Services.
Air Conditioning Inspections
Many commercial buildings have air conditioning systems. These systems should be carefully maintained and managed in order that they do not consume too much energy.
Government legislation is introducing regular inspections for air conditioning systems. By 4 January 2009 all air conditioning systems over 250kW must have their first inspection, and by 4 January 2011 all air conditioning systems over 12kW must have their first inspection.
The trigger for air conditioning systems inspections is the size (effective rated output) of the system not the type of building and so the measures apply to homes, commercial and public buildings.
Your inspection will be done by an accredited energy assessor and will include an assessment of efficiency, a review of their sizing and advice on improvements or replacements and alternative solutions.
Audits
Environmental audits are systematic and objective assessments of the environmental status and performance of properties, facilities, processes, and/or operations. They are a valuable management tool which can be used to identify and assess environmental problems, and initiate corrective actions which ensure compliance with applicable environmental laws and regulations and internal management policies and practices. Environmental audits also can be used to assess the quality of the existing environmental management systems, and to foster additional initiatives to improve the environmental performance of a facility.
The benefits of carrying out environmental audits are numerous and include:
- Reducing liability and reducing the potential for environmental fines
- Ensuring compliance with legislation
- Reducing waste costs
- Reducing water and energy costs
- Good public relations (if the results are published)
- Standards and audits to maintain compliance and improve performance. environmental, occupational safety and health (EOSH) audit program
Types of Audit
Environmental Review (Environmental Audit)
This is a general term usually referring to a basic audit that looks at a range of environmental factors on site. This type of audit provides valuable management information regarding the environmental situation on a site, and can be used to signpost areas of concern or where further investigative work may be required. An environmental review would normally involve looking at the site as a whole to determine impacts on the local environment, eg location of nearby rivers, location of any local housing, etc. External areas would then be examined looking at areas where waste was stored, location of drainage system, etc. The internal areas are often broken down into manageable units such as office, canteen, process areas etc, then, within each area, environmental issues such as storage, wastes, lighting, heating, air emissions, and water emissions are noted.
Certain documents are normally inspected as part of this type of audit, particularly waste management documentation, IPC authorisations, discharge consents from water companies, Environment Agency etc. Company plans of the site can be used to mark on areas of interest such as waste storage areas, surface water drains etc.
Environmental reviews are also carried out as a first stage towards an environmental management system. They are used to identify the company's impact on the environment and to create a register of impacts and aspects.
Waste Audit
These audits are often linked with environmental reviews and usually form the first step in any waste minimisation exercise. The audit is concerned with waste production and handling at a site. The first concern is to ensure that wastes are being handled and stored in a safe, environmentally acceptable manner at a reasonable cost. Once this is determined then quantities of wastes are noted along with their origin and reason for production. 'Hidden' wastes should also be considered such as waste raw materials, energy and water, and wasted time, etc.
It is also important that adequate records are kept as proof of good waste management. A record-keeping system would typically include a file of consignment notes including special wastes, records of waste produced by a particular department and storage records highlighting any problem wastes which may be stored for a long period. The type of records kept will depend on the company's structure, activities, and type of waste produced. Performance may be audited against legal requirements or against company policy.
The results of a waste audit should show any gaps in information or poor waste management practice. It is important to take action after the audit and look at possible ways to minimise waste production, saving the company money and helping the environment.
Waste Disposal Site Audits
These audits cover the transport and disposal of wastes by a disposal contractor. They are often undertaken as part of compliance with Duty of Care Regulations, to ensure a company's waste is being handled correctly. They are usually carried out internally, and involve a questionnaire-type approach covering issues such as how waste is stored, and general housekeeping on the site. Transport issues are usually covered but can be dealt with separately, especially if the company that owns the waste site is different from the company that transports the waste.
Waste management documentation is checked during the audit, including Waste Management Licences, Waste Carriers Licences and Duty of Care Documentation. This can also be checked with the Environment Agency.
Water Audit
These audits are similar to waste audits in that they are often linked with environmental reviews and usually form the first step in any water reduction exercise. The audit is concerned with water use on a site and wastewater production. Water usage on the site is examined and quantified where possible to determine the areas of greatest usage. Wastewater is also quantified if possible, and areas of greatest production identified.
The result of the audit is a mass balance where a company can identify water going into a site and water leaving the site; any large discrepancies can be investigated as this may indicate leakage or another problem on the site. Another benefit of the audit is that once identified, areas of high water usage or wastage can be investigated and savings made.
EOSH Compliance Audit
This type of audit assesses compliance with environmental legislation or company procedures. This can be either one aspect of it, eg Duty of Care audit, or more generally, all environmental legislation. This type of audit is rarely carried out in isolation, and will normally form part of a general environmental review or EMS audit.
Our environmental, occupational safety and health (EOSH) audit program assesses Company-owned production facilities, shares audit findings with management, and oversees corrective actions based on audit information.
Environmental Management System (EMS) Audit
These audits form a key element of the environmental management systems established under ISO 14001 and the EC's Eco-Management and Audit Scheme (EMAS). The audit will have to be verified by an accredited person who is independent of the site's auditors to receive certification.
Acquisition Audit
This can be pre- or post-acquisition and concentrates on any potential claims or liabilities for environmental damage, or the costs of installing pollution control equipment, which may affect the viability of purchasing a new site. Potential for contaminated land is of particular importance; often this type of audit will recommend a more detailed study to investigate any potential contamination. A phased approach is often used, with a Phase 1 audit being an initial appraisal of the site, looking for potential liabilities, eg underground storage tanks, also looking at the geography, geology, hydrogeology, site history, and environmental setting. A Phase 2 audit is then recommended if a certain area needs further investigation, borehole samples may be taken from the ground of soil and ground water. Phase 3 is a phrase also used sometimes; this generally tends to be once the results of Phase 2 are received and some remedial action is required.
This type of audit tends to be undertaken by specialist consultants, often employed by the potential purchaser of the site. However, in some cases it is carried out by the site owner prior to putting the property on the market, to assist with the valuation. Phase 1 audits can be carried out 'in house' as long as time is set aside for doing the necessary research. However, Phase 2 and 3 audits need to be carried out by trained personnel to ensure boreholes are taken according to recognised methods, and that samples are analysed for the correct determinants.
Due Diligence Audit
This type of audit is normally carried out on behalf of potential investors in a company for similar reasons to the acquisition audits. It is a particularly comprehensive audit and will usual involve a team of professional auditors visiting a site over a period of several days. A wide range of environmental and other factors such as health and safety and fire risk assessment are included, as well as comprehensive site history and legislative reviews.
Building Management System Services
Our energy and operational Strategic Services provide the management needed to get the most value from your installed systems. AlphaCello experts can provide support for any in-house facilities team, to providing a complete holistic energy and operational solution.
Our consultants will review your BMS control setpoints. It is vital to check that the controls will work correctly when the building is occupied (not just during commissioning) and at different times of the year. A BMS commissioned in the summer, for instance, should be checked in the winter. By exploiting the BMS and its communications abilities, building managers can quickly make adjustments that will keep the building’s occupants comfortable while saving energy.
We will ensure that the BMS and its controls are working. A faulty control sensor could, for example, force a heating valve fully open in the middle of summer, wasting energy on unnecessary heating and cooling. Also, if plant has been switched to manual operation, the full energy-saving benefits of a BMS cannot be realised.
Once everything is working as it should, we will study the building-services plant and its controllers. Many HVAC controllers have a wealth of energy-saving features, but they may not have been enabled during installation and commissioning.
Building Management System Training
A BMS can be operated at different levels: by a full time specialist, a maintenance technician or a security guard. However, to get the most from the system, specialist staff must have an in-depth knowledge of the software, and this is only possible through on-site training courses.
Like any software package, a BMS operator terminal can be operated with only a little in-depth knowledge, but an operator who is unaware of its advanced features will never coax the best out of a system.
And remember that operating a BMS is not only about getting to grips with the software. Senior operators should have a detailed understanding of the building, not just the controls.
If a BMS is working properly, building-services plant will operate less frequently, increasing its useful life, reducing equipment failures and minimizing the need for maintenance. Don’t forget that the BMS itself needs maintenance too. AlphaCello can help build procedures that will ensure that software upgrades are applied, and that logged data is archived for storage.
Carbon Audit of Supply Chain
Alphacello can identify emissions arising throughout your whole supply chain including the use and disposal of products. We will then formulate plans to cut carbon emissions across the entire supply chain, making cost savings and delivering low carbon products and services to your customers.
Cost Consulting
AlphaCello have designed an offering that unlike traditional cost consultants, brokers and agents, doesn't just focus on cutting prices in the short-term by switching to the supplier that offers the lowest headline price. Instead, we have designed a comprehensive four-step process to analyze expenditure profile, obtain rebates against historical billing errors and manage the total long-term cost of your utility overheads. This means addressing not just the figure on your bill at the end of every month, but also the value, suitability and sustainability of the products and services you are buying and the hidden, indirect costs of managing these overheads.
ecoDriver
ecoDriver is an award winning software based technology (Microsoft ingenuity award) that in its simplest form is an automatic monitoring and targetting system (aM&T) that monitors energy, water usage, waste and business travel. The beauty of the product is its ability to display your live energy and water usage in graphical form, promoting your energy conservation efforts to your staff, and customers.
For example you could use the live data generated by your automatic monitoring and targeting (aM&T) system, in a presentation, on a plasma or LCD screen in your reception area, which empowers your staff to reduce their carbon footprint. At the same time a number of programmes can be put in place to educate your staff and customers.
ecoDriver allows you to :
- Monitor sustainable energy technologies
- Greenhouse gas abatement
- Reduced energy costs
- Employee participation
- Improved customer image
- Building regulations & EPBD
- Educating the next generation
- Audit trail of emissions & measures
Emissions reduction is crucial in our fight against climate change. Organisations can reduce consumption by changing processes, staff behaviour, adjusting systems and investing in technology.
www.ecodriver.com
Energy Performance Certificates/Display Energy Certificates
Can be supplied by our accredited energy assessors.
The EPC is part of a series of measures being introduced across Europe to reflect legislation which will help cut buildings’ carbon emissions and tackle climate change.
Other changes include requiring public buildings - for example town halls, libraries, hospitals - to display certificates showing the energy efficiency of the building and requiring inspections for air conditioning systems.
Display Energy Certificates (DECs) show the actual energy usage of a building, the Operational Rating, and help the public see the energy efficiency of a building. This is based on the energy consumption of the building as recorded by gas, electricity and other meters. The DEC should be clearly displayed at all times and clearly visible to the public. A DEC is always accompanied by an Advisory Report that lists cost effective measures to improve the energy rating of the building.
Display Energy Certificates are only required for buildings with a total useful floor area over 1,000m2 that are occupied by a public authority and institution providing a public service to a large number of persons and therefore visited by those persons. They are valid for one year. The accompanying Advisory Report is valid for seven years.
The requirement for Display Energy Certificates comes into effect from 1 October 2008.
Building regulations and EPBD Consulting
AlphaCello will help you navigate the often confusing world of the EPBD (energy performance building directive), which is the EU’s buildings platform. We will advise you on calculating your buildings energy demands, and help you satisfy legal requirements of new and existing buildings.
Energy Procurement
With energy the most volatile of all commodity markets, there has never been a more relevant time to capitalise on the expertise and services offered by AlphaCello. Businesses we work with are facing tough economic conditions and the right energy advice can make the difference between profit and loss. AlphaCello will produce a comprehensive report, detailing market conditions, risk factors and current suitability and cost of energy providers. The savings we are typically making for our clients, mean that the service effectively pays for itself many times over.
Environmental Policy
AlphaCello will work with you to develop an environmental policy. The environmental policy is an agreed statement of a company's stance towards the environment in which it operates.
The policy is the corner stone of businesses intent to reduce its carbon footprint, improve recycling, reduce reliance on packaging, minimising waste, and improve efficiencies on finite natural resources in all of the company's operations and all departments.
All environmental commitments should be an integral part of the day to day activities, clearly communicated to all employees and may form part of application for ISO 14001 certification or registration under the EMAS scheme.
Environmental Risk Assessment
Risk assessments for environmental issues are increasingly being used at all levels of policy and regulation. Our techniques have a wide range of application, including;
- The design of regulation, for instance in determining "acceptable" risk levels which may form the basis of environmental standards.
- Providing a basis for site-specific decisions, for instance in land-use planning or siting of hazardous installations.
- Prioritisation of environmental risks, for instance in the determination of which chemicals to regulate first.
- Comparison of risks, for instance to enable comparisons to be made between the resources being allocated to the control of different types of risk, or to allow risk substitution decisions to be made.
Risk assessment and management have, and will continue to become increasingly important as a mechanism to aid decision-making, a basis for effective risk communication, and a method for highlighting and prioritising research needs.
Installation & Commissioning Checks
The energy-saving performance of your BMS may have been compromised during installation and commissioning. Installation problems can be as simple as the positioning of a sensor in the warm air above a photocopier, triggering the air conditioning unnecessarily, or as complex as having no connection to utility meters.
Meters must be connected to the BMS. An energy bill from your utility might tell you how much energy you have used, but only data logged and analyzed will tell you when and where it was used.
AlphaCello will take this information and help you identify problems such as energy use outside working hours. For instance, is quite common to find building services plant such as air-handling units running 24 hours a day in buildings that are only occupied from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Low Carbon Consulting
Our consultants will work with you to minimize both your energy use and carbon emissions from buildings, both in design and operation. We are able to go beyond the current legal minima in improving the energy performance of both new and existing buildings.
Clients can be sure that buildings designed and operated by AlphaCello Low Carbon Consultants will meet the requirements of Part L (Conservation of Fuel and Power), and Building Control Officers can be assured that compliance is being signed off by suitably qualified professionals.
Project Management
Traditionally a Project Manager will simultaneously manage the three basic elements of a project: people, time, and money. All these elements are interrelated, and each must be managed effectively. AlphaCello believe that there is a fourth element, which is the most important and it is the first and last task for a successful project, it is the project scope.
The project scope is the definition of what the project is supposed to accomplish and the budget (of time and money) that has been created to achieve these objectives. It is absolutely imperative that any change to the scope of the project has a matching change in budget, either time or resources.
Usually, scope changes occur in the form of "scope creep". Scope creep is the piling up of small changes that by themselves are manageable, but in aggregate are significant. You can not effectively manage the resources, time and money in a project unless you actively manage the project scope.
Sub Metering
Sub-metering systems allow you to measure energy consumption within particular areas of your site or by particular items of equipment. This technique allows much more specific identification of energy saving opportunities than is possible by using data from the primary utility meter. Sub-metering is appropriate for energy intensive organisations and those that have already familiar with basic energy management practices.
We can set up bespoke systems to monitor the key areas of consumption within your business and allow you to correlate energy consumption with outputs such as production volume.
Sustainable Product Packaging
At AlphaCello, we envision a world in which packaging is no longer seen as waste, but as a valuable resource for the future. We will work with you to develop packaging designs that use less material without sacrificing quality, and help you invest in technologies and recovery systems that enable you to use more recycled materials We are committed to continuously enhancing the sustainability of packaging solutions, whilst lowering the costs to your business.
Our sustainable packaging strategy focuses on three key areas: Package Design, Packaging Cost, and Package Material reuse.
Trendpoint
AlphaCello are a reseller and implementation expert for Trendpoint products. Trendpoint manufactures a number of environmental monitoring solutions that helps you monitor your energy and carbon metrics.
TrendPoint One is a tool for data centre management, providing the following features:
- Energy Management view true kWh by users and groups (such as departments or customers) as-well-as racks and rows.
- Carbon Management allow each user and group to see their real-time and historical carbon impact.
- Heat Management hot spots create huge cooling inefficiencies and lead to shorter equipment life and slower data throughput.
- Only TrendPoint One allows you to see the actual wattage of heat in each cabinet and gives you the ability to manage manage and mitigate the heat in the most effective means possible.
- Cooling Management many companies are employing hot isle – cold isle and other cooling strategies.
TrendPoint One provides a live floor-map of all your data centre’s power and cooling information.
This outstanding visualization tool lets you see at-a-glance where your hot spots, and cooling problems are to allow you to respond quickly to IT load challenges.
Easy-to-use tabbed interface allows you to manage and send alerts for all the following:
- Equipment - the equipment in each rack together with its owner and contact.
- Cabinets - the balance of heat of each group of equipment within your cabinets.
- CRAC Units - the efficiency of each CRAC unit in real-time and historically.
- Chillers - overall efficiency of each of your Chiller circuits in real-time and historically.
TrendPoint One gives you a complete system for planning, commissioning and on-going management of all your IT and cooling loads. Best of all, TrendPoint One's patented technology is the only system that will show you exactly where to place and move equipment for maximum energy efficiency.
EnviroCube is a unique environmental monitoring solution. It gives you a complete understanding of your data room's environmental metrics. The EnviroCube includes on-board temperature and humidity sensors as well as plug-in power, leak detection and other sensor options.
EnerSure is the first product that lets you affordably track your power metrics at the circuit level. By gathering information for all circuits within a power panel, EnerSure sub-meters each circuit, and provides you with billing-grade power data.
The product provides accurate, true RMS data for all the following:
- Amperage -Knowing exact amperage eliminates tripped breakers
- Voltage - See power spikes and sags and head off trouble
- Power Factor - Track the hidden penalty in your power bill
- kW - See the actual wattage of heat generated by each circuit
- kWh - Track energy by end user and groups
- Green House Gases - Track carbon footprint by user and department
EnerSure, like all TrendPoint's products, is built to be Plug & Play. It installs easily with NO downtime. The EnerSure unit provides its data output to a TrendPoint One Server via Ethernet. This allows EnerSure units to communicate to the server, regardless of location. TrendPoint One's patented features give you the power to plan, commission and manage all of your IT and cooling equipment's energy use and carbon footprint.
www.trendpoint.com
Waste Management
Waste management is the collection, transport, processing, recycling or disposal of waste materials. We can help you by devising the best waste management methods. This includes looking at waste collection, avoidance and reduction methods, energy recovery, and recycling methods (physical or biological reprocessing).
AlphaCello will engage the “3 R’s” principle looking at reduce, reuse and recycling methods, and their cost implications.
BREEAM
BREEAM stands for the Buildings Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method, it is a globally recognised scheme that aims to quantify and reduce the environmental burdens of buildings by rewarding those designs that take positive steps to minimise their environmental impacts.
BS 8901 2009
Specification for a Sustainable Event Management System is a management system standard designed to help organisations in the events industry improve the sustainability of their event related activities, products and services.
Ska-Rating
Is an environmental labelling method designed to rate and compare the environmental performance of fit-out projects initially for office buildings in the UK.