CASE STUDY
Vitality was able to design, oversee the implementation of a full tenant billing platform for 300+ tenants
Overview
The iconic Merchandise Mart (theMart) is a 4.2 million sq-ft building in the heart of Chicago’s business district. It is the world’s largest commercial building. In addition to providing trade show, convention, and retail floor space, the Mart is host to a large number of business entities.
Problem
Approximately 900 electric meters were installed in the building to measure energy use (in part to help qualify for LEED Gold Certification), to verify savings, and to allow management to bill individual tenants for their energy use.
The installed meters were being read manually followed by a manual process of entering those readings into a spreadsheet. Any additional processing or billing also had to be done manually. Not only were these manual processes time-consuming, but they were also prone to errors leading to inaccurate data and bad billing information.
Prior efforts to interconnect the meters into an integrated package had failed. In fact, they had been told by one contractor, that specializes in such work, that the building was too old and that undecipherable legacy cabling networks would make the job prohibitively expensive if not impossible to do.
Working With theMart
Always game for a challenge, Vitality sent a small team to Chicago to analyze the problem and propose a solution. While the existing building cable networks were indeed chaotic, the Vitality team felt that they could be deciphered and proposed the implementation of a data communications network utilizing a combination of existing cabling with new wireless communication devices. This network would enable the data from all of the meters to be continuously monitored and stored in the cloud. The Vitality management software package could then be used to provide management with real-time energy consumption data and to manage the sub-billing processes with the Mart’s tenants.
Tenant Billing
With metering hardware systems in place, Vitality is now implementing a fully autonomous tenant billing platform for the 300+ tenants at theMart. This platform will track tenant energy use in real time and automatically invoice each tenant monthly for the energy consumed. Tenants will have full access to the Vitality cloud where they will be able to see their energy consumption in real-time, review the many reports available, and review and pay invoices. Billing rates can be based on utility rate schedules, floor space, percentage of total, or customized to management’s preferences. With Vitality, meter readings, utility data, reports and monthly tenant billing will now be fully automated.
DESIGN, PROGRAM, & COMMISSIONING
AUTOMATED TENANT BILLING
SERVICES PROVIDED
COMPLETE METERING DESIGN
PROGRAMMING & COMMISSIONING
TENANT BILLING PLATFORM
Conclusion
With the help of Vitality, manual processes that previously had taken a team of people several days to complete will now run automatically each month with no human intervention or any of the associated errors. Combined with the current energy saving practices currently employed by theMart, Vitality will allow them to maintain their LEED gold status as well as their reputation for being the leader in energy management.
4.3M sQUARE FEET
300+ TENANTS
AUTOMATED BILLING
It’s time to gain control of your energy metering. It’s time for Vitality. Let Vitality give you all of your building’s vital information.
Schedule a time to speak with a Vitality expert to see how we can help you with your energy analytic needs.
