After Setup - Communicating to Your Staff about Events2HVAC

After you have setup and configured Events2HVAC, it is important to let everyone know about the changes and how it may affect them.  Different groups of "users" will be affected in different ways as described below.

The Room Schedulers

When a room in the event provider’s scheduling system is mapped to equipment in Events2HVAC, that equipment is automatically turned on/off based on the confirmed events reserved in the reservation system.

If the room schedulers are used to booking a room for an extended period of time in order to keep people from booking it will find that this will cause the HVAC to be in occupied mode for that period as well.  This, of course, is usually undesirable and will lead to wasted energy and money.

For those situation, you can create a special event status like “Hold without HVAC” or something similar that indicates the event is just for holding the room, not turning the energy on.

Also, the schedulers need to know what the polling period is so that any last minute changes can be communicated to the HVAC staff if the change occurs within that period of time where Events2HVAC might not pick up the change.

The Room Users

Room users need to know that if there is no confirmed room reservation booked in the event provider software (Dean Evans EMS, ministrEspace, MeetingPlanner, etc.), no heating or cooling will be on for their event.  If the room has only one user (teacher in the classroom), that person needs to be responsible for making sure the room is booked correctly in the system.  Whether there is a specific person who will be booking all rooms or individual room users will be booking their rooms, make sure that all room users know the procedure you want them to follow to make reservations. Also, make sure room users understand that any adjustments to schedules need to be made in advance of the minimum time needed for the Events2HVAC updates. For example, if Events2HVAC is set up to pull data at midnight for the following day, changes need to be made before midnight.

The Facility Operators

The HVAC operators in your facility are trained to manage the building environment.  However, dynamic scheduling is a new concept in HVAC control and will be foreign to them at first.  It is important that you convey the goals of the system, how it interacts with existing systems, and how they will need to troubleshoot or override things if necessary. Emphasize the points below:

1. Save energy by not having equipment running in rooms that are unoccupied.  
   Turn on the air in the room only when an event is booked for that room.  This will eliminate running HVAC in all spaces in a building just because one room is occupied.
2. Centralize schedules for the rooms and the HVAC equipment.  Book your spaces AND your air in your room reservation system.  Eliminate double entry of schedules.
3. Have a backup plan. If the Events2HVAC server is shutdown or there are communication problems preventing the automatic schedules, your operators need to know the proper steps to override the system and revert back to the old way of scheduling.  Document these steps so other shift workers or technicians know the proper procedures. (See Overriding Existing Schedules.)
   

Your HVAC Representative

Make sure you tell your local HVAC technician what you are doing as well.  If they are on site and troubleshooting a room that isn't getting turned on, they may undo some of the configuration work that was put in place for the Events2HVAC system.  Remember, HVAC technicians are used to dealing with their own systems, not third-party integrations.

They may also provide some valuable information that might not have been considered when adding your systems to Events2HVAC.  That is why you should get them involved early in the process.