With approximately 29,000 undergraduate and graduate students, the University of Guelph is a leading educational institution in Canada. The university prides itself in attracting and retaining only the best students, faculty, and staff. The university is located on a beautifully landscaped 1,017-acre area with approximately 50 magnificently designed buildings. These facilities serve a variety of purposes such as living corridors, computer labs, classrooms, or extracurricular activities. The varied functions of the buildings require that the environmental factors be regulated separately to cater to the occupants of each building. The responsibility for this customized control falls to Kreuter Marketing Canada Incorporated, the authorized KMC partner throughout Canada.

KMC Canada has integrated controls in nearly all campus buildings to ensure that university students, faculty, and staff are comfortable. In essence, each building operates as a standalone LAN using KMC controllers and residing on the campus WAN (Ethernet). Thus, facility managers gain an understanding of the performance of each building and use available data in their energy management and related duties.

The fact that the building controls are integrated into the existing campus IT infrastructure is significant. It illustrates the comfort level that facility management has with the KMC products. Also, of course, the University was able to hold down costs by not having to lay down a separate network for building automation.

The on-going success of the controls project is not limited to KMC products, however. Alex Magyar, Energy management Technician in the Physical Resources arm of the university, explains the important partnering relationship with KMC Canada: “Having a quality product that meets expectations is one thing; having a quality organization that exceeds expectations is quite another. KMC seems to foster a culture of representatives who are not only skilled and knowledgeable but who are responsive. Whenever I have needed a part urgently or called upon them for any assistance, they have responded promptly and courteously. I really couldn’t ask for a better group of people to assist me in the operation of campus facilities.”

This powerful combination of product and representation ensures that the University of Guelph will continue to fulfill its mission of higher education. The campus will grow. Facility demands will change. Through it all, KMC stands ready with programmable hardware and intuitive software while Kreuter Marketing Canada stands ready with expert systems design and service.