Enertiv

The Challenge

The Outcome

Executive Summary

Value Add Class B Office in Texas

$82,000 in Savings Identified

Challenge

TI Group is a global real estate private equity firm that is consistently recognized as one of the premier owner-operators in North America and Europe.

To reinforce their experienced team, the management team at TI Group has placed an emphasis on deploying technology to unlock additional asset value from their investments. However, due to hold periods of only a few years, sensor-based technologies to improve building operations hadn’t offered the type of payback period necessary to warrant an investment.

In addition, short hold periods had historically made it difficult to determine whether equipment upgrades or retrofits would produce sufficient return before the asset was sold.

“Our value-add strategy means that our assets often lack the advanced systems found in some buildings. We needed a light-weight solution to attack the bottom line from a different angle than simply rent increases.”

Matthew Reibling

Partner and Vice President, TI Group

Solution

TI Group management recognized that there was an opportunity to boost NOI through cost-cutting measures and data-driven CapEx in their Greenway Tower, a 200,000 sq ft Class B office asset in Irving Texas.

Simultaneously, TI Group identified that Enertiv was uniquely able to capture the data necessary to achieve this objective for a low cost. In late 2018, Enertiv deployed a number of sensors in the Greenway Tower to track equipment performance and created a digital twin of the mechanical rooms.

In short order, this data led a number of insights that added up to over $80,000 in potential NOI (over $1M in asset value at a 7% cap rate). Examples include:

$10,000/year in savings from airside economization to utilize cold outside air to naturally cool the building when cold outside
$47,000/year in savings from optimized HVAC Scheduling
$25,000/year in savings from data-driven retrofit recommendations

Results

As compelling as these insights were, TI Group management recognized that this was only the first step. It would take leadership from the top to translate those insights into actualized increases in asset value.

This process happened in three steps. First, Enertiv’s client success team delivered the recommendations to the on-site team at the Greenway Tower and helped develop a workable implementation strategy.

Next, TI Group management organized a call with their top engineers from across the portfolio to ensure that best practices were being implemented. Finally, the changes were made, resulting in over $1,000 of savings over the first weekend, which could be easily tracked by management in the Enertiv Platform.

“The first phase results have been better than I could’ve hoped for. Now that I have a blueprint for success, it’s a no-brainer to roll the Enertiv Platform out across the portfolio.”