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Thomas Erb (co-chair) is a 28 year resident of Medfield and the owner and president of Electric Time Company (supplier & contractor to the construction industry and commercial property tax payer) since 1984. Electric Time Company was relocated to Medfield in 1986. Tom was a prior Chair of the Permanent Building Committee & current member, a prior member of the Medfield Capital Planning and Finance Committee, and a current member of the Medfield Sign Board. He is also a member of MEMO (Medfield Employers & Merchants Org) & Chapter 8 NAWCC (National Assoc of Watch & Clock Collectors).
Megan Sullivan (co-chair) has enjoyed living in Medfield since 1994. Her first community volunteer work was on Medfield's 350 Anniversary Committee. She has served on the Transfer Station and Recycling Committee since 2010 and is currently also a member of the town's Capital Budget and Energy Committees. Her paid work experience includes Budget Analyst at The Facilities Resource Management Company, Assistant Business Manager at Milton Academy, Recycling Coordinator at Sharon Public Schools and Enrollment Project Manager at The Baker Group. She has a BA in Accounting from Bucknell University and an MBA from Babson College. She is a founding member of Sustainable Medfield and Medfield Environment Action.
Amy Colleran has been the Director of Facilities for the Town of Medfield since 2019. She is a trained architectural engineer and worked as a Project Manager for Turner Construction specializing in Higher Ed and Medical Field Construction for 10 years. When her 4 children were young, she started a design company specializing in new residential homes and additions. Once her kids got older she went back into the workforce as the Assistant Director of Facilities for the Town of Dedham / Dedham Public Schools.
Walt Kincaid is a 25 year resident of Medfield and a 30-year veteran of the construction industry and has both extensive new and renovation construction experience in the public and private sector. He has successfully completed over $390M in Chapter 149A projects, including Quincy High School, Sherwood Middle School, Winthrop Middle/High Schools, and recently served as the senior project executive on the construction of the $120 million new Minuteman Regional Vocational Technical High School. He brings valuable experience, lessons learned and an in-depth knowledge and familiarity with the unique aspects of the construction management at-risk construction process. Walt is also married to a wonderful Medfield HS teacher!
Alec Stevens is a 10-year resident of Medfield with three children in the Medfield Schools. He has previously served on the State Hospital Advisory Committee and is a current member of the Medfield Energy Committee. Professionally, Alec is the president of DMI, an engineering consulting firm that focuses on energy efficiency in new and existing large buildings, including schools and other municipal properties. He is a licensed professional engineer and a LEED accredited professional with over 20 years of experience in energy efficiency. Alec was appointed to the Sustainability Subcommittee for the elementary school project based on his interest in evaluating efficient design alternatives for the project and applying his professional skills to help Medfield become a leader in this field.
Jason Uzzell is a 12-year resident of Medfield and the father of three with twins in the fifth grade at Dale Street and a rising third-grader at Wheelock. He is a member of the Dale Street Site Council, serving as a liaison between parents and the school. When not volunteering in the community as a coach for various sports teams, Jason is a Director of NextGen IoT Alliances at Cognizant, focusing on smart building technologies. The Sustainability Subcommittee aligns with his interests and his role on the Dale Street Site Council. Jason has a BS in Marketing from Stonehill College and an MBA from Babson College.
Committee Description
The Sustainability Subcommittee was created as an advisory committee to the School Building Committee by vote of the School Building Committee on November 23, 2020. The committee is comprised of 6 members from different committees including the School Building Committee, Medfield Energy Committee, and the Dale Street Site Council. The Sustainability Subcommittee was formed primarily to evaluate the energy performance of several design options for the new elementary school and to determine the best overall approach for meeting the town’s goals for the project. Broadly speaking, the subcommittee’s task was to determine if a so-called Net Zero Energy building was a feasible option.
The Sustainability Subcommittee will continue to serve as a resource for the School Building Committee and will evaluate and consider other issues related to sustainability. These elements may include review of alternatives for credits for LEED Silver Certification, material selection, and green building education. The Subcommittee will also continue to work on the alternatives for the building’s photovoltaic (solar) generation, an essential component of the Net Zero building.
Read about the committee’s work and determination that a Net Zero Energy building is a great option for the new elementary school below. A Net Zero Energy building has been approved by the Board of Selectmen and the new elementary school is being designed as such.
Net Zero Analysis
A Net Zero Energy building, on an annual basis, uses less energy than a code compliant building and has provisions to generate what energy it does use on site, usually through photovoltaic (solar) panels installed on the roof or on ground-mounted structures.
The Sustainability Subcommittee worked diligently with the project’s design team, including the architect, the engineers, the cost estimators, Eversource, and Eversource’s third-party energy modeling consultant. The design team’s baseline building design was already very energy efficient, due to requirements of the MSBA and the energy code. The baseline design features included an efficient building enclosure (windows, walls, insulation) and efficient lighting. The subcommittee's task was to compare building performance for several different HVAC options as well as the interactivity of those systems with onsite photovoltaic panels. The energy performance results were compared with the expected economic results, including first cost, annual equipment maintenance costs, and end-of-life equipment replacement costs.
Rather than looking at the benefits and costs through a traditional simple payback model, where the annual savings are compared to the additional first costs, the Sustainability Subcommittee adopted a more progressive approach that was shared with Medfield by our counterparts in Lexington. This analysis methodology compares the savings from the efficient design to the likely additional debt service (principal and interest payments) that would be required to fund the upgrades to the design. In order to have a robust model, high, medium, and low estimates were developed for the major model inputs, and the resulting output was tested iteratively and interactively. For example, instead of only evaluating the most favorable scenarios for things like bond interest rates,and utility costs, we tested the worst case (highest) costs against the worst case (lowest) benefits. Even under a very “bad luck” combination of assumptions, the Net Zero design still demonstrated that the annual benefits to the town exceeded the debt service and other costs. On the basis of this analysis, the Sustainability Subcommittee recommended that the Net Zero Energy building design be pursued. This recommendation was subsequently adopted by the School Building Committee and the Board of Selectmen.
The design features of the recommended building include the efficient enclosure and lighting systems mentioned above, as well as a geothermal heating and cooling system and photovoltaic panels on the roof that meet the building’s energy needs on an annual basis. Air is supplied to classrooms and other spaces using a displacement ventilation system, which provides better indoor air quality than a traditional overhead system. Future work for the subcommittee includes the evaluation of additional photovoltaic panels that could be mounted on parking lot canopies. Surplus electricity production could be used to offset the energy consumption of the adjacent Wheelock School. We will also evaluate onsite battery energy storage, which would primarily allow the building to help reduce peak demand strain on the electric grid and earn additional incentives from Eversource.
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