The City of Atlanta’s Department of Enterprise Assets Management (DEAM) is responsible for providing safe, secure, clean, and well-maintained sustainable facilities. The division is directly responsible for maintaining, repairing, securing, cleaning, and providing services for various facilities, including Atlanta City Hall, Atlanta Municipal Court, Public Safety Headquarters, and the Atlanta Detention Center.

These central, multi-story facilities, built from 1929 to 2009, include 1.73 million ft2 of administrative, judicial, police, and correctional space from which the city conducts its core functions. DEAM uses multiple strategies to meet its ongoing efforts to provide maintenance and repair support and manage wide-ranging construction and renovation projects across 51 facilities. The safety and security of employees and citizens using these facilities is also a chief concern.

The Mayor’s Office, through the Office of Sustainability, recently announced a goal of reducing energy consumption by 20% before 2020. DEAM elected to use guaranteed energy savings performance contracting as its method for meeting these challenges while keeping its core focus.

The 2KB team was engaged to support the solicitation, development, construction, and performance phases of the project. DEAM evaluated multiple vendor teams, ultimately selecting the firm that was in the best interest of the existing facility conditions and ongoing operations. 2KB would facilitate an investment-grade energy audit and review 45 proposed projects valued at almost $35 million. We led multiple stakeholder reviews to help ensure that the final project met many criteria, including financial acceptability, technical applicability, equipment operation and serviceability with existing staff, and other elements in the best interest of the City.

The result was a $12.4 million project, which included major upgrades to HVAC mechanical systems, modernized HVAC controls systems, code-compliant ventilation, lighting upgrades and controls, and water conservation. During the construction period, the City realized over $500,000 in energy and operational savings, and the project is expected to produce over $1 million in savings in each year of the 13-year contract.

2KB is now helping DEAM prepare for the first full-year savings report by ensuring that policies concerning the replacement of equipment, standards of comfort, preventative and ongoing maintenance, and utility data analysis are implemented and monitored. This ongoing work will support the safeguarding of energy and operational savings, upon which the financial profile of the project is based.