The First Facility Management Blog

GE Consumer & Industrial has issued a call for entries for the 24th Annual GE Edison Award competition. Through the competition, GE recognizes excellence and quality in professional lighting designs that employ the significant use of GE lamps.

The GE Edison Award competition is open to professional designers, architects, engineers, and consultants. Entries are judged on the following criteria: functional excellence; architectural compatibility; effective use of state–of–the–art lighting products and techniques; appropriate color, form and texture revelation; energy effectiveness and cost effectiveness.

Projects scoring the highest number of points will qualify to receive Awards of Merit or Awards of Excellence. The GE Edison Award Winner is selected from among the Awards of Excellence. Awards for Sustainable Design are given to those projects that demonstrate exemplary, sustainable lighting design. These designs, while providing high quality lighting, should minimize the use of energy, maximize the use of daylighting, avoid skyward illumination and ensure system durability and maintainability.

The Award for Residential Lighting Design—a new category added in 2005—is judged on the same criteria mentioned above and presented to the project that best exemplifies excellence in lighting design within a residential application.

All entrants will be invited to an awards ceremony, which will take place Monday, May 7, 2007 in New York, NY on the evening prior to the opening of LightFair International. At that time, designers who have been designated as winners of Awards of Excellence, Awards of Merit, Awards for Sustainable Design, and the Award for Residential Design will be recognized with personalized plaques acknowledging their lighting design achievements.

The identity of the 2006 GE Edison Award Winner will remain confidential until announced at the Awards ceremony. The winner will receive a personalized Steuben crystal trophy and continued publicity throughout the following year. A distinctive plaque will also be presented to the owner of the winning installation. All lighting projects, submitted for award consideration, must have been completed between January 1, 2006 and December 31, 2006. Entries must be received by January 10, 2007. For more information about the GE Edison Awards visit www.GEEdisonAward.com.

Last year, the 2005 GE Edison Award was awarded to Dennis Vogel, Keith Irtenkauf, and Sonia Noble of Illuminating Concepts for their lighting design for The Guardian Building renovation in Detroit, MI. The building is one of the most significant and striking Art Deco skyscrapers in the world. An extensive renovation returned this landmark building to its original glory and prominence on the Detroit skyline.

Combining both the sophistication and hospitality of the South, contract furniture manufacturer Allsteel unveiled its latest Resource Center in Atlanta on October 25th. The new facility aims to bring both the experience and brand essence of Allsteel’s headquarters to a regional level.

Created by the Atlanta office of the award-winning international design firm HOK, the 15,000-plus square foot showroom, education, and resource center was christened as the company hosted the area’s architect, design, real estate, and business leaders at the grand opening event.

“Our challenge in designing this Resource Center for Allsteel was creating balance between the ’small town’ past of the South and the ‘forward-looking’ city of Atlanta, all the while expressing the brand attributes of Allsteel—advanced functionality, lifetime durability and outstanding performance,” said Tim Nichols, HOK-Atlanta Vice President and Design Director, Interiors, and lead on the Allsteel project.

“We are so pleased that HOK’s design of our Atlanta Resource Center captured our intention in an unexpected and exciting way. We look forward to welcoming our current and future customers and the design community to experience the space,” said Jan Johnson, Allsteel Vice President, Marketing. “Dealers, designers, and customers will appreciate the creative vision and attention to detail by HOK-Atlanta.”

The Resource Center is located in the 1180 Peachtree Building, the newest high rise in Midtown Atlanta and the first pre-certified LEED Gold Building in the United States.

Each element of the Resource Center complements its overall, sophisticated design. For example, the centerpiece Community Room evokes a sense of history and nostalgia. This warm, inviting space features a limestone chimney and wood slat ceiling, a large gathering table, and various regional art pieces, including a unique piece that features the windshield from an old pick-up.

“The use of regional artwork and humorous symbolism provides a sense of community and a fun approach to the design,” Nichols stated.

From the Community Room, guests can then customize a tour of the showroom space. Its open design includes numerous examples of the full breadth of workplace solutions from Allsteel, including its Align®, Terrace®, Concensys®, Reach® and Adept® products, as well as the complete line of seating collections.

“We are committed to providing the best workplace solutions in the Southeast and to the Atlanta design and business community. Our latest showroom was designed as a convenient and inviting meeting place for architects, designers, real estate, and facility management professionals and others to use for events, or even as an alternative office. We deliberately built the space with this in mind,” said Tim Smith, Allsteel Vice President, Resource Center Development. “The warm and inviting nature of the Atlanta showroom is reflective of Allsteel. Much like our products, the space is well designed and sophisticated without being pretentious.”

According to An Inside Look at FM Outsourcing, a new research report from the International Facility Management Association (IFMA), facility managers remain confident in the ability to save money and improve quality through the use of outsourcing.

Companies are outsourcing with greater frequency today, hiring full-service vendors to provide many functions, with 15% of the respondents’ companies now outsourcing, up from 3% in 1993. Two-in-five companies have brought services back in house after outsourcing the service. Typically the reasons are to regain control of the service, either in terms of cost, quality, or response time.

The use of out-tasking–hiring individual specialized vendors to provide one or more services–has decreased from 91% in 1993 to 77% in 2006. The steepest decline has come in the past seven years.

The report, based on survey responses from 487 of the association’s members, also revealed that most facility managers believe that outsourcing can be the answer if they find the right service provider.

“We’ve seen outsourcing evolve into an accepted practice in running a facility management operation. More facilities are opting to establish longer term contracts with full-service providers or reduce the number of contractors. Yet the majority sticks to what works for them, out-tasking to specialized contractors, retaining management oversight and specifying everything in the contract,” said Shari Epstein, associate director of research for IFMA. “Although outsource providers would like to build upon their relationship with existing clients, it’s difficult due to lack of communication and information offered by the client company. One of the many challenges for a company and its employees is to develop a level of comfort and trust and let go of the day-to-day details of running a facility.”

One-half of companies have consolidated their vendor base to use fewer service providers during the past five years. The result is that for nearly one-half of companies, service providers are in a position of receiving substantially larger contracts than just two to five years ago.

More than one-half of companies have also saved money through outsourcing/out-tasking and one-third have seen a quality improvement. These results are consistent regardless of whether the company is outsourcing or out-tasking.

Architectural/engineering/interior design services were outsourced with the most frequency with 90% of respondents reporting that they outsourced these services, followed by housekeeping services with 77%, property appraisals with 72%, and roads/parking/garage maintenance with 70%. The largest growth among outsourced services between 1993 and 2006 was in the outsourcing of utility system maintenance with a growth of 23%.

The main reasons facility managers are choosing to outsource include financial motives like reducing or controlling costs, and the ability to better adjust to work fluctuations while decreasing turnover and training costs. The key challenges to implementing an outsourcing initiative are ensuring delivery of the correct level of service and developing a level of trust.

The survey was conducted online. A total of 4,816 North American members, including 316 Canadian members, were randomly selected to receive an e-mail invitation to complete the survey. The survey data was collected from July 11-27, 2006. A total of 487 complete surveys were collected from IFMA members for a final response rate of 10.1%. The survey was previously conducted by mail in 1993 and 1999.

The research report, An Inside Look at FM Outsourcing, is available for purchase online in the IFMA Bookstore at www.ifma.org/bookstore.