TESTIMONIAL
National Health Club
SITUATION
National Health Club is one of the largest health club chains in the country with 400 locations and over 22,000 employees. The clubs are open 24 hours a day to allow members to make their workout fit their schedule and become an energizing and rewarding part of their day. National Health Club has embarked on an aggressive organic growth plan and transformation of their brand with a more member-centric focus.
CHALLENGE
Key to their strategy is to optimize member comfort. This includes keeping the proper humidity and temperatures in the sauna, pool and weight areas, as well as ensuring consistently hot water for showers with proper exhaust fan control. All while managing energy spending and facilities, particularly HVAC, capital investments. National Health Club's legacy system was no longer flexible or service oriented enough to meet the Company's needs. Hardware would break and need replacement after just three years and the cost plus the time to manage the system had become increasingly difficult to justify. Since the legacy system only provided energy management and did not offer a monitoring solution, it was hard to see much benefit. National Health Club was not like a simple retailer that can easily benefit from turning off lights and implementing temperature set-backs after closing.
SOLUTION
After a competitive evaluation, the Vice President of Facilities and Maintenance selected Entouch because of its superior support, flexibility, and more reasonable pricing. The Director of Facilities Operations manages the day to day relationship with Entouch. The two leaders have spent their entire careers, together totaling fifty years, at the Company, so they understand their facility and energy management needs and related nuances intimately. Entouch offered a more robust reporting system that enabled them to understand what is really going on with the HVAC unit: outside temperature, humidity, CO2 levels in the room and more. The incumbent could only read room temperature, supply air temperature, and exterior temperature with three separate sensors, making it less functional while requiring more hardware. To maximize the value of its installation, the company chose the Entouch.360 service that provides 24x7 monitoring and a concierge service that also includes a lifetime warranty covering any hardware replacement, thereby maximizing their financial return while eliminating any unexpected costs. The number one requirement that the two leaders demanded from their building automation and energy management system was the ability to operate their 400 clubs out of their one national location. They also wanted uniformity and adherence at every site to the American College Sports Medicine Guidelines for the Club Industry, including a temperature range of 73-76 depending on what area of the gym a member used. Ultimately the biggest benefit Entouch delivered was visibility. This enabled the Company to staff an in-house HVAC team that improved performance and lowered costs. That was the biggest separation between the incumbent and Entouch. The prior system was designed to raise flags. Entouch, on the other hand, gives the Company the visibility into when to roll a truck, when to set back, and the ability to troubleshoot remotely and therefore control not only energy, but also maintenance costs. With an in-house team, the Company needed precise information on each HVAC unit to determine their best course of action and Entouch delivered.
RESULTS
The National Health Club now has visibility and control into each one of its more than 300 clubs fitted with the ENTOUCH system and justifies its ongoing expansion based on the proven savings. ENTOUCH has saved The National Health Club $3.6 million in just 18 months. The investment had a 1.5 year payback. ENTOUCH under promised and over delivered on the system performance, initially estimating a 10% energy savings but actually delivering a 14.4% savings.
Full coverage inside a single quarter
1,745
Stores brought online
20
Weeks from first install to full coverage
16%
Average reduction in annual consumption
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