Fayetteville Policies and Procedures  710.1 

Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning (HVAC) Switching

The University of Arkansas provides environmental heating and cooling to campus buildings. The variety of complex HVAC systems in the various buildings throughout the campus do not lend themselves to effortless switching between heating and cooling as can be done in residential homes. Switching of the HVAC systems occurs twice per year: one switch in the spring, and the other switch in the fall. To make the switches, Facilities Management in many cases has to dispatch technicians to manually operate valves and controls for the HVAC switching to occur. In the past, Facilities Management has made the switches by monitoring the long-range weather forecasts to indicate when cooling or heating would be needed for the remainder of that season.

In response to campus constituents who desire more control over their building environment, the decision of when to switch will now be left up to each Building Executive. Once the Building Executive has enough input from building occupants to identify when the switch should be made for that building, the Building Executive may then contact Facilities Management to request the seasonal switching. Due to the fact that some campus buildings accommodate more than one dean, director, or department head, it is important that the Building Executive be the single point of contact for the building to insure consistency. This switching will be done at no cost once in the spring and at no cost once in the fall. However, should a second, third, or more switching be requested that spring or fall, those additional switches will be done at the expense of the requesting department. The process of switching each building is unique to the specific facility, and the cost of making the switches will vary by building. The cost to switch each building is posted on the Facilities Management web site at http://fama.uark.edu/ 

In most cases building switching can occur within two working days of Facilities Management receiving the request to switch. However, campus priorities at the time of the request may vary the time to switch to be somewhat shorter or longer. When each request to switch is received, Facilities Management will review current workload and campus priorities, and will get back to the requester with an estimated time the switch can be made.

HVAC switching can be requested by contacting your Building Executive. If you do not know who your Building Executive is, you can view the current Building Executive list on the Facilities Management homepage at http://fama.uark.edu/ under the topic Building Information.

Reformatted for Web April 21, 2014
January 10, 2000