Magazine

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…

Now that workers have returned to the office at least part of the time, they are reminded of stiff clothing and morning commutes. Another stressor that has been a source of contention for years is temperature—offices that are either too hot or too cold, and the lack of ability to control the climate in these…

The U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) released its annual ranking of U.S. states leading the way on green building, with Massachusetts topping the list. The USGBC ranking is based on LEED-certified gross square footage per capita over the past year. The LEED rating system is the world’s most widely used green building program and was created…