Tips for planning new offices / renovating the existing one.

• Before starting work on a new office or renovating any old office, assess existing offices for design criteria & correct deficiencies. Drawings of building layouts & equipment designs should be compiled along with the design criteria, specifications & manuals. This should include sufficient information to safely operate, inspect, maintain & troubleshoot normal problems.
• Bright colors should be used for walls & furniture so that designer can consider higher reflection coefficient while designing the lighting system. This will reduce the number of fittings required. For other details please check ‘efficient lighting design’ sections.
• For new offices, double glazed windows can be used. If the designer & interior decorator is not planning to utilize the daylight then window area can be reduced, as best of the windows have less ability to block solar gain as compared to worst of the walls. Before starting upgrades on the ac system, effect of reduced load due to efficient lighting & other load reduction strategies should be considered. This information should be used for right sizing of AC systems. For details please refer to ‘training & awareness section’.
• While going for major up-gradation project, instead of seeing each part as a series of discrete projects, they can be seen as part of an integrated project. Assessing upgrade opportunities for whole system takes less time & money in the long run. Addressing the interactions between the components using this approach will result in a good energy-efficient system.
• A good preventive maintenance schedule should be maintained. For this past experience & manufacturer’s recommendations should be used for determining the schedule. Preventive maintenance is much more cost effective than corrective maintenance. It considerably reduces the building life-cycle costs, energy bills, repairs, and corrective maintenance & equipment replacement. For details please check ‘Preventive maintenance’ section.
• Apart from these energy management initiatives, some special steps can be taken to reduce the electricity bills, by proper scheduling & planning. Please refer to the ‘Electricity bills reduction’ strategy.
• For long term success of the energy management project, it is necessary to have properly trained and motivated personnel assigned to implementation. Also proper monitoring of the progress of such project & some fine-tuning is required.