The First Facility Management Blog

As the New Year approaches, enjoy some amusing and striking art creations. English artist, Julian Beever, is famous for his works of chalk art, which can be found on the pavement in numerous countries, including England, the United States, France, German, Belgium, and Australia. Below is a sampling of his realistic drawings.

As green cleaning’s popularity continues to soar, a new poll appears to question if using environmentally preferable cleaning products is of greater interest to jansan manufacturers and distributors than to the customers of building service contractors (BSCs). Participants were questioned as to how many of their customers have asked to switch from conventional to green cleaning products. Sixty percent responded “very few;” 20% indicated more than half; and 20% reported that a “quarter to about half” of their customers request environmentally preferable cleaning products be used in their facilities.

For more on this topic, make sure to check the January 2007 issue of TFM.)

The Tornado e-Poll also asked BSCs if their customers were aware of certifying organizations, such as EcoLogoM and Green Seal® or the Carpet and Rug Institute’s Green Label and Seal of Approval Programs. The results are as follows:
Almost all: 20%
Quiet a few: 20%
Very few: 40%
None: 20%

Similarly, when asked if their clients were seeking LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification, the cleaning professionals answered:
Yes: 20%
No: 40%
Do not know: 20%

“It almost makes you wonder if green cleaning is of greater interest in the boardrooms of manufacturers and distributors than in the millions of facilities cleaned every day,” says Jim Hlavin, head of Tornado’s Business Development division. “However, we know the interest in Green cleaning, sustainability, LEED certification, and similar measures are growing considerably. It is just beginning to blossom.”

The final question asked the BSCs about their sources of information about green cleaning. According to the survey, 80% indicated they get most of their information from trade publications. The remaining 20% answered that their information source is primarily their local jansan distributor.

Survey Methodology:
• Database of end users provided by Tornado Industries; survey conducted by AlturaSolutions Communications, Chicago, Illinois, using a Web-based survey service.
• The survey was conducted November 2006.
• E-mail invitations were sent to approximately 3,000 jansan distributors via a monthly newsletter with 141 responding at the time of this release.
• The survey has a confidence interval of 95%. This means that even if a larger number of similar recipients had responded, there is a 95% chance the survey results would still be the same.

In anticipation of next week, FacilityBlog is letting managers in on a little secret. It’s a free service called Call-in-Sick which allows workers to send a prerecorded “sickie” request to managers “from anywhere,” and at “any time.” The description continues, “With Call-in-Sick, you can record your sick message the night before then schedule it to be sent directly to your boss’s phone early in the morning without you even getting out of bed!”

Here is the description from the Web site:
* It’s FREE!
* Your caller-id on your outgoing call
* Schedule the call anytime of the day or night.
* Re-record your message and play it back until you have perfected the perfect sick sounding call.
* All calls left on your boss’s phone’s voicemail or answering machine.
* Confirmation delivery of your message sent as a text message to your cell phone.

(I personally tried the example, and it worked.)

So facility managers, be forewarned!

Two new compilations of environmental standards have been published by ASTM International. ASTM Standards on Environmental Site Characterization, 3rd Edition, and ASTM Standards on Environmental Sampling, 3rd Edition, are now available in print or on CD-ROM.

ASTM Standards on Environmental Site Characterization, 3rd Edition, features 180 ASTM guides, practices, and test methods for environmental site characterization drawn from the work of the following ASTM committees: D18 on Soil and Rock; D19 on Water; D34 on Waste Management; E47 on Biological Effects and Environmental Fate; and E50 on Environmental Assessment, Risk Management, and Corrective Action.

All of these standards can be used in site characterization plans to satisfy state, local, and federal regulators during investigations of hazardous waste sites and evaluations of contaminant migration in the environment. In addition, the standards provide valuable guidance to use with CERCLA, RCRA, and petroleum release site investigations and to develop accelerated and expedited site characterization procedures.

Eighty percent new or revised since its last edition, ASTM Standards on Environmental Sampling, 3rd Edition, includes 128 of the latest standards relevant to environmental sample collection and handling.

Standards cover planning for sampling, screening samples in the field to indicate the need for additional sampling, interpreting data based on a specific sampling plan, various sampling techniques for a variety of environmental media, valuable information on different types of sampling equipment, sample holding times, preservation techniques, and quality
assurance/quality control specifications.

Copies of ASTM Standards on Environmental Site Characterization, 3rd Edition are available for purchase for $225. Copies of ASTM Standards on Environmental Sampling, 3rd Edition are available for purchase for $175. Copies of both purchased together (stock # ENVCOMBO) are available for $340. To purchase, contact ASTM Customer Service by phone at 610-832-9585 or e-mail: service@astm.org.

For the second year in a row, The HON Company’s customer service department was recognized by Service Quality Measurement Group (SQM) for achieving excellence in providing world class customer satisfaction. This recognition was achieved by having 80% or higher of call center customers rate their experience as very satisfied. The HON Company’s customer service department was also acknowledged by SQM for providing the highest customer satisfaction level in the retail sector.

“We are thrilled to be honored again by SQM,” said Dave Burdakin, president of The HON Company. “These awards mean so much to us because we have made it our mission each and every day to go above and beyond to meet our customers needs and expectations.”

Mike Desmarais, founder and president of SQM Group, stated that “based on their customer’s assessment, The HON Company call center is recognized as consistently providing world class customer service.”

SQM benchmarked over 260 call centers for the period of October 1, 2005 – October 27, 2006. In each call center, SQM surveyed 200-400 customers within 1-3 days of their call to the call center to understand their satisfaction with their service experience.

Seventy-six-year Florida resident, American Society of Safety Engineers‘ (ASSE) professional member, and chemist Edwin Granberry, Jr., has urged officials to provide the same level of workplace safety protection for the estimated 8.5 million state and local government workers that other U.S. workers have under the Occupational Safety and Health Act at a recent public meeting on a Daytona Beach explosion that killed two workers. Florida state and municipal workers do not have the same workplace safety protection that other workers do.

The U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board (CSB) public meeting, held mid-December, was on the Bethune Point Wastewater Plant Explosion that killed two municipal workers and seriously injured another. The workers were trying to remove a steel roof over a storage tank containing highly flammable methyl alcohol when, as reported, a cutting torch ignited the blast. The plant is operated by the City of Daytona Beach.

“This public meeting should bring attention to a situation every Floridian should know and be deeply concerned about,” Granberry said. “That Florida’s public employees do not enjoy the same occupational safety and health protections by law that the rest of us do.”

A key issue that arose at the hearing was the lack of Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) coverage for state and municipal employees and whether Florida should adopt federal OSHA coverage to protect public employees from chemical hazards in the workplace.

“This is not only a Florida issue, but around the country it is estimated that 8.5 million state and local government employees are not protected by OSHA safety and health rules and regulations,” Granberry said. “This is a long-standing national issue of concern….All workers should be protected.”

In 2000, Florida legislators allowed the administrative code provisions requiring public sector employers to comply with the same federal OSHA requirements that all private sector employers in Florida, and the U.S., must meet. However, Granberry noted, in the business world merely meeting OSHA standards is considered a minimal level of protection for workers.

“Most large employers – as the state and many Florida municipalities would be considered – expect even higher safety and health standards to be met,” Granberry said. “That’s because they understand that fewer injuries save money in workers compensation and liability costs, time off and productivity costs, and health insurance costs.

“They understand the moral responsibility they have to make sure their workers are able to come home each day from work alive and injury-free to their families,” Granberry said. “Florida’s workers deserve no less of a commitment to safety from their employers.”

With the death of the two workers and the recommendations of CSB, Granberry said, a process should begin now to correct this lack of safety standards for municipal employees.

“We urge the Florida legislature to establish a task force and charge it with researching and recommending to the 2007 session a viable solution requiring adequate safety and health protection for Florida’s public servants,” Granberry said.

Replacing traditional round tube heat exchangers with flattened tube technology may enable the air conditioning industry to provide comfort cooling using a new refrigerant, while increasing efficiency, but not the size of the system. A recently released report from the Air-Conditioning and Refrigeration Technology Institute (ARTI) characterizes how flattened-tube heat exchangers function under various environmental conditions and pressures.

“Flattened tube heat exchangers have received much attention as a possible replacement to traditional round tubes, but until now little research has been done on the thermal-hydraulic performance of flattened tubes under wet, dry and frosted conditions,” said Elizabeth Jones, a project manager with ARTI, which provided the funding for this project under its HVAC&R Research for the 21st Century program. “This research report addresses the fundamental science needed to allow the air conditioning industry to engineer products using this technology.”

The geometry of a flattened tube, compared with the traditional round tube heat exchanger, allows for improved heat transfer and thermal performance; increased coil and overall unit efficiencies; substantial refrigerant charge reduction; and more compact and reduced coil size.

In the ARTI report, University of Illinois researchers provide analysis, modeling, and interpretation of air-side, thermal-hydraulic performance for flattened tube heat exchangers under wet and frosted surface conditions. They make design recommendations to help improve the performance of plain, wavy, strip and louvered fins for flattened tube heat exchangers. They conduct a full assessment of the air-side thermal-hydraulic performance of flattened, round, and finned heat exchangers. In addition, researchers developed a new method to provide data on retention and drainage of water from the air-side surface of flattened tube heat exchangers under a number of operating conditions.

The final report, “An Assessment of the State-of-the-Art and Potential Design Improvements, for Flat-tube Heat Exchangers in Air-Conditioning and Refrigeration Applications,” can be accessed by visiting www.arti-research.org/research/completed/finalreports/20021-final.pdf

About ARTI
The Air-Conditioning and Refrigeration Technology Institute, Inc. is a 501(c) (3) not-for-profit corporation established in 1989 by the Air-Conditioning and Refrigeration Institute, Inc. (ARI) to undertake pre-competitive scientific research related to heating, ventilation, air-conditioning, and refrigeration. ARI is a not-for-profit trade association representing manufacturers of more than 90% of North American-produced central air conditioning and commercial refrigeration equipment.

The New York Power Authority (NYPA) invested about $110 million in energy efficiency and clean energy projects during 2006, breaking its previous one-year record of $103.8 million, set in 2001. NYPA set the new record in a year in which it also passed the $1 billion mark for total investments in energy efficiency and clean energy initiatives since the late 1980s.

“These two milestones demonstrate the Power Authority’s firm commitment to ensuring a reliable power supply while improving the environment and cutting our dangerous dependence on foreign oil,” NYPA president and chief executive officer Timothy S. Carey said. “This has been a banner year for us in these areas, and we intend to build on the solid foundation that’s in place.”

Carey noted that NYPA’s annual investments in energy efficiency and clean technologies such as fuel cells and solar power have more than doubled during Gov. George E. Pataki’s 12 years in office. He said Pataki initiatives, including an executive order establishing ambitious targets for energy savings and use of renewable energy in state facilities, had given impetus to the Authority’s efforts.

In 2006, the Power Authority directed funding to more than 250 projects at government buildings, schools, police stations, and other public facilities throughout the state. NYPA typically recovers its costs by sharing in the savings in energy bills that result from its initiatives, after which program participants retain all the savings.

The Authority, which uses no tax dollars, finances its energy efficiency and clean energy projects principally with commercial paper notes.

NYPA’s record total in 2006 reflects expenditures on projects that began during the year or were already in progress. Some of the projects were completed in 2006, while others will continue, requiring additional funding.

The largest 2006 investment (more than $19 million) was for a project to replace four boilers and about 25,000 feet of hot water distribution piping at New York City’s North River Wastewater Treatment Plant on the Hudson River in Upper Manhattan. The project, which began in 2005 and is scheduled for completion in 2007, is expected to ultimately cost about $37 million.

Elsewhere in 2006, the Power Authority invested funds for such energy efficiency projects as:

* New lighting, boilers, or chillers at nearly 40 police stations in New York City and the city’s police headquarters.

* Numerous measures at the State University of New York (SUNY) College at Brockport’s dining hall, including the installation of mor -efficient lighting, heating, ventilation and air conditioning, and building insulation, as well as upgrades to a computerized energy management system for the campus in Monroe County.

* Replacement of existing boilers with more efficient units in several dormitories at the SUNY College at Canton in St. Lawrence County.

* New lighting, motors, insulation, and water-conserving equipment at public facilities in the City of Jamestown in Chautauqua County, as well as an upgrade of the city’s energy management system. Jamestown, a Power Authority municipal-system customer, is among the first to benefit from an Authority action last May that enabled the state’s 51 municipal electric systems and rural cooperatives to participate in NYPA’s energy efficiency and clean energy programs.

Among the clean energy highlights in 2006 was NYPA’s investment of funds toward development of a project in which landfill gas will be used to produce nearly 5 megawatts of electricity at Monroe County’s Mill Seat Landfill in Riga. The project is scheduled for completion next spring.

Other Power Authority clean energy investments in 2006 were directed at such projects as fuel cells completed during the year at the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry in Syracuse and a Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) facility in Corona, Queens, and another to be installed at the Bronx Zoo. NYPA also provided funding for an innovative battery energy storage system awaiting the start of operation at the MTA-Long Island Bus depot in Garden City.

About NYPA
NYPA uses no tax money or state credit. It finances its operations through the sale of bonds and revenues earned in large part through sales of electricity. NYPA is a promotes energy efficiency, new energy technologies and electric transportation initiatives. It is the nation’s largest state-owned electric utility, with 18 generating facilities in various parts of the state and more than 1,400 circuit-miles of transmission lines.

Shat-R-Shield, a manufacturer of plastic-coated safety lamps and Philips Lighting Company, a division of Philips Electronic North America Corporation, an affiliate of Philips Electronics, announced they have entered into a supply agreement. Under the agreement, Shat-R-Shield will apply its shatter resistant coating to Philips’ T5, T5 HO, T8, T12 and T12 HO fluorescent lamps along with selected incandescent and high intensity discharge lamps. Philips will distribute the newly coated lamps under the TuffGuard™ brand through its network of electrical distributors.

“Philips Lighting has seen the need to compliment their product offering with coated lamps for several years. They recognize Shat-R-Shield as the industry leader and have made the right choice for their company and their customers,” said Shat-R-Shield president Karen Ponce. “This will give distributors more choices for protective lighting while strengthening a partnership that has been growing between our two companies for over a decade.”

“The partnership with Shat-R-Shield is a win-win for Philips Lighting and our customers worldwide,” said Ed Crawford, executive vice president of Philips Lighting Company. “The addition of Shat-R-Shield shatter-resistant coating combines innovation and sustainability to offer our end users extra protection with our products.”

Made to meet the coating standards of other Shat-R-Shield lamps, TuffGuard lamps will be available to distributors beginning February 2007.

An interesting seasonal factoid: How many people nationally are treated for falls, cuts, shocks, and burns due to incidents involving faulty holidays lights, dried-out Christmas trees and other holiday decorations?

A whopping 12,800, according to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission.

Christmas trees are involved in about 300 fires annually, resulting in an average of 10 deaths, 40 injuries and about $7 million in property damage and loss.

Such shocking stats are why SCF Arizona, the state’s largest compensation insurance carrier, is warning workers to be careful when jazzing up their offices.

Here are some helpful hints:
–Make sure your fire extinguisher is working and everyone knows how to use it.
–Never use candles where they can be knocked over or near anything that could catch fire.
–Inspect all holiday lights. Discard all lights with cracked or broken wiring.

To find out what lemon-lime soda does for live Christmas trees or to get more workplace holiday hints from blogizona, check out this link.