Education

Understanding Legionella – Designing to Reduce Risk

Pontiac Fever. It’s got nothing to do with cars, and everything to do with Legionellosis, the disease caused by a pathogenic bacterium called Legionella pneumophila. Legionellosis or Legionnaire’s Disease preys on the elderly, the young and anyone with weakened immune systems. The subsequent fallout can also be catastrophic to a facility and owner because the … Read more

Cover Your Assets: Why You Need Surge Protection

Electronic devices are everywhere – in our pockets, on our desks, in our homes, in our cars, and in our facilities. Technological advances that make our lives simpler and more productive are made possible by countless electronic devices. The water, gas, electricity, air, and even the information that flows in and out of our buildings … Read more

Building Better Schools: The Importance of Proper Ventilation

Is your building properly ventilated? What is proper ventilation? How do you know if you have it? These may not be the burning questions you ask yourself when evaluating student performance, but if your key business is education, perhaps they should be at the top of your list. Some facilities personnel see ventilation as an … Read more

Is Your Lighting WELL?

For many years now, the design community has been laser-focused on creating ‘green’ buildings that use less energy and have a smaller impact on their surrounding environments. That is until recently. Due to growing concern amongst the healthcare community that Americans are spending too much of their days indoors coupled with the scientific community’s increasing … Read more

Choosing the Right Contractor – It’s a Matter of Success or Failure

Your project has gone through a comprehensive planning and design process to ensure that the project design objectives and goals are fully captured in the documents. You are ready to start work. Now what? The successful implementation of your project requires one more, extremely important step, selecting the right construction partner. How can you do … Read more

Who Is Deciding What Goes Into Your Facilities?

Managing the construction of new facilities or renovation and maintenance of existing facilities with multiple design and construction firms can be a daunting task even for the most experienced owner. One way to help eliminate miscommunication and set expectations of all project stakeholders is to have written design and construction standards. If you own, operate … Read more

Understanding Building Energy Usage

Fall is almost here and winter isn’t too far behind, so let’s make sure your building and wallet is ready for it! It’s important to understand how your monthly energy use is broken down by your building systems. Below represents a pretty typical breakdown for a building: System Type % of Total Energy Consumption HVAC … Read more

Exterior Lighting Upgrades

Since 2009, the lighting industry has made remarkable improvements in LED technology for exterior lighting. Manufacturers have been able to significantly increase light output, improve the color quality and reduce electrical usage all while lowering upfront costs. These advancements have made upgrading to exterior lighting to LED sources a viable way to create a positive, … Read more

HVAC System Selection Considerations

When designing a building, there are some things that are pretty straightforward: plumbing fixtures need water supply and drain; you need lighting to see; power for that lighting and other equipment; and you may also want some telecommunications and life safety/security systems – the things that Make Buildings Work. The fixture types that you choose … Read more

Using BIM to Coordinate Designs

Building Information Modeling (BIM) has rapidly changed the construction industry in recent years. One of the most powerful uses of BIM is the ability to integrate models from the architect, structural engineer, MEP engineers and others to discover and resolve potential conflicts in constructability before the project moves into construction. This allows the design team … Read more

Energy Savings with Variable Refrigerant Flow (VRF) Systems

Building owners are becoming more and more concerned about their building’s energy usage. Reducing the amount of energy a building uses can both help reduce annual costs for the building owner and reduce the building’s environmental impact. The largest piece of the pie for a typical commercial building’s energy is used by the heating, ventilation, … Read more

The Challenges of Archival Storage Facilities

If you are responsible for archival storage you may find yourself faced with a mountain of questions and a shortage of answers. Historical items that we deem most valuable are often the most fragile and susceptible to deterioration over time. Items such as books, video, film, paintings, furniture, and metals are all sensitive to the … Read more

Don’t Take Any Static: The Issues with Electromagnetic Interference of LED Lighting

Over the past ten years, LED products have taken the lighting world by storm. They are flooding the market, but not all of them stack up. This is true especially when it comes to their ability to mitigate electromagnetic interference. Electromagnetic Interference (EMI) is often referred to as ‘static’. It is a disturbance to an … Read more

Benefits of Centralized Uninterruptible Power Supply Systems

When evaluating the design criteria for an electrical distribution system in a facility of significant magnitude, vast complexity, or of critical operations, such as a hospital, a centralized uninterruptible power supply (UPS) system backed up by the emergency standby power source should be considered. There are numerous benefits associated with utilizing a central UPS system … Read more

Advanced Central Steam Plant Technologies

Central utility plants are traditionally used in campus settings to generate and distribute steam to multiple buildings. While central steam plants are an effective way to provide heat for a campus layout, these plants are also complex and can be expensive to operate. Some owners are finding that investing in and employing advanced steam plant … Read more

Reducing Utility Costs of Ventilation Air

Ventilation load can be a significant portion of a building’s heating and cooling load and subsequently a building’s utility costs. Finding ways to reduce the energy use associated with ventilation load can greatly reduce these costs. Two methods of reducing these energy costs are to utilize energy recovery ventilation equipment or demand control ventilation. Energy … Read more

Low-Flow Fixtures Can Be A Hot Topic

Energy/utility savings are becoming more prevalent in building managers’ roles in reducing their facility’s operational costs. Water consumption savings are attractive with the latest in low-flow plumbing fixtures, and the consumption savings trickle into reduced water heating capacity too. Although it may seem like a simple task in specifying low-flow fixtures or even replacing plumbing … Read more