Energy & Physical Plant

Energy and Physical Plant (EPP) maintains and provides quality service to students, faculty, and staff to enhance learning and teaching in a safe and comfortable environment. EPP maintains the systems that are contained in nearly 20 million square feet of buildings. EPP accomplishes this enormous task with only 60 employees and 33 contractors with almost 60 service or job order contracts. EPP keeps the lights on, the rooms cool in the summer and warm in the winter, the toilets flushing, the elevators running, and the buildings secure and protected from fires.

EPP is comprised of basically 8 elements:

Utility Management – Approximately $206 is spent per student per year to provide electricity, gas, and water to each building. EPP is always looking for innovative ways to lower this cost and provide these services more efficiently. Some examples of these innovations are: tracking the trends of building energy usage and adjusting them accordingly and making ice during off peak times to help cool the buildings during the day.
Energy Management – This group maintains the control systems that keep the buildings at a comfortable temperature no matter the outside extremes. They run the mechanical systems at optimal performance while assisting building staff with occupancy scheduling and overrides.
HVAC Shop – This group maintains all of the HVAC systems and equipment, refrigeration and kitchen equipment. These systems comprise of approximately 230 chillers, 400 boilers, and 3000+ air handler units and approximately 1000 cooler, freezers and ice machines. Click Here for Information about HVAC Scheduling.
Plumbing Shop – This group maintains boilers, gas and oil hot water heaters, and all water piped into the buildings and leaving the buildings. This consist of all water lines feeding water to the buildings and ball fields, rooftop drainage, approximately 600 backflow preventers, sump pumps in mechanical spaces, water heaters, and flush valves. Simply put, they are number 1 in the number 2 business!
Electrical Shop – This group maintains all the electrical services and equipment that distributes the electricity throughout the buildings. This also includes outside lighting around the exterior of the buildings, many of the parking lots, and sports field lighting.
Communications Shop – This group maintains all intercom systems and MATV systems at every school as well as nearly 215 fire alarm systems and over 60 sprinkler fire protection systems.
Security Shop – This group maintains approximately 200 burglar systems, over 2000 surveillance cameras, over 40 access control systems, and nearly 10,000 Intelli key access users. They also assist staff, security staff, and sometimes local police with burglar events and video retrieval.
Elevator Shop – This group maintains all elevator equipment in the multi-level schools and administrative buildings. It performs all preventative maintenance as well as emergency repairs to nearly 125 elevators and over 50 chairlifts.

If you have any other questions or comments, please feel free to contact M&O Customer Service at (919) 856-8120