How Cypress Fairbanks used Benchmarking to Save Millions

Are rising energy costs giving you sleepless nights and making each budget season feel like a scramble?

At Cypress-Fairbanks ISD, Energy Manager Manny Villalobos turned that challenge into a success story.

If you're looking for a playbook that's equally practical and inspiring, keep reading! You'll learn how CFISD, with Villalobos at the helm, went from just keeping the lights on, to multi-million dollar savings and without adding layers of bureaucracy or hiring new staff.

The Challenge: More Square Footage & Less Budget

When Villalobos stepped into his role at CFISD, he didn't inherit a blank slate. He inherited:

• A $1M budget reduction
• Energy expectations without additional staffing
• An environment resistant to change
• Additional square footage being added with no additional budget allocation

Even basic operational adjustments, like reducing outside air during summer, were met with hesitation. Not everyone welcomed immediate change, and Villalobos knew that no amount of personal conviction would be enough on its own.

The Solution: Benchmarking, Relationships & Storytelling

Villalobos' first move wasn't to convince people; it was to prove reality.

"You may feel like your buildings are running fine, but feelings don't get you funding. Benchmarking gives you the real story." – Manny Villalobos

By benchmarking CFISD's performance against 40 neighboring districts using both CenterPoint localized data and ENERGY STAR models, he established a defensible baseline:

Baseline Cost (2022): $1.20 per square foot (Electricity + Water + Gas Combined)

His target was clear:

Reduce to $1.10 per square foot. A ten-cent reduction might not sound like a lot until you apply scale.

With nearly 18 million square feet under management, Villalobos translated that target into district language:

"A 10 cent reduction = $1.8 million. We're not turning dials; we're recovering salaries, buses, and programs."

That was the turning point.

Once the story was framed in credible numbers, district politics gave way to district alignment.

Partnership with OperationsHERO: From Data Collection to Decision Support

To scale the effort and eliminate manual bill tracking, more than 500 monthly utility bills across electricity, water, and gas, CFISD partnered with OperationsHERO and implemented the EnergyHQ platform.

This allowed Villalobos to turbo charge his efforts and build a credible story his leadership could understand:

EnergyHQ didn't replace Villalobos' expertise, it amplified it.

The Results: Millions Saved and Reinvested

Benchmarking proved our impact, and analytics kept it growing.

By comparing actual spend vs. what CFISD would have spent if 2022 operational performance had remained unchanged, Villalobos was able to clearly quantify avoided costs:

This wasn't just theoretical; Villalobos used this validated savings narrative to request reinvestment approval from leadership.

This request resulted in CFISD funding a district-wide preventive chiller maintenance program, an initiative that had previously stalled due to budget hesitation.

Leadership now supports deeper forecasting and long-range planning as CFISD prepares for anticipated rate increases in 2029.

What Other Districts Can Learn

You don't need a huge team of people or total school buy-in to start an energy strategy, you need a trusted baseline.

Here's how CFISD moved from politics to progress:

• Start with benchmarking, not persuasion
• Translate kWh into dollars-per-square-foot; leadership speaks budget, not BTUs
• Use data to create alignment, not confrontation
• Turn early savings into reinvestment fuel