Schools, colleges and universities

Buildings with an extreme occupancy cycle and a very long ownership horizon.

Educational buildings are the clearest case in Canada for deep measures, because whoever owns them will still own them in thirty years. The payback threshold that kills measures in a leased office is not the same threshold here.

The technical opportunity is the occupancy cycle. A school is empty for two months in summer, most evenings and every weekend — and a great many are conditioned through all of it because the schedule was set once and the caretaker who understood it retired. Setbacks and ventilation scheduling are usually the largest no-capital measures in the building.

Portables, gymnasia and pools each need separate treatment and are frequently excluded from an audit that treats the site as one building. We do not exclude them; they are often where the energy is.

Commercial — the rest of it