Cx Associates was obviously not alone in shutting down our main office in Burlington, Vermont in March 2020 as the coronavirus pandemic hit the United States. Employers across the country shut down their offices and told their employees to work from home for the foreseeable future. Last summer, Cx Associates took measures in our office to enable a slow (and optional) return to working in the office – we constructed plastic barriers between workstations, installed HEPA air filters at each desk, and mandated mask use when not at one’s desk. But one year later, we are still very much a distributed team; we have one employee who already worked remotely, and many others who either prefer to work from home when possible and/or are not yet comfortable going back to the office.
5 min read
Making our Commissioning Process Remote
With the current COVID-19 global crisis, organizations all over the country are actively seeking ways to continue to provide the same level of services to their customers while keeping their employees safe. Cx Associates is known for its rigorous standards in the commissioning process, but a large portion of our work is contingent on our ability to be on construction sites, working with contractors to verify the installation and functionality of equipment. With Vermont’s order that all non-essential employees work from home, and with Cx Associates’ commitment to both keep our employees safe and prevent us from potentially spreading the virus on construction sites, we needed to quickly find a way to provide our on-site services remotely for the essential construction work that continues to move forward in a way that still matches our high standards. This blog discusses our approach to remote site work and how we're continuing to serve our clients while safely social distancing from our home offices.
Topics: Building Performance & Technology commissioning HVAC Heat Pumps technology Utility building automation system COVID-19 coronavirus remote problem solving
3 min read
Making Sense of Building Data: Part 1: Overview
Similar to other domains, data from buildings is being generated at an unprecedented pace and scale. However, all of that data is useless if we can’t extract meaning to create value and yield actionable insights. This requires the utilization of protocols or standards to effectively make sense of the data. Project Haystack is one such standard that has been developed over the past several years and allows for the contextual tagging of data in a flexible way, using data from any number of sources.
Topics: Building Performance & Technology technology Building Data Energy Management Controls upgrade energy monitoring & solutions
3 min read
Data Loggers: Two Applications of New Technology
In one of Cx Associates’ latest blog posts, Energy Metering Devices: What’s New, Katie Mason describes data loggers (aka energy metering devices) used in the industry to diagnose building system issues and calculate energy consumption. This data collection technology has come of age in that the loggers themselves are not outrageously expensive and modeling software has developed into a strong analysis tool. For a building owner, this means data loggers can clearly diagnose where equipment is operating poorly, triggering increased energy and maintenance costs. Data loggers are also instrumental to managers of local, state or regional energy efficiency programs in order to accurately calculate energy savings attributable to efficiency improvements. Let's look in more detail at these two applications of the new energy metering technologies.
