New metrics for designing scientific research space measure the predictors of human interaction in a research environment. While traditional metrics measure productivity in quantitative terms, new metrics—based on interaction, sustainability, and performance—look at qualitative factors to determine what type of environments encourage collaborative research.
An evidence-based approach to designing and analyzing research laboratories—one that focuses on practical and interrelated reductions in energy use—offers long-term cost benefits that trump popular but often-underperforming symbolic gestures. Traditional thinking suggests that sustainable construction of research labs, which are among the most energy-intensive facilities in the world, costs many times more than the non-green alternative. Not so, say the designers at Payette, a Boston architectural firm.
The biggest factor in determining or predicting appropriate facilities management staffing levels is not the amount or type of space managed, but the size and type of the workforce served. This revelation, which contradicts widespread thought and practice, came to light in a new study of how facility management staffing models have changed over the past 10 years—a period that includes the Great Recession of 2008.
The following is a condensed transcript of a panel discussion that took place at Tradeline’s Academic Medical and Health Science Centers 2013 Conference. The panelists are Ian McDermott, senior director of MedRIST, University Health Network, and Scott Kelsey, managing principal at CO Architects. The moderator is Derek Westfall, president of Tradeline.
Onset announced the release of a new high-performance data logger for building performance monitoring applications in January of 2014. The HOBO UX120-006M Analog Logger provides twice the accuracy of previous models, a deployment-friendly LCD, and support for up to four external sensors for measuring temperature, current, CO2, voltage, and more. This enables energy engineers, facility managers, and others to easily solve a range of building performance applications, including energy audits, building commissioning studies, and equipment scheduling optimization.
The following is a compilation of responses to a survey that asked individuals responsible for planning, design, operations, and maintenance of high-containment facilities to rank their priorities for 2014 and make open-ended comments regarding those priorities. The issues identified in this survey will be the focus of Tradeline’s upcoming conference—The 2014 International Conference on Biocontainment Facilities—on April 10‐11 in Scottsdale, Arizona.
The respondents ranked their overall priorities as follows:
The following is a condensed transcript of a panel discussion from Tradeline’s 2013 International Conference on Research Facilities. The panelists are William Gustafson, principal at Ballinger; Steven Frei, principal at Affiliated Engineers, and Michael Reagan, vice president of Stantec. The moderator is Steve Westfall, founder and CEO of Tradeline.
The State of Washington’s Department of Enterprise Services (DES) has selected AssetWorks' AiM platform to serve as the statewide facilities inventory system. DES is expected to leverage AiM to capture, manage, and report on relevant facility inventory data for both owned and leased facilities. This data in turn is expected to be used by the state’s Office of Financial Management (OFM) to conduct in-depth analysis, long-term planning, and ongoing management of the state’s facilities portfolio.
Annual revalidation of BSL-3 biocontainment facilities—which involves verifying that systems are operating to specifications—is important not only to maintain a safe working environment for scientific needs, but also to reduce utility and maintenance costs and protect the substantial financial investments such buildings represent. The time and expense of the revalidation process can be minimized with careful preplanning.
Lawrence Berkeley National Lab has released EnergyIQ, a free, Web-based energy benchmarking platform. The tool enables facility managers to compare energy end-use scores for individual building systems, predict return-on-investment for retrofit projects, and identify potential actions for improvement . EnergyIQ can be integrated with a variety of other platforms. The database currently includes facilities from the the U.S. Department of Energy Commercial Buildings Energy Consumption Survey and the California Commercial End-Use Survey.
