Proactive IAQ Management in Schools - The Case of Milwaukee Public Schools

In order to effectively, efficiently, and proactively manage the Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) district-wide indoor environmental quality (IEQ) program the division of facilities and maintenance (DFMS) environmental health and safety IEQ group teamed with TSI in implementing the pilot project of utilizing TSI AirAssure™ Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) monitors to monitor IAQ in select MPS school buildings.

"We manage 160 school buildings and care daily for over 95,000 people between students and staff. We need to understand what is happening on the indoor environment before issues happen. We want to have a proactive approach," said William S. Fink, Senior Industrial Hygienist at Milwaukee Public School District.

TSI was chosen due to the quality, superiority of performance and support service of their Q-Trak™ model of indoor air quality monitors. The MPS DFMS EHS Group has been using the Q-Trak™ (model 7575) IAQ monitor with 982 probe for many years. Recently, the upgraded Q-Trak™ XP (model 7585) was purchased and used to augment IEQ program capabilities.

Webinar: Future First - Optimizing Indoor Air Quality in Schools
A conversation with William Fink, Senior Industrial Hygienist at Milwaukee Public School District.

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The TSI Technical Support Team has been instrumental in working side-by-side with the MPS IT department and the MPS DFMS EHS Group to implement the enterprise-network connection for the TSI AirAssure™ real-time IAQ parameter monitoring.    

At present, the DFMS EHS IEQ Group is looking ahead at utilizing the TSI Link™ Application Program Interface (API) feature to have the AirAssure™ IAQ monitors interface directly with the environmental management systems of our school building HVAC systems. The goal is to utilize the wealth of IAQ data gathered from the TSI AirAssure™ monitors and optimize IAQ in school buildings and classrooms by interfacing with HVAC system performance.
 

The TSI Technical Support Team has been willing to review IAQ monitoring data when anomalies appear. We work as a team to solve these issues and develop workable solutions. The quality and responsiveness of product support has been impressive.
We have had a few sensor failures in the first few months of use. The TSI Technical Support Team has been very responsive in sending out replacement sensors. They also have been very responsive at verifying or troubleshooting performance of these sensors when the data is not tracking as expected.

"Overall we are pleased with the TSI AirAssure ™ IAQ monitor performance - concludes William S. Fink - The capabilities of the TSI Link™ feature connects our team to the instruments at the designated sampling locations. This feature is extremely useful for tracking IAQ performance in real-time. The TSI Data Analyzer™ allows reporting of IAQ data in multiple ways. For example, our team can now provide a temporal and spatial component to reporting IAQ parameters in specific locations."

The DFMS EHS IEQ Group is looking forward to utilizing TSI AirAssure™ IAQ monitors in the coming months and years to monitor and optimize the IAQ in MPS school buildings and, specifically, classrooms with the goal of providing a safe, comfortable, and healthy learning environment for MPS students.

TSI Solution for Air Quality Monitoring includes:

TSI AirAssure™ IAQ monitor, the right tool for continuous air quality monitoring thanks to low-cost sensors tracking gases, including CO₂ and tVOC, and particulate pollutants along with key IAQ parameters to help optimize your indoor environment.

TSI BlueSky™ monitor, the light-weight instrument for outdoor air quality monitoring, designed to simultaneously measure PM2.5, PM10 mass concentrations, temperature, relative humidity, barometric pressure, O3, CO, CO2, NO2, and SO2.

Discover more about the TSI monitoring solutions for schools and universities and start your IAQ program today!.

TSI Solutions for Schools