Good News: Bird Safety Retrofits Are Very Affordable At Your University or Local Building
October 22, 2025
Summary: You can start your advocacy by showing the bird safety retro fits are very inexpensive. Don’t talk about bird safety in one meeting and get back later with the economic costs. Make this economic argument right up front. The annual maintenance costs of a sample building are between 3 and 15 times greater than the cost of a bird safe retro system. (This memo refers to “university buildings” but it applies to most commercial type buildings.) About 5,000 commercial bird window safe systems have been installed saving about 5 million birds.)
(See important “Caution” below. There are 3 primary suppliers for commercial bird collision prevention products. See “Alternatives” below. It also explains why these two options were chosen.)
“We can at least spend as much to protect birds for 15 years for a fracon of teh cost of cleaning the floors and washing the windows in this building in one year.”
Note that you are not predicting the actual cost of a bird safety system. You are using the estimates to get past initial the barrier that “it costs too much”.
Bird safety advocates at a university have a tough time making the case for retrofits if they cannot say how much they cost. Collision prevention we now know is the most effective option for saving birds at buildings – – 95% effective. Bird safety advocates can make a very, very strong economic case for bird-safety retrofits in university type buildings by comparing the cost of the retrofit to the overall cost of maintenance for the building. The annual maintenance costs of a sample building are between 3 and 15 times greater than the cost of a bird safe retro system.
You can say as you start the process that” the cost of protecting birds on this campus is very, very low. Let’s take the example of building X. It costs Y dollars to maintain this building in just one year. The cost of either bird readily available system is ___ times a single year of maintenance at this building. We can afford to protect birds at a fraction of the cost of maintaining the building.”
You can use the spreadsheet on which this is based to estimate the costs for about any building. (see below)
Whether any item is costly depends on the context. For me caviar is so expensive it is unaffordable, but for a rich man its cost does not matter. Thus, the purpose of this exercise is to place the cost of a retro bird safety system in the context of the maintenance cost of a building. It is very expensive to maintain a building — $5 dollars sq/ft. is typical. The annual survey of American School & University‘s 38th annual Maintenance & Operations Cost Study estimates is $1,303 sq/ft. I have used $5. It all depends what costs are included in the estimate.
A comparison shows in relative terms how inexpensive is the cost of installing a bird safety retro system.
Caution, in every case, it is essential that you make the point that these estimates assume that the installation costs are not extreme at a building. I have used $10/ sq/ft. for the overall cost of Feather Friendly system at the McCormick Convention Center in Chicago. It includes the installation cost at that building. It was a relatively simple installation.
You are just providing this information so that you can get the university to take the first step — getting beyond the objection that bird safety “is too expensive.” In order to get an actual estimate of the cost you should insist that a person in the planning office contact either Feather Friendly or Acopian to discuss an actual installation. I have used a plug number of $1,000 for installation costs. Feather Friendly 1-888-874-1755 Acopian 610-258-6149. You can lower the overall cost by using the most expensive system on some windows and the lower cost system on others
I have developed a spreadsheet which you can use to compare the maintenance cost of just about any type building to the cost of a bird safety system. I will provide the spreadsheet to anyone who is interested. I need to go through it with the relevant person because any spreadsheet can be confusing
The cost of the square foot maintenance of university of commercial buildings is readily available. It can be as high as $1000 per square foot in this analysis. I use $230 ft.²per square feet. (See links below) Check the university budget documents.
So can say,” the cost of protecting birds on this campus is very, very low. Let’s take the example of building X. It costs Y dollars to maintain this building in just one year. The cost of either bird readily available system is eight times a single year of maintenance at this building. We can at least spend as much to protect birds as we do to clean the floors and wash the windows in this building.” The spreadsheet allows you to enter all of these variables X,Y etc.
From a budgeting point of view the maintenance costs are 15 times the annual cost. Fifteen is used because the useful life of the systems are about 15 years.
In example spreadsheet, the 15-year cost of maintenance is between 40 and 200 times the one-year cost of Feather Friendly and 41 times over the 15-year useful life of the building.
Alternatives – There are three suppliers of bird window safety products for commercial buildings. In alphabetical order they are: Acopian Birdsavers, CollidEscapeand Feather Friendly. Both CollidEscape and Feather Friendly offer a variety of products. Installation costs are a key component of any installation. The Feather Friendly option was analyzed because we have its installed cost at the McCormick Center. Acopian Bird Savers was chosen because its cost is so low that the added installation cost is not likely to be significant.
Prepared by Dr. Jim Cubie 843-991-1059 or jimcubie1@gmail.com
Consultant Acopian Center for Ornithology
The $328 annual maintenance cost is from the following:
The $1,303 cost is found in https://www.asumag.com/research/article/20851272/38th-annual-maintenance-operations-cost-study-for-colleges