Steve Wolfe, Director of Maintenance, 
Georgetown Exempted Village Schools 

The Georgetown Exempted Village School District in Georgetown, Ohio completed an OSFC construction project in August 2006. This project remodeled and added rooms to our existing Junior / Senior High School Building and constructed a new Elementary Building that is about twice the size of the previous one. 

At the completion of the construction project, there was much excitement about our new facilities. There was also a certain amount of nervousness concerning the utility cost of operating the new buildings. The remodeled J/S High building added new classrooms creating additional floor space. The previous J/S High facility had very limited air conditioning; however, during remodeling, air conditioning was expanded to the entire facility. The new Elementary building was over twice the size of the previous one. Both buildings had huge upgrades in the electrical service and technology systems. All these improvements were projected to more than double the previous utility costs. Additionally, the new modern buildings would require a lot more technical expertise to maintain all of the systems that operate the facilities. For this reason, I made the decision to enroll in the Building Operator’s Certification course offered through the Ohio Public Facilities Maintenance Association.

The BOC course was appealing to me because it covered such a wide array of topics useful to maintenance personnel. Everything from electrical troubleshooting and controls optimization to Indoor Air Quality and environmental safety were covered within the course as well as many other items. The information was so practical and made such an immediate impact on my maintenance department that I immediately signed up for the Level II course after my completion of Level I.

By applying the lessons learned in my BOC courses, our school district has benefited immensely. It was through the BOC coursework that I learned to track our district utility spending through the Energystar® program. 

The EnergyStar® program is a joint venture of the United States Department of Energy and the United States Environmental Protection Agency that promotes energy efficiency in buildings across the nation. 

Recently, both our elementary and junior/senior high facilities became only the 4th and 5th school buildings in Ohio to be EnergyStar® rated. 
We also became the ONLY school district in the state of Ohio to receive the EnergyStar® LEADERS Top Performer Award by managing our facilities with superb energy efficiency. 

Our utility bills did NOT double as had been previously forecasted prior to our building project. Instead we have become one of the top energy performing schools in the nation and saved over $100,000 dollars over our projected utility spending. 

This was accomplished in large part by using the knowledge gained through the BOC classes in operating and maintaining our mechanical, electrical and control systems that operate our facilities. 
I would recommend the BOC course to any facility management or maintenance personnel looking to improve their skills and to make a positive impact on the facilities in which they work.

Steve Wolfe

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Facilities in Ohio whose personnel have participated

Nicholas B. Getzinger, Building Superintendent
Toledo Correctional Institute 

My name is Nicholas Getzinger and I am currently the Building Maintenance Superintendent for the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation & Corrections at Toledo Correctional. Prior to my job as a superintendent for Toledo Correctional, I worked for 21+ years in the HVAC, R & P mechanical fields where I have obtained multiple licenses in the building trades. 

I was hired at Toledo Correctional for my experience in the trades and my understanding of building operations and environmental control. Once I was hired I found myself presented with an enormous number of tasks and opportunities to bring our facility up to compliance with operational mandates. I initially began to assess my options, my staff and my resources to begin laying out a plan on how we were going to accomplish all these tasks.

In a conversation with my supervisor and one of my staff, I was informed about the BOC certification program and the required mandates for each facility. I was advised on how the program covered facility energy performance, maintenance, tracking and all the other various aspects of building maintenance. 

At first, I felt that the course would be redundant for me with my current background, but I looked into it anyway. I soon saw some immediate advantages to attending the course because of my current situation at Toledo Correctional and an upcoming ACA audit. I had an immediate need to put new plans into action and have them operational before my pending audit.

I began to see great advantages to the program and how it seemed to fit perfectly into place at a time when I needed as much resource as possible. I had also learned that one of my staff Mike Carter, had recently completed the BOC course Level 1 & Level 2 which inspired him with a number of ideas on what he thought should be improved and what needed to be addressed immediately. It didn’t take long after discussing these issues with Mike to determine he was full of excitement and eager to address these issues. I discovered that his excitement was inspired from the information he had gained in both of the BOC courses.

With my new tasks at hand, along with my new ongoing refresher training from the BOC and Mike’s relentless ambition. I was now able to utilize these tools provided to me to realign my staff, implement training programs, new PM procedures, establish energy use assessments and determine the priorities of the facility maintenance program. I was on my way to successfully passing my impending State Audit.

I found the information from some of the classes extremely useful to the point that it to had inspired me to do more than the usual to make our facility more conservation friendly. Mike and I had begun to influence additional staff into doing more and recognizing their own potential and improving their own areas and reducing energy consumption.

Before long, my staff began rolling in with ideas sparked with ambition and the motivation to make things happen. 
Mr. Carter and I decided that we needed to find a way to cost effectively reduce the facility’s water consumption and the enormous heating bill for hot water. We researched a number of companies and ideas that were inspired by the BOC training and fueled by the ambition to make drastic improvements in our energy use reduction. 

Eventually, we came up with an idea that would completely change how we would control water and it would not only affect our maintenance operation, but it would make a major dent in our facility maintenance budget and cost of operation per fixture. After many bench trails and fabrication of our own controls, we were able to come up with our own in house water timer control system which would reduce the use of water consumption by limiting the amount of time a unit could run and setting a time limit on when the unit would reset to run again. We were able to reduce what seemed to be limitless hot showers into pre-programmed time limits which would not reset immediately. We had recruited our electrician and our plumber to install the units for a test run, we soon found another major advantage. The new controls that were costing us no more than $150.00 for 4 to 6 showers were not only cost effective but extremely dependable too! It wouldn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that the lower maintenance cost of the timer fixtures, the efficient operation of the heating plant and the reduction of water usage is in fact a great success story. 

Once we successfully initiated the water use reduction plan, I began working on a facility wide energy use reduction plan as well as a full blown preventative maintenance program for each skilled trade area in our maintenance department. It took several weeks to plan and implement but we managed to pull it off without any remarkable problems or complaints.

Our work production is up over 300%, our overtime emergencies have virtually been eliminated and we now provide over 95% of our own in house service. We now have a more organized and efficient system and an extremely positive and cooperative staff that is very proud of their accomplishments.

Also we have made great strides lately in making major improvements to our electrical and lighting systems and have integrated ideas inspired directly from the BOC lighting course. We have integrated a number of ideas on lighting upgrades, replacements and energy use timing. Our outstanding results have gained the attention of our state counterparts and our pioneering spirit have inspired them. We are now in the midst of planning a complete lighting upgrade based on our previous ideas inspired from our past BOC training and our own implementations. I hope to send more of my staff through the BOC course to keep them up to date and inspired as we are.

All our efforts and determination to put at work all our knowledge resulted in completing our State audit and more than that we’ve passed with flying colors, in fact we were complemented specifically on our implementation of energy use reductions in our lighting, heating and domestic water, also our staffs’ high motivation, cooperativeness, high professionalism and great efficiency received recognition. 

Subsequently, I was asked if I would supply a copy of our program to be used as a model for other institutions to follow and be measured by. I would like to thank the instructors as well as the management from OPFMA for the great training and inspiration they have provided. As you can see, a well implemented plan can and will affect others in a positive way. 

Nicholas B. Getzinger

Eric Meredith, Director of Business Affairs, 
Adams County/Ohio Valley School District

As director of Business Affairs at Adams County, Eric is responsible 
for, among other things, overseeing the operations and continuous 
improvement of the maintenance staff. Moving from a role of educator 
and principal to a role that involves the management of the facility 
maintenance staff, he looked for coursework to help further his 
understanding of the complex mechanical and electrical systems that 
operate in school buildings. The BOC course also gave him much needed 
information on topics such as Indoor Air Quality, Environmental 
Health and Safety Regulations and Energy Conservation techniques. 
Seeing the value of this coursework, Eric has sent his entire 
maintenance staff through the BOC program.

Eric credits the BOC program as one of the reasons the Adams 
County/Ohio Valley School district has seen a recent decline in 
electrical and propane use. The district is also able to handle a 
large bulk of preventive maintenance and repairs with “in-house” 
staff by using lessons learned through the BOC program.

Recently, the United States Green Building Council selected the Adams 
County/Ohio Valley School District as the only Ohio school district 
to receive the “LEED EB Pilot Program” grant. As a recipient of this 
grant, one of the existing buildings in the district will receive 
assistance from the USGBC to become a LEED rated facility. The 
lessons learned in the BOC program has helped the school meet many of 
the prerequisites required to receive this grant and will play a huge 
part in making the existing buildings reach LEED status.

“The BOC program has proved to be a valuable source of education in 
helping the maintenance staff at AC/OVSD continually improve the 
maintenance and operation of our facilities. I would highly recommend 
it to any district looking to improve in their facility management 
effort”. 

Eric Meredith