The First Facility Management Blog

The American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine (ACOEM) recognized the company for outstanding achievements in employee health, safety, environment, and management

As a 2007 recipient of the Corporate Health Achievement Award, Caterpillar is noted for outstanding dedication to environmental quality and product safety in the communities where the company operates. It also highlights Caterpillar’s commitment to creating healthy, safe and productive workplace environments for its more than 95,000 employees around the world.

“We are honored to win an award that focuses on what we believe is Caterpillar’s most important asset–our people,” said Sid Banwart, vice president with responsibility for the Human Services Division. “Since 2000, we have cut recordable workplace injuries by 75%. While we have made considerable progress, we can still do better for our employees and their families. We believe all accidents and injuries are preventable, so our ultimate goal is zero.”

Maintaining healthy employees continues after a work shift ends. The ACOEM award also acknowledges Caterpillar’s Healthy Balance® health promotion program, which identifies modifiable health risks and provides lifestyle recommendations that decrease risk. This, in turn, helps workers make wise lifestyle and healthcare decisions.

“We are focused on treatment and, more importantly, prevention,” said Stephen Goldman, MD, Caterpillar’s Corporate Medical director. “Not only can we help employees manage chronic conditions like diabetes or high blood pressure, but we are also using software to more robustly predict those at risk for future disease. Combining these initiatives with healthcare benefits, including free physicals and cancer screenings for age-eligible employees, helps create a healthier workforce. And a healthy company is a better business.”

In addition, the Corporate Health Achievement Award values the company’s dedication to environmental excellence. Caterpillar continues to make strides in reducing the environmental impact of facility operations. For example, in January 2005, the company publicly pledged to voluntarily reduce global greenhouse gas emissions intensity 20% by 2010. Caterpillar has exceeded that goal by achieving a 35% intensity reduction.

About Caterpillar
For more than 80 years, Caterpillar Inc. has been making progress possible and driving positive and sustainable change on every continent. With 2006 sales and revenues of $41.517 billion, Caterpillar is the world’s leading manufacturer of construction and mining equipment, diesel and natural gas engines and industrial gas turbines. The company also is a leading services provider through Caterpillar Financial Services, Caterpillar Remanufacturing Services, Caterpillar Logistics Services and Progress Rail Services.

About The American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine (ACOEM)
ACOEM provides leadership to promote optimal health and safety of workers, workplaces and environments. Founded in 1916, ACOEM is an international medical specialty society of more than 5,000 occupational and environmental medicine physicians and other allied health professionals. The College is headquartered in Elk Grove Village, IL.

Carpet cleaning professionals and facility managers who use extractors, floor care, and restoration equipment, along with tools and accessories manufactured by U.S. Products, can now find solutions to equipment problems with the company’s new 24/7 online Troubleshooting Guide.

The new interactive guide enables visitors to select a specific machine to view an online Specifications Sheet and Operations Manual, as well as download trouble shooting guides addressing the operation of the equipment’s various components.

A topic list allows visitors to quickly access particular issues. For quick searching, users can type in a part number for a specific machine and quickly find details on that machine.

“We are convinced this tool will improve convenience for our customers by allowing them to solve virtually any issue quickly and effectively,” says Nick Wiebe, marketing manager for U.S. products. “If a particular problem is not addressed in the online guide, or if a user still has a problem, technical experts can be reached by contacting local distributors or U.S. Products directly.”

According to Wiebe, one of the key reasons for developing the online Troubleshooting Guide was to address the fact that many carpet cleaners are performing their work at
non-traditional business hours, such as late at night or on weekends. Having the guide online means that issues can be resolved any time of day or night and their work can continue.

The guide is available for use by visiting here.

Slightly off topic, but commercial real estate professionals are feeling the pinch of a slowing market in the shadows of the residential downturn. Here’s a comical look at how some people are dealing with the demise of the housing market.

When the real estate market was at its peak, hundreds of thousands of eager first-time investors were chasing the pot of gold at the end of the renovation. TV shows about buying, fixing, and reselling homes on every channel, and a nation of flippers was born.

But now that the market has gone sour, some would-be real estate moguls have arrived a day late and will end up more than a few dollars short. A new online video parody series, Flipper Nation, is a breakout new comedy—a mockumentary series that has been called “The Office” meets “Flip This House.”

It’s a sharp and witty story about two friends attempting to grab their piece of the millions to be made in real estate… and the faulty reasoning they use to justify it. Here’s the first of three episodes:

Flipper Nation: The First Flip

There’s more where this came from at: FlipperNation.com
If you cannot view this video, you can check it out at YouTube instead.

After just a few months, Flipper Nation has already been highlighted as a featured video series on Yahoo, YouTube, MySpace, iTunes, and more. To find out how these naive entrepreneurs make countless (and sometimes hilarious) mistakes—blindly trusting shady mortgage brokers, spending imaginary profits, thinking renovation will be easy and quick—follow their adventures in the rest of the series, which can be found at this link.

Today’s Friday Funny comes from long time TFM reader and TFM Show attendee Maria Vickers, operations manager from Workscape.

HID Global, a leader in secure identity, has named Mark Doi director, business development, education market, supporting the company’s recently launched HID Identity expertise group. In this newly created position, Doi will report to Chris Sincock, vice president of HID Identity, and he will be responsible for promoting the benefits of HID technology in the education market, especially at the university level. By working with HID Global customers across all distribution channels, Doi will further the effective usage of HID technology to solve specific campus-related requirements.

Introduced in March at ISC West, HID Identity strives to benefit end-users by providing solutions and expertise that streamline and simplify the issuance of multi-application credentials. According to HID, the higher education market is the first market to truly embrace multi-application cards, using “student IDs” for everything from dormitory access and meal plans to library checkout and laundry operation. HID Global’s iCLASS®technology is gaining acceptance as a secure, extensible technology platform for university multi-application credentials.

“We are quite pleased to create this new position and fill it with such a respected veteran in the university marketplace”, said Dennis Caulley, HID Global’s vice president of HID Identity. “Mark’s direct experience with university end-users and his channel management experience with the large “one card” OEMs is a perfect combination to help universities reap the greatest benefit from HID technology.”

“After working around the limitations of magnetic stripe cards for years, universities are now seeing the value of secure multi-application credentials,” said Doi. “I’m excited to help our education market customers solve their problems using HID technology.”

Prior to joining HID Global, Doi was with Ingersoll Rand Security Technologies, where he was director, National Education Accounts. With over a decade servicing the university marketplace, he has also held sales and business development roles of increasing responsibility in the education market at Onity.

About HID Global
HID Global is the trusted leader in secure identity, serving customers worldwide with proximity and contactless smart card technologies; central station managed access controllers; secure and custom card solutions; photo ID and ID card application control software; high definition printer/encoders and secure card issuance solutions. Headquartered in Irvine, CA, HID Global operates international offices that support more than 100 countries and is an ASSA ABLOY Group company.

®HID and iCLASS are registered trademarks of HID Global Corporation. HID Identity is a trademark of HID Global Corporation. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners.

Cooper Lighting has announced a call for entries for its 31st Annual SOURCE Awards national lighting design competition. The competition, which focuses on furthering the understanding, knowledge and function of lighting as a primary element in design, is open to all lighting designers, architects, engineers, professional designers, and consultants who use Cooper Lighting fixtures in an interior or exterior design project. Students currently enrolled in any of these disciplines are also eligible to enter projects based on conceptual lighting designs utilizing Cooper Lighting fixtures, and are judged in a separate student category.

The competition requires the primary and predominant use of any or all of the Cooper Lighting brands, which include Halo, Metalux, Portfolio, Neo-Ray, Corelite, Sure-Lites, Lumark, McGraw-Edison, Fail-Safe, Lumière, Shaper, Iris, Ametrix, RSA and Invue Lighting Systems.

Projects will be judged on the blending of aesthetics, creative achievement, and technical performance and to the degree which the lighting met project constraints and design concept goals. There will be no minimum or maximum number of awards given, as each project will be judged on its own merit. Award categories will include: Winner, Honorable Mention and Award of Recognition.

Judging for the 31st Annual SOURCE Awards competition will take place in January 2008, by a professional, independent panel of lighting and design professionals as well as a representative of The SOURCE, Cooper Lighting’s educational center. Student winner(s) will receive a crystal trophy and a monetary award ($1500) and professional winner(s) will also receive a monetary award ($2000) and a crystal trophy along with local and national recognition through publicity and advertising. Both student and professional winners will also receive an invitation to attend a lighting seminar at The SOURCE, the company’s premier lighting education center located at Cooper Lighting’s headquarters in Peachtree City, Georgia. The faculty adviser of the student winner will also be invited to attend a seminar. Entries must be postmarked by January 1, 2008.

Over the competition’s 30-year history, winners have been awarded well over $600,000 in addition to receiving industry wide recognition. Past entry applications have included offices, commercial building lobbies, retail stories, galleries, airport terminals, libraries, banks, restaurants, convention centers, entertainment facilities, and residences. To request a complete list of rules, visit the company Web site.

About Cooper Lighting
Cooper Lighting, a subsidiary of Cooper Industries (NYSE: CBE), is a provider of lighting fixtures and related products to worldwide commercial, industrial, residential and utility markets.

About Cooper Industries
Cooper Industries, Ltd. is a global manufacturer with 2006 revenues of $5.2 billion, approximately 85% of which are from electrical products. Incorporated in Bermuda with administrative headquarters in Houston, Cooper employs approximately 30,000 people and operates eight divisions: Cooper B-Line, Cooper Bussmann, Cooper Crouse-Hinds, Cooper Lighting, Cooper Menvier, Cooper Power Systems, Cooper Wiring Devices and Cooper Tools group. Cooper Connection provides a common marketing and selling platform for Cooper’s sales to electrical distributors.

Building design leaders across the nation have united in establishing a benchmark by which The 2030 Challenge energy reduction targets can be measured.

After a series of discussions, Architecture 2030, the American Institute of Architects (AIA), American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE), Illuminating Engineering Society of North America (IESNA), and the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), supported by representatives of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), and Target Finder, established a common starting point.

The group agreed to define the baseline starting point, or benchmark, for their common target goals as the national average energy consumption of existing U.S. commercial buildings as reported by the 2003 Commercial Building Energy Consumption Survey (CBECS). The CBECS data is a set of whole-building energy use measurements gathered by the DOE’s Energy Information Administration (EIA). The CBECS data can be used to determine a national energy use intensity (EUI) using kBtu/sqft-yr as the metric.

Agreement was also reached to use Site Energy Use Intensity (Site EUI) to measure reductions at this time. Site Energy Use is a measure of the energy consumed directly at the location of a building. Another option considered was Source Energy, which is a measure that accounts for energy consumed on site, as well as energy consumed during generation and transmission in supplying energy to the site. Although Source Energy may be a better expression of the carbon emission impacts of a building’s energy use, the group decided against using it as a measure because conversion factors that accurately express these impacts at the level of specific building and location are not yet available.

The establishment of this common starting point now allows project designers to move forward with developing buildings that meet The 2030 Challenge Targets for reducing fossil fuel energy consumption and the consequent greenhouse-gas emissions currently causing global warming. http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif

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Written by: Gladys on Thursday, May 24th, 2007 at 6:44 am