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Back to Basics is an article series that highlights important, but possibly overlooked, information facilities management professionals should know. This year’s hurricane season began on June 1, so it’s time for facilities management professionals to prepare. This is important because above-average Atlantic hurricane activity is predicted for 2022 by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration…

Supply chain challenges and increasing material costs have thrown many buildout and construction projects into chaos. Here are some tips on ensure projects run smoothly. The ongoing pandemic has impacted many industries across the globe, including the design, architecture, engineering, construction, and facility management professions. Between increased demand, heightened inflation, supply chain delays, and the…

  Developments in digital mapping are allowing universities to make buildings smarter and introduce new efficiencies in how they operate. Dr Addy Pope, Higher Education Manager at Esri UK, examines the growth of indoor mapping in higher education Landscapes, cities and buildings have long been digitally mapped, allowing better decisions to be made about how…

Society has started the long march toward living in harmony with nature’s realities. There is no other way forward. And where goes society, so goes the economy. As concluded in the seminal circular economy report “Turning Point,” issued by the Council of Canadian Academies, material extraction and waste are exceeding planetary thresholds. We are using…

Advanced-analytics tools make it possible for engineers and other SMEs to greatly increase productivity and overall plant reliability. In the process-manufacturing industries, there has been a significant increase in the amount, complexity, and accessibility of operational and equipment data. Engineering teams now have visibility into historical and near-real-time data, from local and remote locations. Add…

Digital technologies allow teams to take an informed approach to asset maintenance. Nine of ten manufacturers now say digital transformation is important to their organization’s success. While digitalization can improve virtually any aspect of your operations—from throughput to quality to sustainability—perhaps no area has more potential for improvement than maintenance.  Maintenance activities remain inherently inefficient…

By Mark Barnes, PhD CMRP, Des-Case Corp. The Stribeck Curve and the Hersey number are your primary tools for selecting proper lubricant viscosity. For rotating equipment, proper lubricant selection is critical to asset reliability. Done correctly, equipment can live a long and healthy life; done poorly, asset life will be significantly reduced. Of course, original…

Summer is here, and it’s a great season to start working on various maintenance projects. This is especially true as more facilities workers return to their workplaces in person after working remotely during the worst days of the COVID-19 pandemic. Regular upgrades to outdoor projects may have been postponed due to COVID-19 and staff shortages,…

Once a pandemic stopgap, hybrid working has fast become the norm in many workplaces due to the work life balance it offers to employees. From a managerial perspective, this has other benefits to business, from increased employee retention to the potential downscaling of offices to cut costs. However, in modern hybrid work environments, a variety…

All systems are perfectly designed to produce their results — even when their results are far from perfect. Engineer Edward Demings observed that decades ago. Don’t like the results? Change the system. Potential systems change exists on a continuum, from wholesale system destruction and reconstruction to incremental system shifts. The former is often due to…