Andrew Kimos completed the civil engineering programs at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy (B.S. 1987) and the University of Illinois (M.S. 1992) and is a registered Professional Engineer in the state of Wisconsin. He served as a design engineer, construction project manager, facilities engineer, and executive leader in the Coast Guard for over 20 years. He worked as a regional airline pilot in the western U.S. before joining the Buildipedia.com team as Operations Channel Producer.
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.
Ted Kokenos is a veteran construction cost estimator. He initiated a transition from pencil and paper cost estimating to computer-based while working for a construction company employing about 60 people. His experience might inspire some construction firms that have been thinking about making the leap to computer estimating to finally go for it!
I just finished reading Stephen Flynn’s 2007 book "The Edge of Disaster: Rebuilding a Resilient Nation." For those who’ve been interested enough in infrastructure topics to find their way to the Operations Channel, I’d highly recommend this book. Flynn is more of a security expert than he is a construction specialist, but it is exactly this objective perspective which makes his focus on our infrastructure so valuable. He includes infrastructure shortfalls along with Jihadists and pandemics as major threats to our society. He sees our aging infrastructure beyond the bricks and mortar, as reducing our national flexibility, as vulnerable terrorist targets, and as economic liabilities for future generations. These add up to make our declining infrastructure a tangible national security issue that he’s rightly concerned about.
Recently, I had the opportunity to observe firsthand the installation of an underground water storage tank for the purpose of fire-fighting in rural western Howard County, Maryland. An underground water storage tank can serve as a water source for firefighters in an area where hydrants connected to water mains are either unavailable or located at great distances from each other. Underground water storage tanks provide greater fire safety, are more compact and visually unobtrusive when compared to aboveground models, and could represent cost savings to local government agencies as well as homeowners.
Technologies to monitor emergency lighting systems throughout buildings or campuses have increased in popularity across Australia over the last decade. During the last six years, emergency lighting monitoring systems have also become more popular in North America. The idea behind these systems is to connect all exit signs and emergency (battery-powered) lighting devices to a central computer station so that they can individually report their functional status when tested, offering significant time and cost benefits to facility managers.
As stated in Watts it Matter to You? Electricity Generation, the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) assigned the United States’ ENERGY infrastructure a grade of “D+” on their 2009 Report Card for America’s Infrastructure. Electricity transmission, which is the second of three installments on energy, covers transmission lines and grid networks, “green” power transmission, and "smart" grids. Electricity distribution will be covered in installment three as we follow the path of electricity from a power generating facility to your home or business.
Bird control is a method of deterring birds from landing, roosting, and nesting in and around a building. In less extreme examples, birds in buildings can impede the productivity of workers and create additional building maintenance and cleaning challenges. In more extreme cases, they can damage capital equipment and create significant safety hazards. Fortunately, there is an entire industry in existence which offers various products and techniques for the control of birds, including bird spikes, bird shock tracks, netting, fragrances, wire arrays, and bundled wire stands, among others.
The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) assigned the United States’ ENERGY infrastructure a grade of “D+” on their 2009 Report Card for America’s Infrastructure. Electricity generation is the first of three installments on energy and covers nuclear, coal and natural gas, and hydro-electric power generating facilities. Electrical transmission and distribution will be covered in installments two and three as we follow the path of electricity from a power generating facility to your home or business. The goal is to provide an overview on how electrical power is delivered, including issues of current concern.
Sound masking technologies broadcast a consistent, comfortable, and unobtrusive background sound within a work space for the purpose of facilitating speech privacy. They prevent the transmission of speech beyond its intended local audience by carefully raising the level of ambient background noise within a building; often sound masking equipment is installed in an office, classroom, or meeting area.
I had the pleasure of attending the 10th annual National Facilities Management & Technology (NFMT) conference in Baltimore, Md. on March 16th and 17th. It was a great experience to reconnect with colleagues and get a sense for what Facilities Management consultants and professionals are offering and focused on these days. A few topics that grabbed my interest and which I plan to write about are centralized management of emergency egress lighting, bird control, water storage tanks, new technologies in the pavement industry, coordinated campus-wide synchronizing of clocks, diagnostic air metering, variable load air-conditioning systems, and sound-masking.
