuation Increase | $ 15,000,000 |
| Present Value of Operations Savings | $ 4,194,733 |
| Total Value | $ 21,614,733 |