The First Facility Management Blog

Danfoss announced recently that its president and CEO, Jorgen M. Clausen, has retired and that his successor, Niels B. Christiansen, has assumed these positions. Clausen will become chairman of the company after Danfoss’s annual general meeting in the spring of 2009, its board of directors said. 

Christiansen joined the company in 2004 as its chief operating officer and a member of its executive committee. In May, 2007, he earned a promotion to the position of vice CEO. 

“Niels will lead a young, dynamic team, and I have great confidence in their collective ability to succeed and drive Danfoss forward,” Clausen said. “During his time at Danfoss, Niels has shown that he is highly capable of renewing our business while affirming the company’s values and history. As a socially responsible innovator in the manufacturing industry, we are committed to engineering technology that conserves energy and slows climate change, and this approach will not change at all.” 

Christiansen will head the company’s executive committee, which consists of the executive vice presidents Kim Fausing (COO) and Frederik Lotz (CFO). 

“I am excited about our opportunities and challenges that lie before us,” stated Christiansen. “We are completely focused on driving our business forward and meeting the needs of our customers in tackling global energy efficiency and conservation issues.” 

Jorgen Clausen is the eldest son of Danfoss founder Mads Clausen, an engineer who established the company in 1933 in his parent’s attic in Nordborg, Denmark. 

“Now is the best time for me to retire from the company’s day to day operations and concentrate on my directorships, which include both the chairmanship of Sauer-Danfoss and membership of the board of the Bitten and Mads Clausen Foundation, the charitable organization established by Danfoss’s founder and my father,” Jorgen Clausen concluded.

Danfoss, a company focusing on the research, development. and production of mechanical and electronic components and systems, celebrates its 75th anniversary this year. Danfoss products and components have focused on providing the control and efficiency to suit the application and customer requirements. Worldwide, the company has 70 factories in 25 countries, 114 sales offices, and 23,000 employees.

Early this morning, science was made in a remote part of Europe. Some of you may have seen the video last Friday, and others may have heard about it on the news, but today was the day when the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) did its thing…with a bang.

Anticipation today in the LHC control room, as the first test is run (9/10/08).

For facility managers, the LHC is a fascinating, um, well I’m not really sure WHAT to call it. It’s not just a building or a lab, it’s actually a complex populated with all sorts of different structures. Really it’s a huge underground ring of tunnels (nearly 17 miles long) filled with cables, pipes, tubes, machines, detectors, magnets, and just about everything that could satisfy the wildest dreams of any mad scientist.

Built by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), the LHC is situated near the Swiss/French border near Geneva and cost between €3.2 to €6.4 billion. The site opened its doors on April 6, 2008 and ran its first test today: September 10, 2008.

Opening day at the LHC, April 6, 2008.

While I am still waiting for some additional facility oriented information about the LHC, I thought I’d share some weird and wonderful facts about the project (compiled by Hazel Morris April 2004):

That’s a lot of cable: The combined strands of the superconducting cable being produced for the LHC would go around the equator 6.8 times. If you added all the filaments of the strands together they would stretch to the sun and back 5 times with enough left over for a few trips to the moon.

That’s a big fridge: Part of the LHC will be the world’s largest fridge. It could hold 150,000 fridges full of sausages at a temperature colder than deep outer space.

It really sucks. The vacuum in the LHC is comparable to outer space, if it were a car tire with a leak, there are so few gas molecules that it would take 10,000 years to go flat.

How big is it? The ATLAS (one of several “detector” caverns) could hold the nave of Notre Dame cathedral.

So far, but yet so close. When the 27km long circular tunnel at CERN was excavated between Lake Geneva and the Jura mountain range, the two ends met up with just one centimeter of error.

She blinded me with SCIENCE! CERN is the world’s largest laboratory dedicated to the pursuit of fundamental science.

Faster than a speeding bullet. On October 1, 2003, CERN and the California Institute of Technology set a new Internet Land Speed Record by transferring 1.1 terabytes of data in less than 30 minutes across 7000km of network (that’s the equivalent of transferring a full length DVD movie in 7 seconds).

Dress up days. Since 1962, 38 heads of state have visited CERN.

In case of emergency… The CERN Fire and Rescue team covers 40km of underground tunnels, radiation, and chemical risks as well as the buildings above ground. CERN firemen train in abseiling and rope rescue techniques in preparation for a tunnel emergency. There are firemen of nine different nationalities, Bulgarian, British, Czech, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Spanish, and Italian tackling fires with the CERN fire brigade. When they are called out, they only speak in French over the radio.

Kate McAlpine at the LHC. Credit: Telegraph

Back in October 2006, FacilityBlog wrote about the ASHRAE video, “Licensed To Chill“–a hip “rap” tribute to the field of HVAC&R engineering. More recently (August 2008), we covered the first industrial rap song, created by ITT employees to highlight the importance of workplace safety.

All of this leads me to the conclusion that engineers are just natural born rappers, particularly when you consider this next story. It’s even grander (in terms of engineering) and more popular in a kooky way (no offense to the folks at ASHRAE or ITT).

Now hold onto your seats, because I’m not even sure how to explain it. Thanks to Wikipedia, I’ll start with a definition of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC):

The LHC is the world’s largest particle accelerator complex, intended to collide opposing beams of 7 TeV protons. Its main purpose is to explore the validity and limitations of the current theoretical picture for particle physics (aka the “Standard Model”). The LHC was built by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) and lies under the Franco-Swiss border near Geneva, Switzerland.

As the highest energy particle accelerator, the LHC is funded and built in collaboration with over eight thousand physicists from over 85 countries as well as hundreds of universities and laboratories. The idea of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), began in the early 1980s. The first approval of the project by the CERN Council occurred in December 1994 and the first civil engineering construction work began in April 1998.

That ends your 60 second physics lesson and provides a bit of background for this Friday Funny—an extremely popular YouTube funky love tribute to particle physics. Yes indeed, there’s a rap dedicated to the Large Hadron Collider! Along with the good beat, the rap explains the theory behind the project much better than my 60 second physics lesson.

From Universe Today:

Puzzled about particle physics? Want to know what the inside of the Large Hadron Collider looks like? Like music, fun and science? Want to know for sure the LHC won’t create a black hole that will swallow the Earth? Find all of the above in a rap Kate McAlpine, 23, who used to work in the press office of CERN, where on September 10, the LHC will be powered up. The song has been a hit on You Tube, and has been downloaded over 400,000 times. Physicists say the science in the song is “spot on” and provides a rhythmic tour of the mysteries of modern physics and the workings of the LHC, while noting that “the things that it discovers will rock you in the head.” Without further ado [but with subtitles, for those of us too old to understand the language of rap], here it is:

This video has more than a million hits on YouTube, and it was first posted just a few months ago (July 28, 2008). Unbelievable!

The Compressed Air & Gas Institute (CAGI) has announced the teams taking part in the organization’s first Innovation Awards contest. Participating engineering schools include Milwaukee School of Engineering, Purdue University, Virginia Tech, and the University of Minnesota.

The Innovation Awards are an invitation-only awards program designed to honor undergraduates for innovative use of compressed air. Students submit their air powered designs for judging by the members of CAGI, the association of manufacturers of compressed air systems and equipment. The contest challenges students to create innovative designs, using compressed air as the power source.

“With creative team names like ‘Stressed and Compressed,’ ‘Gas Giants,’ and ‘Full Throttle,’ we’re looking forward to seeing what inventive submissions the teams produce,” said David Prator, president of CAGI.

First place teams will receive $2,500 and will also see $8,000 awarded to their school. $1,500 goes to the second place team, with $4,000 going to its school. Results will be announced April 1, 2008.

The U.S. Air Force’s Office of the Civil Engineer has issued a policy recognizing the value of the International Facility Management Association’s (IFMA) Certified Facility Manager® (CFM) credential, adding the designation to its Group A Professional Credential Level list. Membership in the Group A Professional Credential Level means that the selection of a CFM to fill key senior civil engineer positions at Air Force installations is “highly encouraged and/or required,” according to Air Force guidelines. Additionally, civilian employees may request 100% reimbursement for expenses required to maintain the CFM designation, a benefit previously afforded to professional engineers and registered architects.

The new Air Force guidelines, as outlined in the “Policy on Professional Registration and Certification for the Civil Engineer Career Field,” are part of the Air Force’s efforts to “develop and attract employees who possess proven abilities in their professions [and] a high degree of technical competence as evidenced by professional registration or certification.”

“Recognition of the CFM for the civilian civil engineer career field as a matter of policy clearly indicates the importance this credential has when it comes to possessing the skill set and level of proven ability needed to meet current and future built environmental requirements,” said Air Force Lt. Col. Thomas Mitchell Jr., CFM, CFMJ and second vice chair of IFMA. “The CFM is the wave of the future. It increases the value of civilian facility professionals who will play a significant role in executing and sustaining the civil engineer business practices necessary to meet the challenges of the future.”

The certification process is designed to assess competency in the field through work experience, education, and the ability to pass a comprehensive exam. Since the program’s inception in 1992, more than 3,100 facility managers from 32 countries have received the designation.

Remember the board game, “Mousetrap?” Here are two great ads that put a new spin on the Rube Goldberg concept. The first is an ad from Honda, which has been touted as “one of the most expensive ads ever filmed.”

The next is part of the current Guinness campaign, which, as Cory Doctorow of Boing Boing so eloquently put it, “was shot over a week in a remote Argentine village — it depicts a falling-dominoes cascade that expands to include falling suitcases, bookcases, flaming bales of hay, junker cars, crutches, and many other objects winding through the hills of the town.” So it’s not really a Rube Goldberg set up in the purest sense of the word, but it’s fun to watch, regardless.

I just have to include this incredible series of pool shots:

Unhappy with the unconventionally designed Stata Center, completed in 2004, MIT officials have brought a lawsuit against Frank Gehry (the Los Angeles, CA-based architect) and NJ-based Skanska USA (construction/engineering). The suit claims the building has “serious design flaws” which have led to “persistent leaks, drainage problems, and mold growing on its brick exterior. It says accumulations of snow and ice have fallen dangerously from window boxes and other areas of its roofs, blocking emergency exits and causing damage.”

The design of the building, which houses labs, offices, classrooms, and meeting rooms, apparently caused a rift between Skanska and Gehry Partners even before construction took place, according to a spokesperson from the company’s Boston office. Warnings were ignored despite design flaws, and Paul Hewins, executive vice president and area general manager of Skanska USA, says, “This is not a construction issue, never has been.”

The suit for unspecified damages was filed on October 31. The Stata Center cost $15 million to design and $300 million to build.

More on the story can be found here, here, and here.

An industrial engineering conference on the campus of Tec Milenio University in Monterrey, Mexico, was a fitting accompaniment to the grand opening of the first international office of the Institute of Industrial Engineers (IIE). The IIE Latin American office, housed on the Tec Milenio University campus, will support more than 60 IIE chapters and 1,100 IIE members throughout Latin America. Day-to-day operations are managed by IIE staff member Nydia Moreno, a graduate of Tecnológico de Monterrey in Monterrey, Mexico.

IIE Executive Director Don Greene and Corporate Operations Manager Donna Calvert represented IIE headquarters at the well-attended opening ceremony that also captured the interest of local press and the more than 1,000 students and professionals attending the conference.

Photo caption: (left) Filipe Quintanilla-Flores, a professor at Tecnológico De Monterrey, and Institute of Industrial Engineers senior vice president of international activities, addresses guests at the grand opening of IIE’s first international office in Monterrey, Mexico. Also shown: Dr. Rosa Hilda Felix, a professor at Instituto Tecnológico de San Luis de Potosi and IIE regional vice president (seated), and Daniel Villarreal, an industrial engineer with ProModel Mexico and long-time IIE member.

“The hundreds of people attending the grand opening of our Latin American office along with the number involved in the industrial engineering conference on this campus is ample testimony to the burgeoning growth of the industrial engineering profession in this region,” said Don Greene. “We look forward to being a resource and partner in the further growth of the profession in Latin America.”

The new office will facilitate exchange of information between IIE headquarters and members throughout Latin America and will promote membership in the organization as well as events, training, and leadership opportunities for both professionals and students.

According to Louis Martin-Vega, Ph.D., dean of engineering at North Carolina State University and president of the IIE Board of Trustees, “This represents a significant milestone in bringing our vision of IIE as a truly international organization to fruition. We can now provide our Latin America members with more immediate access to the many services IIE offers.”

“This is an exciting time for us,” added Felipe Quintanilla-Flores, professor at Tecnológico De Monterrey in Monterrey, Mexico, and IIE senior vice president of international activities. “The office in Monterrey will both support our members in the region and serve as our prototype for additional offices world wide.”

IIE supports the industrial engineering profession and individuals involved with improving quality and productivity. Founded in 1948, IIE is an international, non-profit association that provides leadership for the application, education, training, research, and development of industrial engineering.