The First Facility Management Blog

On March 19, 2008, FacilityBlog posted the article below which touched upon the decaying state of Michael Jackson’s Neverland estate (which was sold last year). Abandoned and tied up in legalities for many years, the piece of property symbolized some of the financial turmoil and legal woes that swirled around the late Michael Jackson.

A comeback tour due to start in just a few weeks was supposed to help pull the King of Pop out of his economic meltdown. Despite being a billion dollar business, the singer was in about $400 million in debt when he died yesterday.

There have been reports from some companies that people would be dressing up in Michael Jackson attire today. What has been the reaction to this news, if any, in your facilities? Is it just another distraction during a slow Summer Friday? 

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One minute your childhood home is there. The next minute, it’s gone. So are family heirlooms and other personal items. Why? Faulty GPS coordinates.

For Al Byrd, owner of the house, this mishap by Southern Environmental Services of Marietta, GA was unforgivable. And while the house was unoccupied, there was absolutely no reason to justify the demolition. The company had no address but claims it had all of its paperwork in order based on GPS coordinates.

For anyone who has ended up in the wrong place based on faulty GPS instructions, well, it’s not too hard to imagine such an incident. But to base something as conclusive as a house demolition on GPS coordinates, well, that does seem to rate more than just an apology from the company.

Two years after undergoing a $60 million interior makeover, the New Orleans Morial Convention Center turned its paint brushes to the building’s exterior for a dramatic change. Earlier this year, work crews began applying the first coats of deep blue paint needed to replace the building’s 279,000 square foot brick red stripe.

The Convention Center main entrance

Conceived in 1981, the building’s original exterior color scheme of light beige, brick red, and dark green was based on certain colors particular to the neighborhood, an area crowded with small 19th century warehouses. The palette was designed to make the new, modern building better harmonize with its Old World surroundings.

Over the years, business at the Convention Center helped spur the Warehouse/Arts District’s revitalization, dramatically transforming it to an area flourishing with fine dining establishments, hotels, art galleries, and commercial and residential development.

Today, the red brick color has given way to “Convention Center Blue,” a custom color by Richard’s Industrial Coatings. “The new shade of deep blue appropriately reflects our relationship with one of the most famous bodies of water in the world, the Mississippi River,” said Bob Johnson, the Convention Center’s president and general manager.

The painting crew applied custom color "Convention Center Blue" onto the facility's exterior.

The new color gives the building a more classic look and complements the building’s redesigned interior palette, which is exhibited in 88,000 square yards of carpet and 26,000 new meeting room chairs.

“We’ve gotten incredible feedback from our client base about the new color. It’s amazing how this one cosmetic change can make such a huge difference in our appearance,” said Johnson.

The Convention Center’s 2006 renovation was so well received that more building improvements have been implemented to further enhance the Center’s value to clients. More than $20 million of additional interior and exterior improvements have been completed or are underway, including an aesthetically enhanced main entrance, additional landscaping, new furniture pods, and technology upgrades to debut later in the year.

Read TFM’s January 2008 coverage of the Convention Center’s post-Katrina renovations, “Swift Recovery” here.

Converted Organics Inc., a Boston-based manufacturer, is diverting food waste from landfills to produce fertilizers for lawns, golf courses, sports turf, and other landscape uses. According to the EPA, about 96 billion pounds of food waste is disposed of each year in the U.S. Due to the difficult nature of composting food waste on a large scale, the majority of this waste is destined for landfills or incineration.

Turf-Blend 6-0-0 from Converted Organics

To combat this, Converted Organics collects food waste from supermarkets, restaurants, and processing plants and then uses its patented technology to transform the food waste into a high quality, organic fertilizer. The process is large-scale, expedited version of backyard composting, which introduces additional oxygen as well as heat into a closed, carefully monitored tank, as a way to accelerate the digestion process.  As a result, what would take months to compost can be quickly converted to a useful all natural fertilizer product in a matter of hours.

One of company’s products, Turf-Blend™ 6-0-0*, is a liquid fertilizer. Its nutrients are derived from L-Lysine Amino Acid, compost, and phosphoric acid. This product has been formulated to provide professional greenskeepers and landscape professionals with a high quality, fully pasteurized liquid fertilizer suitable for use on all types of turf and any soil condition.

Lightline® canopy products are manufactured by Polymer Kunststoffe GmbH of Germany and distributed in the United States by Feeney Inc., Oakland, CA. These products have been widely used in Europe to shield people from the elements when they leave their homes or businesses. The manufacturer has taken an old concept of over-door canopies and awnings and created new, modern designs using innovative materials: stainless steel support arms, integrated aluminum gutters, and UV resistant acrylic visor panels in a variety of finishes.

An extended version of the Curve style of Lightline canopies is seen here.

Lightline® canopy products require no custom design or one-off fabrication. Each canopy comes in an easy to assemble kit with all the hardware necessary to assemble and install; additionally, a patented Click-Lock pane attachment feature makes for ease of installation without having to drill holes through the acrylic visor panes. The canopies offer eye catching designs that are easy to use, durable, low maintenance, and sized to fit almost any standard doorway.

Lightline® canopies are available in a variety of styles. The Gable Canopy, for instance, looks best on a pitched roof configuration, according the company. Meanwhile, the rounded Arch Canopy works well with both modern and traditional designs, and the simple Curve Canopy is designed to complement virtually any doorway.

The kits also come in several standard widths ranging from 5’ to 9’, and the Curve style has an extended, multi-panel model that allows for continuous widths, a useful design for commercial storefronts.

This Web Exclusive is written by Jordan Fox on behalf of Bird-X.

Contemplate the beauty of nature for a moment. It often enhances our everyday lives—whether it’s manifested by the numerous species of small, cute mammals that scurry around close to our homes, the colorful gardens in our parks, or the grandeur of a summer sunset. Bird watchers will tell you how beautiful their favorite creatures are too, yet that beauty can be marred when birds become a nuisance or even a threat to life, health, and property.

The threat that birds can pose to life was vividly demonstrated recently by the safe emergency landing of the U.S. Airways passenger jet in New York City’s Hudson River. Birds were implicated in that mishap. And the threat was further emphasized in a newspaper article that cited the fact that over the past two years, commercial airline crews reported more than two dozen emergency landings, aborted takeoffs or other scary incidents due to collisions with birds.

Turning to Bird-X
In Borden, Canada, not far from Toronto, the Canadian Forces School of Aerospace and Engineering experienced another sort of bird problem. Though not as dramatic, it was nevertheless significant. The Canadian military unit turned to Bird-X, Inc., the Chicago, IL manufacturer of bird repellent technology, to solve that problem.

Master Warrant Officer Ted Poper says, “We’re a Canadian Air Force school for aircraft technicians, and we train new servicemen and women who have completed their basic training and are beginning their military careers as airplane mechanics,” he explains. “We have approximately 240 students going through the Aviation Technician course of study at any given time. We train about 800 Aircraft Technicians of various trades each year. The trainees here work on about 20 airplanes housed inside a massive airplane hangar, which encompasses about 40,000 square feet.

“Some months ago a multitude of pigeons, purple martins, sparrows, and other small birds found something about our hangar that was very much to their liking and began nesting there. You can probably guess the rest.”

Immediate Complaints
According to MWO Poper, the staff and trainees would come to work on a Monday morning after a weekend away from the hangar and unhappily find bird excrement everywhere, including the tops of the planes. Their complaints were immediate, loud, and clear.

“Bird excrement, unabated, can be corrosive and harm the surfaces of the aircraft and the hangar itself. And it poses a threat to health. Lung disease can occur in humans after too much exposure to it,” he adds.

They had to do something fast and first hired a cleaning contracting company to do away with the nests and clean up the excrement. “The contractor couldn’t believe all the straw that it found,” says Poper. “The staff cleaned all the rafters and the hangar doors.

“We then purchased and installed a BirdXPeller PRO, a Bird-X, Inc. sonic repeller. That’s a digital, programmable device that uses birds’ own natural distress calls and the squawks of predator birds to create a ‘danger zone’ that scares and keeps birds away.”

Installing Bird Nettings
Poper continues, “The cleaning contractor undertook the necessary effort of installing bird netting to keep the rafters out of reach of the nesters. It took three weeks to stretch the netting across the hangar ceiling.”

The BirdXPeller PRO was created about 15 years ago by Bird-X as a single species repellant, according to David Kogan, the company’s marketing director. “But over the years, we’ve upgraded it by adding seven more different bird repellant noises—the cries and calls of pigeons, starlings, and other pest birds and bird predators. And we’ve added electronic noises as well.”

Kogan explains that Bird-X research and development studies found that birds react more to bird distress cries and predator noises than from the blasts of shotguns.

“The whole idea was to create a behavior modification tool that doesn’t harm birds, but rather scares them away. Our company’s philosophy is to take a humane approach to pest bird abatement rather than to kill them. You can cull a few from the flock, but that doesn’t work. The survivors keep coming back unless they’re scared away. The idea is to make them leave of their own volition. If they do that, in their own way they teach other birds, by example, to stay away from the area,” Kogan explains.

Poper had used another Bird-X product with success when he was posted in Victoria, BC: the ultrasonic Quadblaster QB-4. He used it to get rid of the birds that had developed a special affinity for a hangar at a Maritime Helicopter Squadron.

A Second BirdXPeller PRO And Eight Terror Eyes
This time, after consulting with Bird-X representatives and describing the situation at the training school, Poper decided to purchase and install a second BirdXPeller PRO, along with eight Bird-X Terror Eyes.

The BirdXPeller PRO comes in a green, rectangular sealed box with a Plexiglas-hinged door in front. Inside is a switch offering a choice of low, medium, and high frequencies. It comes in three different versions, according to Kogan. Version one emits noises that repel pigeons, starlings, sparrows, and gulls. Version two repels crows, blackbirds, grackles, ravens, and cormorants. Version WP repels woodpeckers.

Users can customize the BirdXpeller by selecting the frequency, volume, direction, and hours of operation. Its variable settings enables the product to be adaptable to many bird control situations.

The Terror Eyes, Kogan explains, are shaped like big, orange beach balls prominently decorated with the image of a giant horned owl, a predator of smaller birds.

“The image’s eyes are holographic, so it always seems like the ‘owl’ is glaring at the birds from different angles. Because they are suspended in the air, winds blow and spin them around, which freaks out the pest birds,” says Poper.

Success!
“Now, about six months after we first confronted the bird problem by putting the netting, BirdXPeller PROs, and Terror Eyes in action, we can report great success,” he says.

“Of all the birds that originally messed us up, only two pigeons remain—we named them Healthcliff and Gertrude. They don’t cause much of a mess, but our maintenance people take no chances. They wear dust masks, leather gloves, and goggles when they clean up after them. Why do Healthcliff and Gertrude refuse to leave? We’re not sure, but they seem to handle the noises emitted by the sonic repellers. We may have to trap them and evict them.”

Poper advises users of the BirdXPeller PRO to change the sound frequencies often. “Otherwise the birds might get used to the noise. We change the frequency daily— from high during the day to low at night. The low frequency noises are heard by both birds and humans, and are especially disturbing to both. The high frequencies are only heard by the birds.

Effective Deterrents Used in Combination
“All of our products are effective deterrents, but used in combination (i.e. a sound device plus a visual device plus a physical roost inhibitor), they yield significantly greater results than any one product alone. This is especially true in situations where pest birds are particularly stubborn, where they have nested in one place for extended periods, or where an area provides food, warmth, or shelter. A combination of Bird-X products works synergistically to create an aurally, visually, and physically undesirable environment for bird and animal pests,” says Kogan.

Bird-X Inc. was established in Chicago back in 1964. The company’s mission is to provide non-lethal, humane, environmentally safe, and ecologically sound products.

“We regularly receive referrals from the Audubon Society, the Coalition to Prevent the Destruction of Canada Geese, the Humane Society of the United States, and the Animal Damage Control division of the USDA,” says Kogan.

Bird-X products include physical barriers, such as bird spikes, sticky gels, and bird netting; sound repellers, including the BirdXPeller, Critter Blaster, and Goose Buster; ultrasonic sound deterrents such as the QuadBlaster QB4 and Ultrason X; taste aversions, including bird repellent sprays and solutions; and visual deterrents, such as the Bird Blazer, Terror Eyes, and 3D Coyote.

The Georgia World Congress Center Authority (GWCCA) will soon be able to water its green space and turn its fountains back on after a water ban that went into effect October 2007. Water restrictions are still in place, but the 200 acre campus will no longer be as much of a strain on the local water supply.

The GWCCA, which includes the Georgia World Congress Center, Georgia Dome, and Centennial Olympic Park, has bored two 660-foot deep wells. One is located at the northeast corner of the Park and the other is underneath International Plaza, which is in front of the GWCC’s Building B entrance. Water from the wells will be used for watering lawns and plants as well as operating ornamental water features.

A pump test to identify the rate of water flow is performed on the well located under Centennial Olympic Park.

The well at Centennial Olympic Park should be fully operational in 9 to 10 weeks, and the Georgia World Congress Center project will be complete in late August or early September.

Looking Long-Term
Since the City of Atlanta’s Level Four water ban was implemented, management at the GWCCA facilities has had to invest more than $100,000 in repairing, resealing, and recaulking water features that have dried out and cracked. Additionally, $500,000 worth of plant life on the campus has been lost.

“As an economic generator to the state, we welcome millions of visitors to the Park and GWCCA campus each year,” said Mark Banta, general manager of the 21 acre Centennial Olympic Park. “The wear and tear of foot traffic requires water to rejuvenate the plant life. Water from these wells will enable us to keep our 200 acre campus green.”

The Park project, which ties the well to the water garden storage and irrigation system, will cost $142,712. Testing has confirmed that it will produce 12.5 gallons of water per minute once construction is complete. Consequently, the investment will be recouped in just seven years. The GWCC project is estimated to cost $292,000, but can produce 54 gallons per minute meaning that it will take three years to recover the investment. Special piping in International Plaza that connects to cisterns below the plaza will also allow for water harvesting. The return on investment will be significant over time.

Banta explains, “Water harvesting takes rainwater that falls on the International Plaza and store it in cisterns for later use. The well uses underground water that exists already.”

“We are extremely pleased with the projected output of the two wells on our campus,” said Mark Zimmerman, general manager of the Georgia World Congress Center. “With local water limitations, we are happy that we’ll no longer have to put a strain on the state’s water supply and that, at the same time, we’ll be able to maintain much needed green space in our downtown area. The wells tie in perfectly with our continual goals to be good stewards of our facilities and to take responsibility for the huge impact we can have on the environment.”

Fifty-eight trees recently planted in two schoolyards in Bacon County, GA will improve the appearance and safety of those properties. Through its Making the Shade partnership, the Georgia Forestry Commission (GFC) is partnered with Milliken & Company, the City of Alma, and Bacon County Board of Education to implement the program in that county.

(left to right): Jamie Calloway, Milliken & Company, Alma Plant with student volunteers from Bacon County High and Middle School and Vance Burkett, Milliken & Company, Alma Plant

GFC announced its first three Making the Shade partnerships, including Milliken, in 2007 on Georgia Arbor Day. Today, nearly 500 trees have been planted, with the program expanded to benefit more than 9,000 students at 14 schools in 13 counties throughout Georgia.

“We are very grateful to our partners who helped achieve healthier and more attractive school playgrounds by planting 13 species including oak varieties, maple, poplar and cypress trees,” said Daniel Westcot, Georgia Forestry Commission community forester.

The 58 trees were recently added to the Bacon County Elementary and Bacon County Primary School campuses, which had offered very limited shade areas for faculty and students. Adding shade trees to the landscapes will reduce the effects of high temperatures and related health and safety concerns, while those shading HVAC equipment will improve energy efficiency.

“As a major employer in the community, Milliken is pleased to have worked with our local schools and the state to implement the Making the Shade program,” said Vance Burkett, Bacon County Board of Education member and Milliken associate.

Milliken supports Making the Shade as part of its Trees For All initiative, reflecting concerns for healthy environments—indoors and out. Milliken demonstrates its commitment to improve Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) with its adhesive free TractionBack® modular installation system, which eliminates offgassing. Outdoors, the company nurtures millions of trees and is certified carbon negative through reduced emissions and carbon sequestration in its forests, without purchased credits.

The Georgia Forestry Commission research indicates compelling reasons to add shade trees to the landscape:

• Traditional elementary school campus design often eliminates the health benefits provided by shade trees.
• Children are more susceptible to ground level ozone because they often play outside on hot, muggy days.
• Children’s skin damage can occur in as little as 15 minutes of overexposure to the suns ultraviolet (UV) radiation.
• Elevated playground temperatures reduce air quality and increase risks for children with asthma and other lung related issues.
• Elevated surface temperatures of school yards and playground equipment can cause serious and painful burns to students.

To see other companies involved in planting trees, visit the Arbor Day Foundation.

There was a crooked man and he walked a crooked mile.
He found a crooked sixpence upon a crooked stile.
He bought a crooked cat, which caught a crooked mouse.
And they all lived together in a little crooked house.

Back in early 2008, I posted a story on the oddest buildings in the world. Apparently, a few more illustrious structures have been added to the list, all with photos this time!

Here are some more of the most crazy, crooked buildings from around the world. Not so sure about the cats and mice, but one can only venture to guess what it would be like to live and work on one of these buildings.

1. Forest Spiral - Hundertwasser Building (Darmstadt, Germany)

2. The Basket Building (Ohio, United States)*

3. Kansas City Public Library (Missouri, United States)

4. Wonderworks (Orlando, Florida, United States)

5. Habitat 67 (Montreal, Canada)

6. Cubic Houses (Rotterdam, Netherlands)

7. Hang Nga Guesthou se a.k.a Crazy House (Vietnam)

8. The UFO House (Sanjhih, Taiwan)

9. Nakagin Capsule Tower (Tokyo, Japan)

10. Erwin Wurm: House Attack (Vienna, Austria)

11. Wooden Gagster House (Archangelsk, Russia)

12. Ripley’s Building (Ontario, Canada)

* Also featured on FacilityBlog back in August 2008.

Many thanks to Luann Rathemacher for passing this along!

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Afternoon Addendum!

Working on the premise that “form follows function”, the Prada Transformer in South Korea is a shape shifting building that can be reconfigured to accommodate art, film, fashion, and other types of specialized events.

The shape shifting Prada Transformer

Opened yesterday housing a fashion exhibit, the all white exterior belies its chameleonesque quality. It can take on four shapes— hexagon, cross, rectangle, and circle. Construction cranes lift and rotate the steel-framed structure into different facades and floor plate configurations to create the desired shape. According to the building’s official site, the general contractor, Eunmin S&D, completed the first full rotation test earlier this month.

The Office for Metropolitan Architecture based in the Netherlands designed the Prada Transformer. The firm’s website features illustrations of the structure’s contortions, along with a few interior renderings.

Interesting to see what can be done today!

Created, manufactured and distributed by PolyCon Manufacturing, E-Krete® is a durable polymer composite micro-overlay (PCMO™) that bonds securely to asphalt pavement, chip seal, polished stone, and other bituminous products, as well as concrete and primed metal.

E-Krete by PolyCon is designed to extend the life of asphalt and other surfaces.

E-Krete® is unaffected by water, UV, ice, oxidation, automotive fluids, aircraft fluids, oil, diesel, and gasoline. Cracks in oxidized pavement are filled by the PCMO™ material as the asphalt pavement is capped with a 1/8” lift of E-Krete®.  It is the only cementitious pavement preservation material approved by the FAA, EPA, and Army Corp of Engineers, and is currently in the approval process in several state Dept. of Transportations including MS, LA, AL, AR, TX, TN, and FL.

PolyCon provides a 10-year warranty on E-Krete®. The company states the product extends the life of asphalt pavement in excess of 20 years. It is recommended for asphalt and chip seal roads; taxiways and tarmacs; parking lots; interstate bridge decks; heliports; offshore oil rigs; bank and fast food drive throughs; oil spot repair; barge decks; work boat walkways; highly oxidized asphalt pavements; and any area where a high coefficient of friction is needed. E-Krete® provides a clean, high quality, quiet riding, skid resistant surface that arrests the deterioration of asphalt pavement caused by UV and rainwater intrusion.

The National Center for Asphalt Technology (NCAT) at Auburn University found that E-Krete® provides an SRI (Solar Reflectivity Index) that meets and exceeds the requirement for LEED projects. E-Krete® reduces the heat by as much as 12°F compared to the heat which is absorbed and stored in asphalt.

Unlike traditional seal coating materials that contain polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH), E-Krete®  has no PAHs and is recognized by the EPA as “reducing the need for resurfacing, sealing and replacement…thus eliminating the generation and release of PAH, coal tar materials, and hazardous solvents into the environment.”