A plant that never
stops, optimized
around production.
Ventura Foods runs a continuous food manufacturing operation: steam-based production, heavy refrigeration, and a sanitation regime that does not negotiate. Energy demand here is process-driven, not comfort-driven, which makes almost every standard optimization playbook the wrong one.
Twelve months
of verified
utility data.
August 2024 through July 2025, combined with on-site system inspections, thermal imaging and an operational log review. The resulting intensities sit well above commercial-sector medians — which is the correct outcome for a facility integrating food manufacturing, steam production and refrigeration, and exactly why benchmarking a process plant against office stock tells you nothing useful.
Energy demand at this facility is primarily process-driven rather than comfort-driven. Steam generation, thermal distribution, refrigeration, ventilation and auxiliary process-support systems account for the majority of both electricity and gas. That single sentence determines which measures are available and which are fantasy.
Not structural.
Operational.
A site walkthrough, thermal imaging and system-level review identified several inefficiencies contributing to avoidable energy use. None of them are building faults in the structural sense. All of them are the accumulated drift of a plant that has been kept running for years by people whose first duty is production continuity.
- Fixed or misaligned equipment schedules — running against a nominal shift pattern rather than the actual one
- Constant ventilation where demand varies — full airflow maintained through periods that do not need it
- Unnecessary lighting runtime in intermittently occupied areas
- Limited dynamic temperature control in non-process spaces, which are the only spaces where setpoints can safely move
- Partial variable speed drive coverage — drives installed on some equipment and not on comparable equipment beside it
- Heat losses on steam distribution components — visible on thermal imaging, invisible on any meter
Savings that
survived
verification.
Optimization actions implemented as part of the engagement — schedule alignment, ventilation refinement where applicable, lighting control enhancements and selected setpoint adjustments — were measured after the fact rather than projected.
Three percent of a five-gigawatt-hour site is a great deal more energy than thirty percent of an office floor, and it was achieved through control-based and operational changes alone — no capital, no equipment replacement, no production stopped. In a process-integrated food manufacturing environment, where any intervention has to clear both production requirements and food safety, that is the constraint the number should be read against.
The study also identifies further phased opportunities that would deliver substantially larger reductions. Those require additional engineering review, maintenance coordination and capital planning, and they are deliberately excluded from the verified figures above. A verified saving and an identified opportunity are different things, and adding them together is how savings claims stop meaning anything.
Production
first, always.
The recommended measures align building and utility systems with actual production demand: schedule coordination, ventilation and lighting optimization, improved control stability, and seasonal operating governance. They are deliberately pragmatic and scalable, because the alternative — a measure that is theoretically excellent and operationally unacceptable — simply does not get implemented.
Nothing proposed compromised production requirements or food safety. That was a design constraint from the first site visit, not a check applied at the end.
Phase 2 supports owners moving from diagnostics to implementation: retrofit roadmaps, capital planning and sequencing that minimises disruption. It goes past the audit into what actually gets done, which suits a facility where the binding constraint was never the analysis.
Comparable work.
14 William Sylvester Drive
Whole building optimization across seventeen fan coil units, 53% above benchmark energy intensity, with no capital required in the first two priority tiers.
444 5th Avenue SW
An ASHRAE Level III assessment of a 23-storey tower with a chiller plant measuring a coefficient of performance near 1.0.
Iqbal Foods
Wireless temperature monitoring replacing a manual compliance round across cooler and freezer equipment.
Whole Building Optimization report issued 25 November 2025 under the BOMA Enspire Phase 2 programme, prepared by Quwa Smart Services Inc. Baseline period August 2024 to July 2025. Savings above are post-implementation verified results for the operational measures completed within the engagement scope; identified phased opportunities requiring further engineering review and capital are excluded.
Thirty minutes, with the engineer who would run the work.
No cost and no obligation. Bring twelve months of utility bills if you have them — that alone is usually enough to say whether a building has a capital problem or a controls problem.