The challenge
Eleven aging hospital campuses, each with its own systems, quirks and decades of accumulated drift, and a mandate to cut energy use without the budget or disruption of replacing equipment. The savings were there; older buildings almost always waste 15 to 20 percent of their energy on systems that have quietly fallen out of tune. The challenge was finding it, campus by campus, and proving it.
What we did
Alares ran a systematic retrocommissioning program across all 11 campuses: developing a retrocommissioning plan tailored to each site, performing field inspections, gathering and analyzing data, functionally testing HVAC systems, compiling detailed equipment inventories, and delivering actionable recommendations, each with cost estimates and projected energy savings. The work followed FEMP/DOE and ASHRAE guidelines so the findings were rigorous and defensible.
How we did it
Measure before you recommend
The heart of retrocommissioning is evidence. Rather than walk a building and guess, we tested down to the terminal units, gathered operating data, and analyzed how each system was actually behaving versus how it was supposed to. That's how you separate a setpoint someone overrode last winter from a damper that's genuinely failed, and how you make sure every recommendation pays back.
One plan per campus
No two of the 11 campuses were the same, so no single checklist would do. Each got its own retrocommissioning plan, which let us chase the specific operational problems on that site instead of applying a generic template and missing the real waste.
The outcome
We identified energy savings of 15 to 20 percent across the facilities, with the measures optimizing equipment performance, enhancing occupant comfort and improving indoor air quality, all without a capital project. The program was delivered on schedule and drew strong marks from the VA for quality and communication. It's the clearest demonstration we have of the core retrocommissioning truth: in an older building, the cheapest energy you'll ever buy back is the energy you're already wasting.