Beale Air Force Base Receives Recognition for Outstanding Refrigerant Management AND Saves $45,000
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The United States Air Force is strongly committed to promoting best practices in environmental management and operational efficiencies that enable cost savings at its facilities around the world. At Beale Air Force Base in California, both of these goals are being achieved at once.
The Challenge
- Refrigerant managers wanted to inspire technicians to do their best work by investing in new technology.
- Needed to show federal EPA inspectors they were committed to complete refrigerant compliance.
The Solution
- Compliance Suite® Refrigerant Compliance Management Software
- ESS Compliance Services
The Results
- Assured compliance with all local and federal requirements.
- Recognized by the U.S. Air Force Inspector General for exceptional operational performance.
- More than $45K in cost savings from properly managing Freon disposal and in upgrading to new monitoring technologies.
Two long-standing champions of data automation technologies for the base's refrigerant management processes, Dennis Tolliver, Mechanical Superintendent and Brad Bailey, Staff Sergeant and Refrigerant Manager for the 9th Civil Engineer Squadron recently received formal recognition of exceptional performance from the Inspector General of the USAF. In addition, they report that they have saved the Air Force more than $45,000 in refrigerant recycling, handling and monitoring costs.
As users of ESS' refrigerant management products since the 1990's, the Beale Air Force Base team upgraded to Compliance Suite Refrigerant Compliance Management Software by ESS in April 2006. Tolliver said the upgrade was made to encourage innovation and commitment to refrigerant management best practices among the base's technicians.
"We wanted to keep our technicians engaged, create a mindset that refrigerant compliance is a priority," he said. "Although we've been "healthy" for a number of years with regards to refrigerant management, we knew we needed to invest in our program in order to continue to meet our goals in a challenging environment."
In preparation for its annual inspections by both the EPA and base officials, Tolliver and Bailey also enlisted ESS' Compliance Services consultants on three separate occasions to ensure that the more than 560 systems maintained at Beale were precisely documented and that base technicians had the most accurate system information available to them at any time.
As a result of these on-site audits, the refrigerant team has saved more than $30,000 in Freonrecycling costs and has implemented new monitoring technologies for their refrigerant systems using more than 50 pounds of refrigerant, which has saved the base an additional $15,000 in operational costs.
Tolliver said the software and audits continue to demonstrate lasting value and resulted in formal recognition of the refrigerant management team's outstanding performance by the Inspector General.
"We got our money's worth," he said. "ESS energized us with the on-site discussion, direction given and report issued. That is priceless."
Tolliver encourages other military bases to consider going beyond compliance by taking their refrigerant management programs to the next level.
"We have a successful, manageable program because of ESS software and the ESS experts who support it," he said.
