Magazine

Automating plant vehicle behavior reduces incidents while advancing production efficiency. Safety is often viewed as an inhibitor to efficiency, forcing vehicles and machines to move slowly to avoid collisions. After all, if an accident happens, the resultant overhead costs can be high, with investigations and possibly even a halt to operations. Contrary to this thinking,…

As a facility maintenance manager, you need to take care of the building from top to bottom, and that includes your windows. Typically, windows last anywhere from 20 to 50 years, so how do you know when it’s time for replacement? Whether it’s higher energy bills, heat loss, drafts, moisture, or wear and tear, there…

It’s no secret that hospitals, inpatient rehabilitation facilities, medical office buildings and other healthcare centers often function as safe havens for their communities. Over the last few years, we have seen dramatic shifts in the way we design to create a sense of safety for various patient populations. Research from the Academy of Neuroscience for…

Facilities are under constant pressure to minimize production waste and lower operational costs. They employ different techniques and innovative strategies to identify and eliminate these wastes without lowering the quality of products and consistency of established production routines—one of the used strategies is lean manufacturing. Facilities grapple with several invisible wastes arising from obsolete technologies,…

  In an increasingly digitized world, the skilled trades find themselves at a metaphorical fork in the road: make do with tools and processes of the past, or embrace emerging technological innovation. The construction, engineering, and fire and life safety realm is fraught with challenges right now, including an aging workforce, a scarce and competitive…

  In the insurance world, it’s often said that ‘water’ is the new ‘fire.’ And the new normal for annual catastrophic losses related to water damage is around $2 billion, according to the Insurance Bureau of Canada (IBC). But the problem is even more acute in high-rise construction projects, where it can be hard to…