Improving Uptime, Resilience, and Reliability for Mission-Critical Federal Infrastructure

The federal government has extensive mission-critical facilities that continued to operate throughout this historic pandemic. These facilities rely on complex climate control systems to ensure indoor environmental quality remains consistent day to day and season to season. Simply put, these critical facilities cannot fail. Establishing redundancy and controls to ensure critical building infrastructure remains consistent in times of man-made or natural disasters is important for the safety and resilience of our communities.

Why Uptime is Mission Critical
Today’s world poses imminent dangers for which the federal government needs to be prepared. We’ve seen firsthand the significant increase of natural disasters, from hurricanes and wildfires to tornados and flooding, as well as the added vulnerability of man-made dangers that threaten the security of our national infrastructure. This leads to energy instability risks that can become dire in times of a crisis.

Having a fully developed plan for how to maintain mission-critical infrastructure in the wake of an outage has never been more important. Whether it’s providing life-protecting emergency shelters or serving as the home base for emergency relief efforts, our communities count on publicly funded infrastructure to be available and operational.

4 Ways to Build Redundancy and Become More Self Sufficient
Successfully increasing the redundancy and reliability of your infrastructure is a multi-step process. We’ve outlined how to get started on this journey to become a sophisticated, self-sufficient operation.

1. Improve current energy efficiency
The first step to increase resiliency is to make sure current operations are as efficient as possible. Cutting unnecessary waste can go a long way to reduce what is needed to power any mission-critical infrastructure. Start by auditing your buildings to identify inefficiencies. Are lights regularly left on in unoccupied areas? Could heating and cooling be better managed to optimize peak power times and turn equipment down or off when it’s off-peak? Is there outdated equipment that is leading to high energy costs? By understanding your energy portfolio, you can begin to create a plan to alter operations and update equipment to improve efficiency. You’ll also have a better understanding of what exactly is required to keep mission-critical infrastructure operational during a crisis.

2. Develop a backup equipment plan in case of an outage
In the case of an emergency, minutes matter. If an HVAC or power outage occurs, Trane has a team of experts available to respond with rental equipment to get you back operational quickly. As a disaster recovery approved vendor with GSA Schedule contract-approved pricing, you have access to our nationwide equipment depots that are stocked with rental chillers, air conditioning units, air handlers, and generators, which can be delivered daytime, nighttime, weekends, and holidays.

3. Build a path to energy independence with a microgrid
As your need for reliable backup energy systems grows, microgrids become a compelling option. With the ability to enhance electrical power generation during normal operations, and provide reliable backup power during an outage, a microgrid can decrease dependence on the grid, reduce energy costs, and lower your environmental footprint. When coupled with energy storage solutions, renewable energy generation can increase the flexibility needed to make your operations more resilient. 

We can help assess what option is best for your facility for both generating and storing renewable energy to create a more self-sufficient operation.

4.  Continuous commissioning to realize maximum savings
Once you’ve upgraded equipment, built redundancy plans, and improved the overall efficiency and reliability of your operations, you don’t want to slide back into the old ways of operating. Trane collaborates with federal agencies to provide continuous monitoring plans which can maximize the investment. Whether it’s as simple as completing regular ongoing maintenance or as advanced as embedding a Trane employee within your operations full-time, we can work with you to develop a plan that helps ensure continuous efficiencies and savings are realized.  

Pay for Projects with Energy Savings Performance Contracts (ESPC)
Created as a partnership between a federal agency and an energy service company, ESPCs allow federal agencies to procure energy savings and facility improvements with no up-front capital costs. As a longstanding government contract holder, Trane has been a preferred ESPC partner for decades, and we’ve helped agencies save millions of dollars that were then used to fund infrastructure improvement projects.

How does it work? Depending on the size of your operations, you can generate millions of dollars in savings by making relatively simple fixes – updating to more efficient lights and lighting controls, swapping out end-of-life heating and cooling equipment, or reprogramming controls on facilities to make sure it’s appropriately optimized. These anticipated savings can be used proactively to fund more costly projects like decarbonizing operations through electrification or building a microgrid. 

In its ESPC program, Trane has a record of reducing energy bills by an average of 35%. Imagine what can be accomplished if you had those predicted savings to fund your next project.

Benefit from our Experience with Federal Contracting
As the partner for some of the largest ESPC projects currently in place, Trane is a leader in helping federal agencies increase the resiliency and reliability of their operations and ensure uptime while reducing costs. For example, learn how we worked with the U.S. Forest Service to decrease its dependence on traditional energy sources with an adaptable, self-sustaining, and customized off-grid mobile solar photovoltaic (PV) system.

Our qualifications working on large-scale, federal infrastructure projects are unmatched:

• 20+ Year GSA Schedule Contract holder with a proven track record in helping agency partners achieve audacious goals
• Qualified DOE ESPC contractor with expertise in scoping and executing energy-saving projects quickly and efficiently
• 250+ North American office locations that have established relationships with local designers, suppliers, and subcontractors to deliver services
• SAM.gov Registered Company – The System for Award Management (SAM.gov) is an official website of the U.S. Government
• Completion of over 7,000+ task orders totaling $370M supporting Federal, State, and Local Government Agencies

Contact us today to learn how you can improve uptime for your mission-critical infrastructure to create a more efficient and reliable operation.