“The cleaning contractor can’t absorb this type of increase because their contract is essentially all labour other than cleaning supplies, so Humber will have to pay the difference,” says Wood. Going forward, however, Wood says the college will examine whether to include a wage rate price adjustment clause in its contracts, whereby the contractor will incur any costs related to a minimum wage increase, and/or give price greater consideration in the bid evaluation process, so long as it doesn’t impact quality of service. Humber isn’t the only post-secondary school faced with assuming the burden of the cost increases related to the province’s planned minimum wage hike. And like most education institutions, it’s under budgetary pressures and has been for quite some time. To save money longterm, Humber has invested in a number of energy conservation initiatives that align with its sustainability goals to minimize the college’s environmental impact and greenhouse gas emissions, and help conserve the world’s nonrenewable energy resources. “Our goal is to become a Canadian leader in energy efficiency,” says Wood, who is a certified energy manager, or CEM, a designation he earned in 2001 from the U.S. Association of Energy Engineers. Since 2005, Humber has reduced energy consumption by 11 per cent while retiring deferred maintenance, cut down on greenhouse gas emissions by 17 per cent and decreased water consumption by 50 per cent. At the same time, the school’s student population has increased by 48 per cent and floor area by 23 per cent. Humber’s target is a 50 per cent reduction in energy usage by 2034. To help achieve this objective, “We performed building envelope projects on four buildings at the North campus this past summer, essentially changing all the windows to triple pane and reinsulating or adding five inches of insulation to the buildings to reduce air infiltration,” says Wood. “The results aren’t in yet because we haven’t gotten to winter but the models are saying we’re going to save about 30 per cent of the heating energy.”
Wood’s department is also in the process of installing more than 700,000 square feet of new LED fixtures with wireless controls across both campuses. When complete, Humber is expected to save more than 60 per cent on lighting energy. On the water front, the school has changed all urinals to 500-millilitre models and most washrooms now have motion-sensored auto shut-off taps. In 2014, facilities management partnered with the Humber student federation Ignite to install 100 new water refill stations across the Lakeshore and North campuses. According to built-in meters, the initiative has resulted in the avoidance of the use of more than 2.1 million plastic bottles to date. Humber is also continuously working to reduce, reuse and recycle. Every year, the school conducts a waste audit in order to better understand its waste streams and improve the management of its waste. In 2016, the school diverted 63 per cent of its waste from landfill. The goal is to achieve 70 per cent by 2019. But of greater interest, at least according to Wood, is how the college is tying key concepts in sustainability into core course content to affect longterm change. While generally not a facilities management role, this task falls under Wood’s leadership. He and his sustainability staff take time to educate students and faculty in various programs on how they can be more energy-efficient in their future careers. In hotel management, for instance, one of the most environmentally impactful areas of operations — laundry — can be improved by using lower temperature settings for the wash cycle, investing in Energy Star rated appliances, installing laundry ozone systems, and so on. “If Humber reduced its energy usage to zero tomorrow, the impact would be relatively small in the grand scheme of things,” he says. “But getting at those students so that they bring sustainability with them when they go off and find employment, that could change the world.” Something Wood is looking forward to resuming now that the strike is over and classes are back in session. /
> SOCIAL MEDIA COLUMN Sponsored by MediaEdge
Showing your social media ROI By Steven Chester As the year winds down, a big challenge for many of us in the social media field arises as we produce our analytics reports and show our worth. Simply saying “I’ve gained 50 Twitter followers a month for the year” doesn’t translate to the business owner who needs to understand how these efforts are furthering their bottom line. The first step is to understand your goals. Was your business looking to sell a product online, acquire customers, gain brand awareness, drive traffic to a sign-up page, or increase overall traffic to your website? If the answer to this loaded question is “yes,” then you’ll have to look at several metrics and ensure you’ve built campaigns around each goal. Then, you’ll need to assign a value to those goals. Think of your hours spent – which you absolutely must be logging for ROI to work – and assign a value to each of those metrics. This is tough, but consider items such as cost per impression and clicks if you were to buy an advertisement. You’ll be able to track your referral traffic and other goals via your site’s Google Analytics dashboard, and most social platforms have decent internal analytics where you can delve a bit deeper into your numbers. There are a handful of great third-party tools that you can also use, which will provide even more insight. This is one of the more complex topics that can’t be fully covered in this space. As always, I invite you to stay social and continue the conversation via my contact info below. Happy holidays, and all the best for 2018.
Steven Chester is the Digital Media Director of MediaEdge Communications. With 15 years’ experience in cross-platform communications, Steven helps companies expand their reach through social media and other digital initiatives. To contact him directly, email gosocial@mediaedge.ca, or follow him on Twitter at @ chestergosocial.