Campus Facilities

As warm weather rolls in across the country, bringing drought warnings in some areas, universities are stepping up their conservation practices and boosting their operating systems to reduce consumption. 

At Auburn University in Alabama, the facilities management team is helping the city of Auburn comply with a Phase II Drought Warning issued on May 1 that includes mandatory water restrictions for residential and commercial properties. Although the university isn’t required to comply with residential regulations, according to Dan Whatley, associate vice president of facilities operations at the university, the facilities team has opted to “support more aggressive conservation practices.” 

In addition to its already established water conservation efforts, which include the use of low-flow faucets and toilets, automated meter reading to reduce water use and identify leaks, and drip irrigation systems, the facilities team is washing the university’s vehicles, walkways and buildings less and flushing hydrants less often. It’s also trying to be smarter about watering plants, it says.  

“We’re reducing watering every chance we can get,” Justin Sutton, director of landscape services at Auburn University, said in a statement. “Most of our watering is done overnight to lessen water loss due to evaporation, and we utilize soak and cycle irrigation programs to reduce runoff. If we do water during the day, it’s only recently landscaped areas that require water so the plants can establish in the landscape.”

Western Washington University, in Bellingham, Wash., plans to install water meters on buildings that don’t have them, coordinate campus-wide water audits and assess the potential for reclaimed water for irrigation, according to the university’s 2025-2030 grounds priorities report, published in conjunction with the Sustainability Engagement Institute. 

“Besides reducing water use from Lake Whatcom, reclaimed water typically leads to 30-50% reductions in potable water consumption for irrigation, resulting in notable cost savings over time,” the report says. The university also intends to provide training and communication to raise awareness of water infrastructure, including how daily habits affect water use. 

The University of Utah is lowering water use as Salt Lake County faces moderate to severe drought following a winter of record-low snowpack, the Daily Utah Chronicle reported. The university, which is the second-highest water user in the state behind farms and ranches, consumed 1,072,713 centum cubic feet of water in 2025, down 101,600 CCF from the year prior. 

“Water is used more heavily during the summer months due to irrigation, general outdoor water use and evaporative cooling in cooling towers,” Lissa Larson, associate director of sustainability and energy at university, said in a statement. 

Since 2015, when it was named the highest municipal consumer of water, the university has cut water use by 55 million gallons, in part by reducing the amount of Kentucky Bluegrass on campus, the Daily Utah Chronicle reported. The university is shifting away from bluegrass, known for its lush color, to drought-tolerant plants and irrigation controllers, among other things, according to Larson. 

Following requests by student groups, the university is also working to publicize usage amounts through a sustainability dashboard that will include monthly water use, energy use, transportation and emissions data, the Chronicle reported. 

Smart systems curb water use

Texas A&M International University in Laredo is taking steps to reduce water use through a partnership with Schneider Electric that has been building since 2017. Through the agreement, the university entered into a multi-phase energy savings performance contract with the company on several water-focused upgrades, including expanding an electric and chilled water metering system, extending chilled water piping and chiller replacements, upgrading building controls across campus and improving irrigation controls, according to a release by Schneider. 

As part of the effort, the university is adopting multiple digital tools from Schneider Electric, including its EcoStruxure resource advisor and Building Advisor systems and its capital asset planning program.

The university has so far decreased campus utility consumption by 33%, with water conservation measures helping to save more than 24.8 million gallons of water annually, or the equivalent annual water consumption of 680 people, Schneider said.

Three students who survived a shooting are suing Brown University for negligent security and premises liability, among other charges, saying the institution made it too easy for a former student to walk into a school auditorium during exam preparation and open fire with a semiautomatic weapon.

“Notwithstanding its location within an open, urban campus environment, [engineering building] Barus and Holly was open and accessible without meaningful entry restriction, and neither the building generally nor [shooting location] Tanner Auditorium specifically was protected by secured-entry measures requiring individualized authorization for ingress,” the complaints say. “Students and non-students alike were free to enter and move through the building without meaningful restriction.”

Cláudio Manuel Neves Valente attended the school as a physics graduate student in the early 2000s. Officials allege he killed two students and injured nine on Dec. 13. Police found him dead by apparent suicide a few days later at a Salem, New Hampshire, self-storage facility.

The students accuse the university of failing to provide building access control, surveillance and monitoring, among other security measures, in a breach of its duty to maintain reasonably safe premises.  

“A significant portion of Brown's campus, including Barus and Holley, is not a closed or self-contained campus physically separated from the surrounding East Side neighborhood of Providence,” say the complaints, which the students filed anonymously. “Rather, it is integrated into that neighborhood, with public streets, sidewalks, and non-university buildings in close proximity to and interspersed with university facilities. As a result, Barus and Holley was readily accessible from public areas and was not physically segregated from the surrounding community.”

The school was also negligent for disregarding concerns raised by one of the school’s custodians, Derek Lisi, who reported his concern that Valente was acting suspiciously by examining the building and auditorium about a dozen times before the incident.  

“During these encounters, [Lisi] observed Valente pacing hallways, peering into classrooms, and moving in and out of bathrooms,” the complaints say. “Lisi reported this suspicious activity to Brown campus security. In particular, Lisi reported that the individual appeared to be surveilling or ‘casing’ the building.”

People showing up repeatedly to a site without having apparent business there is a red flag from a security standpoint, Michael Evanoff, chief security officer of cloud-based security company Verkada, said in an email. “Would-be attackers often scout locations in advance,” he said. “Identifying suspicious behavior early is where proactive security teams can have the greatest impact.”

Best practices for spotting people who might be scouting a location are trained personnel and cameras, Evanoff said. “Both trained personnel and camera infrastructure with analytics … can flag anomalies in real time,” he said. 

The complaints said the school only had two exterior cameras and no interior cameras pointing toward the auditorium or the hallways surrounding it. 

“Neither the building generally nor Tanner Auditorium specifically was protected by secured-entry measures,” the complaints said. 

In an email statement, Brown University spokesperson Brian Clark said the school was reviewing the complaints carefully and promptly. 

“Out of respect for the privacy interests of the plaintiffs, we have no details to share on the merits of the litigation at this time,” Clark said. 

Sponsored content

By Brightly Software

Education leaders are no strangers to pressure: aging buildings, deferred maintenance backlogs, tightening budgets and communities that expect safe, modern, high-performing learning environments regardless of what the fiscal year looks like. The challenge isn't new. But the way the best institutions are responding to it? That's changing fast. 

The 2026 Asset Lifecycle Report from Brightly, a Siemens company, surveyed 400 facilities and operations decision-makers to capture exactly how organizations are evolving their approach to asset and facilities management. The findings are a wake-up call and a roadmap. 

Reactive maintenance is a budget leak you can't afford

For years, reactive maintenance has been the default in education: wait for something to break, then fix it. It's expensive, disruptive and entirely predictable, which is exactly why it's so avoidable. This year's report shows the tide is turning. The share of organizations where reactive work orders make up a quarter or more of annual maintenance dropped from 52% to just 22% in a single year. Meanwhile, 91% of organizations now use their asset and facilities management systems to schedule and track preventive maintenance and 88% say preventive routines meaningfully reduce costs compared to reactive approaches. 

For education leaders, the implication is clear: every dollar spent chasing breakdowns is a dollar not invested in students. Proactive maintenance isn't just an operational preference — it's a financial strategy. 

Long-term planning is the new baseline

Short-term, project-by-project capital planning has long been the norm in education — driven by budget cycles, board timelines and the urgency of whatever crisis is loudest that year. But the report signals a meaningful shift. Just one year ago, only 36% of organizations had a five-year capital plan in place. Today, that number is 56% — a 55% increase. And 89% of respondents say they know when their assets will need to be replaced and can plan their budgets accordingly. 

This matters enormously for educational institutions, where capital requests must be justified to boards, finance committees and state agencies. When maintenance data informs capital planning, rather than sitting in a silo, facilities leaders gain a powerful tool: the ability to make proactive, data-backed investment cases instead of reactive, crisis-driven ones. 

Sustainability is no longer a side conversation

Eighty-three percent of respondents now consider environmental impact when managing assets and facilities health — up from just 51% the prior year. But sustainability in this context goes beyond energy efficiency. It also means protecting institutional knowledge. As experienced staff retire, the expertise they carry with them represents a real operational risk. Recognizing that people, like buildings, are assets that require active stewardship, 85% of organizations now have a formal plan to sustain their workforce and knowledge base. 

The technology window is opening — don't miss it

IoT adoption jumped 278% year-over-year. AI integration grew by 195%. And 73% of respondents expect AI to play a growing role in their assets and facilities management strategy. These aren't distant trends — they're happening now, across industries, including education. The institutions that begin building connected, data-driven systems today will be the ones making faster, smarter, more confident decisions tomorrow. 

The gap between reactive and strategic assets and facilities management is widening. The 2026 Asset Lifecycle Report shows you exactly where that gap is and how to close it. 

Download the full report and see where your institution stands. 

Texas A&M University broke ground on a $226 million semiconductor research and development facility in Bryan, Texas, on April 9, according to a press release from Gov. Greg Abbott.

The building, dubbed the Texas A&M Semiconductor Institute, will have about 80,000 square feet of space for research, training and collaboration, TAMU System Regent Jay Graham said at the groundbreaking ceremony. 

The site will also have a sealed and enclosed clean room in one location for full-scale production, and labs for advanced technology, R&D and workforce development. Construction is expected to be complete by the first quarter of 2028, according to the TIS website.

Glenn Hegar, TAMU System Chancellor, said during his remarks that the “flexible labs” would reflect “real-world production environments.”

The labs will focus on process and tooling development, metrology, packaging, radio frequency, photonics, testing and evaluation. Additionally, the facility will include a skilled-trade lab as part of efforts to develop the state’s semiconductor workforce training.

The clean room would also feature purity ratings of 100 and 1000 classes, and 300mm equipment.

“It is designed to connect research, industry and workforce at scale,” Hegar said. “This facility delivers on that mission. Students and individuals have opportunities in training in our clean rooms, work alongside industry and move directly into high-demand, high-paying careers. That is how you build a workforce and strengthen an industry.” 

The TSI facility will also have support spaces such as loading docks, hazardous materials handling, and storage and distribution, according to TAMU’s board of regents Feb. 5 agenda. 

The board allocated $205.5 million in school funds that will support a capital improvement project and related equipment, Steve Putna, TAMU’s associate vice chancellor for research and TSI director, said in an email. The funding includes $161.8 million dedicated solely to the building, Putna added.

“This project is about building the physical foundation needed to keep Texas competitive in semiconductor research, manufacturing and workforce development,” Hegar said in a Feb. 5 statement. “The scale of this investment reflects both the urgency of the moment and Texas A&M’s responsibility to deliver solutions that serve the state and the country.”

The facility is also the university’s most expensive project per square foot in its history, Hegar said in his remarks.

“And why? Because we are working on cutting-edge technologies that are going to impact this state, the nation and the world, and we're proud to be here today,” Hegar said.

The school invested about $1.5 billion in the 3,300-acre site of the Rellis campus, located about eight miles from TAMU’s main campus in College Station, according to a fact sheet. 

In addition to workforce development, the Rellis campus facilities focus on transportation innovation, national security and defense, energy production and reliability and artificial intelligence hypercomputing. 

The university has been forming partnerships with some of the major semiconductor companies with operations in Texas, including Samsung, Tokyo Electron America and Cadence. 

The school also entered into a memorandum of understanding with San Francisco-based Substrate, according to the company’s application to the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts. Substrate is planning to establish its first semiconductor fab facility and has been assessing possible locations for its multibillion-dollar site across the United States. 

Dubbed Project Factory One, the facility would be operated by Substrate’s subsidiary, America’s Foundry Bryan. The pending TAMU partnership is “a compelling factor for America’s Foundry Bryan to locate in Texas and is dependent on receiving acceptable financing and governmental incentives,” according to the documents.

If Texas is chosen, the facility would be built on undeveloped land on the Rellis campus, according to the company’s application. TAMU did not comment on the MOU.

The TSI building is part of the Texas CHIPS Act funding Gov. Greg Abbott signed into law in 2023, in a bid to attract sector investment and establish education and workforce development programs. The law allocated $440 million to the University of Texas at Austin’s Texas Institute of Electronics for an R&D fabrication facility and $226.4 million to TAMU for TSI and its Center for Microdevices and Systems.

About $200 million went toward the TSI building, and the remaining $26.4 million was set for the Center for Microdevices and Systems. 

The Center for Microdevices and Systems is operating mainly through the school’s AggieFab Nanofabrication facility, Arum Han, associate dean for research in the College of Engineering at TAMU and associate agency director for the school’s Engineering Experiment Station said in an email. The funds enable the university to buy and install nanofabrication and metrology equipment as well as improve the facility’s infrastructure.

“Additional equipment procurement and facility upgrades are ongoing, with expected completion by the summer of 2027,” Han said.

In June 2025, state lawmakers passed legislation to add $250 million to the Texas Semiconductor Innovation Fund, bringing the total in appropriations to about $948 million, according to Abbott’s Texas CHIPS Act fact sheet.

Some of the funds recently went to another Texas university. Abbott announced on April 10 that the University of Texas at Dallas received $700,000 through the Texas Semiconductor Innovation Fund for a training clean room project. UT Dallas plans to install equipment to teach participants about basic clean room operations, safety and processing. The project aims to provide hands-on training to support and grow the semiconductor workforce in the region.

The renovation backlog for college facilities has hit its highest point in years as institutions wrestle with budget pressures, according to the 2026 annual report released April 8 by building intelligence firm Gordian.

Deferred capital renewal — for major upgrades such as new roofs and mechanical components or aesthetic refreshes — reached $156 per gross square foot in 2025, an 8% year-over-year increase and nearly double 2007 levels, according to the report. 

At the same time, spending on existing buildings is only 73.5% of what is needed to prevent the backlog from growing even more. The data “tells a story of structural underinvestment colliding with an accelerating pace of institutional change,” Gordian said in a news release.

Facility backlogs can become a self-feeding negative cycle. While financial pressures on colleges might lead officials to defer maintenance and renovations, waiting to do the work creates its own risks. 

In 2024, Moody’s Ratings pointed to a nearly $1 trillion “hidden liability” in physical capital needs at colleges over the next decade, and that was just for the roughly 500 institutions it rated. That could lead to future debt as colleges take out new loans to work through their deferred maintenance.

Gordian’s report framed the capital backlog in similar terms. “The sustained underinvestment continues to add to the embodied debt obligation in higher education facilities,” wrote report author Pete Zuraw, Gordian vice president of market strategy and development.

The backlog is growing as many colleges face a tough financial landscape with “extraordinary stressors,” according to the report. 

Gordian also highlighted a yearslong slowdown in the construction of new college buildings, with overall campus growth hitting the lowest levels seen in four decades. While Zuraw acknowledged some might see this as a “stagnating” pace of construction, he described it as a positive change in how officials approach campus spaces.

“Schools appear to recognize the real threat of being overbuilt for the likely community population moving forward,” Zuraw wrote, pointing to projected declines in the traditional-aged college student population beginning this year. “This ‘right-sizing’ is bold and courageous in the face of a history which has asserted strongly that not growing is dying.”

But if colleges are neither improving existing structures nor building new ones, out-of-date campus facilities can exacerbate enrollment and other problems in a tight marketplace. 

The Moody’s analysts noted in their 2024 report that “colleges and universities that are unable to offer updated facilities, advanced technology and an attractive physical environment risk losing competitive standing.”

Gordian President Arul Elumalai pointed to similar risks. 

“Without sustained and strategic reinvestment, institutions risk deeper operational challenges,” he said in an April 8 statement.

The person who killed two people and injured nine in the Dec. 13 shooting at Brown University didn’t appear to have a hard time accessing the first-floor lecture hall in the Barus and Holley engineering and physics building, reports show. 

The building had few security cameras in the area outside the classroom, and the doors were unlocked, according to reports. 

“He went in basically without anyone noticing anything,” Thomas Verdi, a former Providence chief of police who now oversees the city’s revenue department, said in a Providence Journal report. “He … knew the building. He knew the area. And I would not be surprised if he was a student, former student, worker.”

“There just weren't a lot of cameras in that Brown building,” Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha said in a separate Providence Journal report. He described the seven-story building where the shooting took place as “an old building attached to a new one.” The building was renovated in 2013 and has more than 100 laboratories and just as many classrooms and offices, according to information on the renovations. 

Although the building was open, students needed to scan badges to access classrooms and labs, school officials said. But hall traffic on that Saturday afternoon was unusually heavy because of the number of students either taking exams or preparing for them, according to reports. 

“The shooting occurred during one of the busiest moments of the academic calendar,” Politico reported.

There was "probably a lot of traffic," Brown University Provost Francis Doyle said in an NPR report.

The shooting site is a lecture hall with tiered rows of seats. 

“The room has stadium seating with doors that enter at the top,” said Rachel Friedberg, a professor whose teaching assistant was conducting an exam review for one of her economics classes when the gunman accessed the room. The teaching assistant told her that the gunman “came in the doors, yelled something – he couldn't remember what he yelled – and started shooting,” Friedberg said in an Ocean State Media report.

Students started scrambling to get away, Friedberg said. They were “trying to get lower down in the stadium seating.”

One of Friedberg’s classes, Principles of Economics, is the most heavily attended class at Brown, taken by half of the undergraduate students, according to Frieberg’s university biography page.  

The New York Times identified the teaching assistant as Joseph Oduro. “The students in the middle were impacted the most,” Oduro told the Times. “Many of them were lying there and they were not moving. I have no idea how many.”

A person of interest identified the day after the shooting has been released. Officials have not publicly disclosed any other suspect. Closed circuit television images that officials released show a person dressed in black walking away from the campus. 

The incident is one of at least 75 school shootings in the U.S. this year, CNN reported. As of Dec. 13, there have been at least 392 mass shootings and 13,955 shooting deaths nationwide, CNN reported based on data from Gun Violence Archive.

New York is contributing $49 million in capital grants to 35 of the state's private nonprofit colleges to help fund upgrades to facilities, build new labs and research spaces, and invest in new technology and equipment. 

The state's Higher Education Capital Matching Grant Program — led by a three-person board composed of political appointees — last week awarded grants ranging from tens of thousands of dollars to $5 million, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul announced in October.

Under the 20-year-old program, eligible colleges must invest $3 of their own money for every $1 of public funds. The next round of applications for projects was set to open in mid-December.

Since 2005, HECap has directed $369.8 million in state funding toward over 300 projects at private nonprofit colleges in New York, the governor’s office said. 

The program makes the state a financial partner for private colleges, many of which were established well before the 1948 creation of the State University of New York system. 

After a more than yearlong application process, the state’s HECap Board approved the latest round of projects at an Oct. 20 meeting. Colleges can use the funds to design, acquire, build, rebuild, renovate or equip buildings. Selected projects are meant to support a college's academic offerings or student life, as well as to drive economic development in the state.

“These projects stand for our ongoing commitment to keeping New York at the forefront of education and economic opportunity,” Hochul said in an Oct. 24 statement. 

The current round of combined public and institutional funds represents a $195 million capital investment in independent higher education facilities, according to Hochul’s office. 

The grants cover a wide range of amounts to nearly three dozen institutions, including:

• $1.8 million to Albert Einstein College of Medicine for renovations to a commons area and recreation center. 
• $5 million to Clarkson University for the first phase of renovations to an engineering and science complex.
• $69,800 to Maria College to purchase and install technological equipment. 
• $1.8 million to Cornell University to build a large classroom space in a library.
• $5 million to D'Youville University for renovations to a facility supporting its osteopathic medicine college. 
• $5 million to Hobart and William Smith Colleges for construction of a new science building and renovation of three adjacent facilities.
• $1.8 million to the Rochester Institute of Technology to upgrade its electrical infrastructure. 
• $1.6 million to Sarah Lawrence College to create an experiential learning center.

New York’s continued public financing of capital projects comes while colleges across the country wrestle with sizable backlogs of deferred maintenance and facilities needs, many left over from the pandemic era as institutions put off those investments.

In 2024, analysts with Moody’s Investor Service estimated a “hidden liability” of deferred maintenance needs at colleges potentially amounting to nearly $1 trillion — and just among the roughly 500 institutions Moody’s rated at the time. 

Rising costs, high interest rates and financial pressures can make those needs all the more difficult to meet.

“Few have the necessary resources and credit strength to sustain the higher amounts needed to tackle the full extent of their infrastructure needs,” Moody’s analysts said in their report. Colleges that can’t afford upgrades face recruitment risks in enrollment and staff talent as buildings continue to deteriorate. 

The backlog of projects is so large that capital spending increases on existing facilities have served only to slow the growth of unmet need, according to a report earlier this year from the building intelligence firm Gordian.

Yale University has paused 10 construction projects due to uncertainty around federal funding, a university official said during a recent real estate forecast panel, according to the New Haven Register.

Construction delays on college campuses have become more common amid rising costs, enrollment shifts and stalled federal research and infrastructure funding, Christopher Fields, senior vice president at Turner & Townsend Heery, an Atlanta-based engineering and construction services firm, told Construction Dive.

Universities are now increasingly reassessing their capital plans due to federal grant uncertainty, proposed endowment tax changes and shifting indirect cost recovery policies, said Krista Trofka, vice president of government and education advisory at JLL, a Chicago-based real estate services firm.

Yale’s construction slowdown signals a growing trend across higher education, where institutions are putting more planned projects on hold.

Institutional starts, which include education and healthcare projects, rose 19% in May, according to Dodge Construction Network. But the growth came mostly from healthcare projects, not universities, said Fields. Year-to-date, institutional activity remains down 2%, according to Dodge.

For example, in addition to Yale, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill halted construction in May on a $228 million research building due to federal funding concerns and grant terminations, Axios reported. In Maryland, officials at Johns Hopkins University decided to reduce capital construction and renovation plans by approximately 10% to 20%, according to a June 2025 school statement.

In May 2025, Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin also paused over $600 million in funding requests for 10 renovation and expansion projects at public universities in the state, according to the latest state budget bill. The governor wrote in the veto letter, “it would not be financially prudent for me to advance these projects to the construction phase with the current risks to our General Fund forecast.”

Those risks, including tariffs, cost volatility and overall labor shortages, have created a more cautious environment across higher education construction projects, said Fields.

“Federal funding uncertainty has delayed planning and approvals at research-heavy institutions, prompting more conservative budgeting and a shift toward phased projects or alternative financing," said Fields. “Many are increasingly turning to public-private partnerships and donor contributions to bridge funding gaps.”

Institutions that do move forward prioritize projects with clear financial upside and diversified funding sources. That means key academic programs, student housing or mixed-use and leasable spaces, said Trofka.

“Continue forward with projects that enhance an institution’s competitiveness,” said Trofka. “Prioritize those with diversified funding streams, private donations, state funding or private capital, that generate revenue.”

Better digital infrastructure helps higher education institutions analyze, track and meet high-level energy management goals, sustainability specialists with Johnson Controls said in an April 2025 webinar sponsored by the International District Energy Association.

Comparatively high energy use intensities mean post-secondary and medical campuses that optimize heating and cooling loads can realize substantial energy cost savings, which they can reinvest in future decarbonization projects, Johnson Controls Industry Director for Higher Education Russ Garcia said. 

Smarter digital systems empowered the University of Wyoming to tame its campus energy “spreadsheet from hell” and Georgia Institute of Technology to lock in $12 million in guaranteed savings through building automation, Garcia and Johnson Controls Director of Sustainable Advisory Services James Rosner said.

Campus energy teams can reduce long-term energy costs and make significant progress toward decarbonization goals through physical infrastructure investments like replacing legacy chiller and boiler systems with more efficient hydronic heat pumps, Johnson Controls’ specialists said on the webcast. 

But digital infrastructure investments also have the potential to improve building HVAC performance and efficiency while reducing overhead costs, they said.

Campuses tend to progress through four stages on their digital building management journeys, according to Rosner. They start at the default state of isolated building systems controlled locally, move through “connected buildings” networked together for improved efficiency, and then into the “smart buildings” stage, where decision-making algorithms optimize performance using historical data and sensor inputs rather than manual setpoints and direct human observation. 

The fourth stage, “autonomous buildings” that operate with minimal human oversight, is an ideal end goal that’s increasingly realistic as technology improves, he said.

Polls conducted during the webinar found most audience members’ institutions are in the “connected buildings” stage, with concerns over high upfront investment costs, data security and privacy as the top barriers to continuing the digital journey.

Rosner detailed how the University of Wyoming used Johnson Controls’ vendor-agnostic digital platforms to do more with the building and energy data gathered from its flagship campus. The 210-building, 6.9 million square-foot campus in Laramie, Wyoming, is served by central chilled water and coal-fired steam plants, he said

Though the University of Wyoming had already deployed building management systems, its hub for data analysis and decision-making was an 85-tab “spreadsheet from hell” that was difficult to manage, let alone leverage for useful insights, Rosner said.

The university then implemented Johnson Controls’ cloud-based OpenBlue Enterprise Manager to supplant the unruly status quo with an overlaid “handshake across systems” that enabled real-time energy usage tracking at the portfolio and building levels without costly software or equipment upgrades, he said. That made it easier to assess how similar buildings, such as residence halls, performed relative to one another.

With better visibility into building and campus energy usage and system performance, campus facilities management staff can take on “more of a supervisor role” that focuses more on prioritized, preventive maintenance and corrective action rather than basic analytics or diagnostic work, Garcia added. 

Separately, the University of Wyoming used Johnson Controls’ Green Hub platform to serve professors’ and students’ requests for energy data, informing sustainability reporting without allowing unfettered access to system controls, Rosner said.

“As a campus is progressing through its journey, there’s an insatiable desire for more information” that facilities managers need to address “without giving the keys to the car away,” Rosner said. This was a particularly high priority at the University of Wyoming given its continued reliance on coal for primary energy, he added.

Accurate, detailed energy usage information is also important for universities and other campus-based institutions subject to local or state environmental regulations, such as New York City’s Local Law 97, Rosner said. Johnson Controls’ Net Zero Advisor platform accounts for local mandates relevant to users, enabling accurate scope 1 and 2 emissions reporting, he said.

Institutions not bound by state or local emissions targets still have a significant financial incentive to invest in smarter building- and campus-level energy management analytics and controls, especially given recent federal directives that prioritize research grant funding on lower “indirect costs,” Garcia said.

Georgia Institute of Technology also realized $12 million in guaranteed cost savings and qualified for a $214,000 rebate from its electric utility, Georgia Power, through a “smart lab” initiative that modernized digital controls for six lab facilities across four buildings, Rosner said. In the first year, the deployment auto-generated 115 corrective work orders, replacing manual complaints from building users. Furthermore, the initiative reduced energy and maintenance costs by $65,000 and $24,000, respectively, he said.

The initiative was so successful that the university expanded the program from four buildings to 40, Rosner added.

The State University of New York at Albany is beginning a $30 million decarbonization project that will enable it to shut down its gas-fired boilers during the summer months, it announced in March 2025. 

The project will install a high-efficiency electric centrifugal chiller and a heat recovery chiller, both connected to a new geothermal well field consisting of between 90 and 135 wells in a campus parking lot. The chillers will replace two gas-fired absorption chillers in the campus' 1960s-era central power plant, the university says. In addition, the project will modify domestic hot water systems in over 25 buildings and install new low-temperature hot water piping in the campus athletic facilities.

The geothermal heat recovery chiller will be able to meet all of the campus cooling, heating and domestic hot water loads during the summer months, the university says. The move is projected to reduce the university's annual fossil fuel consumption by 16%, according to Indu, the energy officer at the University at Albany. 

The pipes throughout the campus that deliver hot water can create technical problems when transitioning to geothermal or other non-combustion heating technologies because of their small diameter, Indu said. 

With those pipes, “You cannot make steam or high-temperature hot water without burning some sort of fossil fuel,” Indu said. 

This limitation is why the university will only be able to turn off its gas-fired boilers during the summer months. “As the heating load starts to increase, our pipe sizes are too small to heat the campus with just 180-degree [Fahrenheit] water,” she said.  

Next steps

To overcome the limitations of existing pipes, the university is evaluating the construction of a satellite energy hub: a fully electrified geothermal heat recovery plant on the other side of campus, closer to where major loads like residential buildings and the University at Albany’s proposed $250 million health innovation & technology building will be located, according to Indu. 

The satellite energy hub and associated geothermal wells would help heat and cool 700,000 square feet of adjacent buildings in addition to the health tech building, the university says. Then, the university will build new pipe networks and electrify the existing plant using the existing piping infrastructure to “feed as much of the campus as we can while that other plant starts to pick up some slack from buildings on the other end,” Indu said. 

“Eventually, these two networks will connect and provide redundancy for each other. But that [plan] will help us move to that without spending an enormous amount of money on pipes,” Indu said. The new plant and geothermal wells are expected to reduce the campus’ fossil fuel consumption by an additional 16%, according to the university’s release. 

The current project and expected next steps are part of the SUNY system’s push to decarbonize across the state as New York works to achieve an 85% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, the university said. 

Seeing the whole picture

Life cycle planning and master planning are critical to implementing energy efficiency projects and preventing hiccups in the process, according to Indu. 

“Campuses, especially … are complex systems,” Indu said. “You can’t just look at one component and see what's the best for this building or this specific system. You have to look at campus as a whole. If I make this change here, how does this impact other things on campus?”

To that end, UAlbany has developed a Clean Energy Master Plan to decarbonize its downtown campus, which it is currently seeking state funding to support. 

“Capital cost is usually the thing that stops people from implementing these projects. Because replacing chillers [like for like] is probably going to be way cheaper [up front], almost half the cost of doing this heat recovery channel, the well fields and all of that,” Indu said. 

However, while a well field is expensive, it has a life cycle of 50 to 60 years, compared with a cooling tower that may only have a life of 20 to 25 years, Indu said. “You can just use your annual savings. You have to look at the life cycle cost of the system and compare it, and then look at the net present value over the life of the system,” she said.

As deferred maintenance at higher education institutions mounts, the growing backlog of needed capital investment presents a “hidden liability” for the sector, according to a 2024 Moody’s Ratings report. 

Collectively, the capital needs for facilities amount to between $750 billion and $950 billion over the next decade for colleges the agency rates, according to Moody’s. With fewer financial options, many colleges will resort to taking on new debt to finance investments, analysts said. 

With infrastructure — as with many other aspects of running a college these days — a divide is growing between institutions with stable resources and enrollment and those that are struggling. 

In their report, Moody’s analysts said institutions that “are growing, well-resourced and have diverse capital funding sources, as well as multiple business lines, will sustain the highest levels of infrastructure spending across the sector.”

Even some large public universities, however, are behind on their infrastructure investment. The University of Massachusetts system, for instance, is facing a deferred maintenance backlog amounting to $4.8 billion that has piled up over a decade, the analysts noted.

Meanwhile, of the approximately 500 colleges that Moody’s rates, the roughly 30% with credit and financial difficulties will “face hard capital-strategy choices,” the analysts said.

“The colleges and universities with strained budgets, sluggish revenue growth and limited debt capacity at their current rating level will still dedicate significant resources toward campus infrastructure despite increasing uncertainty around their future,” they added. 

Institutions can’t put off spending on facilities forever. Doing so could exacerbate enrollment declines. 

As the Moody’s team put it, “colleges and universities that are unable to offer updated facilities, advanced technology and an attractive physical environment risk losing competitive standing.”

Deferred maintenance could also lead to higher costs if infrastructure deteriorates to critical levels. One case study from consultancy EAB pointed to the University of New Mexico, when, some years ago, a waterline break led to cascading issues amounting to $100,000 in repairs along with labor hours and lost productivity. 

Aside from a daunting and expensive backlog, colleges also face rising costs for materials and construction. Between 2019 and 2023, the cost of building supplies and construction services grew 19%, considerably outpacing the growth in operating budgets, according to building intelligence firm Gordian. 

A Gordian report from this spring also found that in 2023, investment in existing campus facilities grew more than 26% year over year, a spike the firm called a “remarkable shift” that showed college leaders were increasingly focused on “the value of physical assets to the campus experience.” But construction costs weighed on that uptick.