Retrocommission for a Better Building

This is an excerpt from a Buildings article.

Want to improve your building’s performance but don’t know where to start? Use existing building commissioning (EBCx) to shine a spotlight on inefficiencies and create a list of improvement options.

Whether your building is 5 or 50 years old, chances are the property has been modified over time – changes to interior layout, shifts in occupancy, or structural alterations. These adjustments can weaken performance by slowly chipping away at energy usage, water consumption, equipment life, and occupant comfort.

“The purpose of existing building commissioning is to use a structured process to confirm that the building is operating in a manner that meets the current facility requirements,” explains Paul Levy, a certified commissioning professional with Kirlin Mechanical Services, a subsidiary of the John J. Kirlin Group.

To read the full article, visit Building's website.

Demand for Janitorial Equipment & Supplies to Reach $7.2 Billion in 2017

This is an excerpt from a CleanLink article.

US demand for janitorial equipment and supplies (excluding chemical products) is forecast to advance 1.7 percent per year through 2017 to $7.2 billion. Although not rapid growth, this rate will be an improvement from the more sluggish gains of the 2007-2012 period. Sales of many of these products declined from 2007 to 2009 due to the recession and its subsequent effect on business activity levels, when a large number of businesses delayed replacing or upgrading higher cost janitorial products and decreased the frequency of nonessential cleaning services.  However, many businesses began purchasing new equipment between 2010 and 2012 as the economy improved, helping sales of most products return to pre-recession sales levels.

These and other trends are presented in Janitorial Equipment & Supplies, a study from The Freedonia Group, Inc., a Cleveland-based industry market research firm.

To read the full article, visit cleanlink.com.

Overcoming Architectural Challenges of Window Washing

For window washers who use boatswain chairs or scaffolding, navigating buildings with irregular window offsets, overhangs, insets, recesses or other architectural challenges can be dangerous and time consuming. Even flat building surfaces require highly trained employees, which makes it more difficult to find qualified professionals.

Since each building is different, window washers must decide the best course of action for each individual descent. Adjusting the boatswain’s chair or scaffolding requires precision, which makes this traditional window washing method a slow, steady process. There is additional downtime when workers have to make adjustments each time they are ready to move on to the next section.

To help manage these challenges, there is a solution that is both safe and effective. Sky Pro’s Skydrowasher™ High Pressure Window Washing System uses high-pressure water to effectively scrub a building surface from up to three feet. It is ideal for cleaning buildings with irregular exterior surfaces. They are available in 4-foot and 8-foot cleaning path models to meet a range of needs. Find out more about the Skydrowasher on the Sky Pro website.

Safety 2013: How to Sell Safety to Difficult Employees and Managers

This is an excerpt from an EHS Today article.

Odds are, you’ve worked with a difficult employee or manager at some point throughout the course of your career. At the American Society of Safety Engineers (ASSE) Safety 2013 conference, J.A. Rodriguez Jr., CSP, offered attendees tips to find common ground with difficult colleagues.

“I see the room is full today,” Rodriguez, senior manager with Raytheon Technical Services Co. LLC, said to the standing-room only crowd at Safety 2013. “Do we know some difficult people?”

If so, these audience members were in the right place. Rodriguez leaned on his 30 years of experience to outline how to turn “difficult” people into your biggest advocates. “It takes work, commitment and involvement, and it takes power within you to say it’s going to happen,” he said.

The the full article, including Rodriguez's strategies to help sell safety strategies, is available at the EHS Today website.

Healthier Workforces May Lead to a Healthier Bottom Line

This is an excerpt from an ISHN article.

Companies that build a culture of health by focusing on the well-being and safety of their workforce may yield greater value for their investors, according to a study published in the September issue of the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine (JOEM), official publication of the American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine (ACOEM).

The stock market performance of companies that had received ACOEM’s Corporate Health Achievement Award (CHAA), which annually recognizes the healthiest and safest companies in North America, was conducted at HealthNEXT LLC and analyzed by lead authors Raymond Fabius, MD, and R. Dixon Thayer, and colleagues. Companies that receive the award must be engaged in demonstrable and robust efforts to reduce health and safety risks among their employees.

To read the full article, visit ISHN.com.

FM Pulse: Despite Challenges, Job Satisfaction Stays High For Facilities Managers

This is an excerpt from a Building Operating Management article, which provides details on the publication's annual FM Pulse survey results. This year, 2,591 facility managers responded to the survey.

These should be the worst of times for facility managers. After two decades of steady pressure on resources, the Great Recession brought a whole new level of budget pressure to bear on hard-pressed facility departments. Staff was cut, retirements were delayed, demands rose, the working day often got longer, and raises were deferred and deferred again. But through it all facility managers have been resilient. Perhaps the best indication of how resilient is the job satisfaction ratings in Building Operating Management's annual FM Pulse survey.

From 2008, before the full force of the recession had been felt, through the depths of the recession, to this year, those job satisfaction numbers have remained remarkably constant. ... Those who indicated that they were satisfied ranged from 88 percent to 91 percent. Within that group, those who called themselves very satisfied ranged from 44 percent to 48 percent. The most striking change came in 2009, when the number who said they were very dissatisfied jumped from 1 percent to 8 percent, before falling back to 2 percent in 2010.

But those job satisfaction numbers don't mean that facility departments somehow escaped the Great Recession unscathed. Just the opposite.

The full article is available on the Building Operating Management website. (Links are below.)

From: FM Pulse: Despite Challenges, Job Satisfaction Stays High For Facilities Managers, Building Operating Management

Constant Improvement

This is an excerpt from an ISHN blog post.

What are you doing to be the best at what you do? Take a few moments and try the following exercise, which is a great process to improve areas in which you are already proficient.

What Activities Improve Safety The Most?

First, ask yourself what activities do you do that improve the safety of others in your area of responsibility. Really give this some time. Think of all the activities you do each day, week, month or year. Ask yourself which of these activities have the biggest impact on safety or have the potential to have the greater impact.

Write down all the activities you do that fit the criteria listed above. Take that list and do your best to prioritize it. Once you have done this, ask yourself which of these you do the best. The ones you are most competent in and feel comfortable doing. Now, look to see how you can become better in those areas.

The full article is available on the ISHN website.