By Ryan Sheard, McKinstry Account Executive

Kilgore College is a Texas institution known across North America for excellence in academics, athletics and community service. It’s also home to a leading fire academy and the world-famous Rangerettes precision drill team that has entertained international audiences since 1940.

To prepare for its 85^th anniversary in 2020, Kilgore College envisioned a comprehensive energy revitalization project to extend its impact and legacy. McKinstry worked hand-in-hand with Kilgore leadership to create learning environments as high performing as the Kilgore students themselves.

To maximize value for Kilgore, McKinstry performed an exhaustive energy audit of every building on campus. A plan was then developed to ensure each building met performance requirements. Improvements included:

• Switching from incandescent/fluorescent lighting fixtures to LEDs to create consistent, comfortable and controllable indoor lighting conducive to student learning.
• Improving HVAC equipment to boost air quality, air flow and heating/cooling performance for students.
• Installing solar thermal window films to block incoming heat, improve comfort and reduce glare from harmful UV light.
• Weatherizing campus buildings to ensure student comfort in any extreme Texas weather.
• Renovating dorms to deliver a comfortable home and sense of community for the roughly 500 students living on campus.
• Enhancing exterior lighting to increase visibility and safety on campus for all students.

McKinstry also moved all campus facilities to a direct digital controls system. The result allows maintenance staff to proactively identify and fix equipment issues. For students and staff, the enhanced controls eliminate lighting, temperature and air flow fluctuations within classrooms and common areas.

The new digital controls system also provides a valuable stream of building performance data. McKinstry is using this data to measure and verify building performance and energy savings across campus improvements. That’s an important element in meeting Kilgore College’s budget-neutral financing approach. The Kilgore College leadership team stressed the need for fiscal responsibility and leveraged an energy savings performance contract (ESPC) that guaranteed enough energy cost savings to pay for the improvements.

The facility improvements performed by McKinstry will save Kilgore College nearly $1 million each year in energy, facility maintenance and operational costs. McKinstry is guaranteeing all utility savings for the life of the project.

Read more about the Kilgore College project here.