The use of epoxy coatings and epoxy-coated structural liners can save both time and money over traditional pipe repair methods.
Damaged or deteriorating pipe systems can be expensive to replace, particularly those that are located in hard-to-reach locations or inaccessible without selective demolition. Fortunately, common pipe systems can be rehabilitated from within, using cured-in-place epoxy coatings or epoxy-coated structural liners. These in situ pipe repair techniques can offer cost savings of up to 60% and time savings of up to 30% when compared to traditional pipe repair methods. We’ve partnered with Nu Flow to highlight several different in situ pipe repair techniques available to facility managers and building owners.
Real estate costs money and money is the bottom line for any company. Facilities managers who recognize this can raise their profile and contribute to the success of the company by accurately establishing facility costs and positioning the information for better corporate decisions.
FM Systems are the most important tools a facility and property manager has to manage his or her responsibilities. They provide critical visibility into the operations, information for decision making and analysis and improved processes and efficient services. All of this results in lower costs and better services.
Life Cycle View: Total Cost of Ownership Drives Behavior
Written by Michel Theriault Thu Dec 08 2011 12:00amInitial costs represent only 15% of a building’s total cost. If you ignore this when developing a building, you are wasting the other 85% of your costs. Keeping the initial capital cost as low as possible seems right, but it’s costing you a lot more over the life of the building. Visibility into the total cost of ownership is one way to address this. Justification and decisions should be based on the total cost of ownership, not just initial costs.
Building Maintenance Systems: The AEC End of the Equation
Written by Marty Chobot Wed Nov 16 2011 12:00pmAEC professionals have the opportunity to pass along valuable information to their clients, and to a building’s future maintenance manager. The information sharing and storage capacity of BIM can be leveraged to help architects, system designers, and installers deliver a more complete product than was ever before possible.
Green Building Performance: Benefits to Post Occupancy Assessment
Written by Michael Tolson MBA, LEED AP Thu Aug 25 2011 12:00amThe performance of green buildings is a very hot topic in both the construction and real estate industries. As owners demand lower operating expenses, more and more new construction and existing building retrofits are being designed to a very high standard. However, as owners are finding out, those high design standards create only the opportunity for a green building. It’s what is done with that opportunity that defines both a building’s operations and the occupants inside it.
Return on Investment (ROI): T5 Lighting Adapter Retrofits Offer Savings
Written by Andrew Kimos Thu Jun 09 2011 12:00amWhen considering a florescent lighting system upgrade, many facilities managers are retrofitting by placing adapters in existing lighting fixtures. Lighting retrofit kits with adapters have advantages over more comprehensive lighting system component upgrades – they reuse existing lamp fixtures, provide new self-contained electronic lamp ballasts, and offer reduced installation, maintenance, and operating costs. We’ll take a look at the basic ideas involved in a T5 lighting retrofit project, including a return on investment (ROI) case study that calculates payback as less than five years.
Thermal imaging or infrared thermography is a nondestructive maintenance method that uses infrared cameras to measure the amount of thermal radiation emitted by objects, which is converted to temperature. Normally, to measure the temperature of objects near room temperature requires the detection of radiation in the infrared wavelength range (which is much longer than that of visible light, i.e., approximately 400–700 nanometers). Infrared images are normally colorized so that objects that emit more thermal radiation than others will appear as brighter colors (yellow, red, and white). Cooler objects appear in darker blue, purple, or green colors. Although thermal imaging normally detects only surface temperatures, infrared signatures often indicate temperatures inside structures.
The Falkirk Wheel, constructed in Falkirk, Scotland in 2002, was developed to connect the Forth and Clyde Canal and the Union Canal so travelers could easily navigate through central Scotland. After consideration was given to several designs including a see-saw-like structure and a rolling eggs structure, a rotating boat design was chosen. British Waterways, Morrison-Bachy-Soletanche, and specialists from Butterley Engineering, RMJM Architects, and Ove Arup Consultants engineered a one-of-a-kind rotating boat lift to connect the two canals.
Theodore (Ted) E. Scott is the Managing Member of Stormwater Maintenance, LLC, in Hunt Valley, Maryland. He has provided our audience some insights into the inspection, maintenance, and repair of storm water systems. There are three categories of these systems that we’ll investigate: surface basins, underground structures and drainage systems.
Reduce Costs with Annual Stormwater Inspections
Written by Theodore Scott PE, CPESC, LEED AP Fri Jun 18 2010 12:00amIn most cases, property owners are required by regulation to maintain pond embankments and outfall works as related to structural integrity and dam safety. Proper maintenance also lessens the liability of pond and lake ownership by reducing the likelihood of failures that can impact downstream property. Owners or property managers may believe that proper maintenance is occurring only to later learn that they need expensive repairs. This situation illustrates that many contractors providing routine maintenance, such as landscapers, are not trained to properly identify issues that can be problematic or lead to increased cost of ownership.
The traditional concept of “preventive maintenance” applies to maintenance on a piece of machinery based on its quantifiable use, or the passage of a set amount of time. A good common example of preventive maintenance is changing the engine oil in your car every 3,000 miles or 3 months, as many automobile owners’ manuals may suggest. “Predictive maintenance” is an attempt to refine maintenance activities to only those times when they are functionally necessary, based on data collection, analysis, and (negative) trend determination from an established “healthy” base level.
