Lessons Learned from Continuous Commissioning of the Robert E. Johnson State Office Building, Austin, TX

Abstract

The Robert E. Johnson State Office building is a 5-story, 303,389 square foot office building built in 2000 located in downtown Austin, TX. The original building design included a number of energy conservation measures that were incorporated into the final construction. During the investigation of the building, four energy conservation measures were identified, three of which deal with conventional HVAC systems. The fourth is related to the currently unutilized daylighting system which was one of the energy conservation measures of the original building design. Utilizing this system would lead to approximately 18.5% annual lighting energy savings or 5.6% annual whole building energy savings based on a DOE-2 simulation analysis. Three main lessons were learned from the experience with the Robert E. Johnson building: • The traditional design-construction-operation team must include the energy conservation analysis team • The entire building process should be reorganized to assure that complete information is provided and passed on from the energy conservation analysis team • High performance buildings should be continuously monitored and analyzed