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The concept of just-in-time manufacturing — revolutionary when it began to spread across U.S. factories in the 1980s — sought to reduce inventory to a very low level. The idea was to save money and reduce waste by making inventory more timely. A just-in-time philosophy has now taken hold across the real estate and facilities industry. It was once taken for granted that corporations would hold enough inventory...

The disastrous series of major hurricanes that hit last year — Harvey, Irma, and Maria — gave facility managers good reason to revisit their emergency response plans, with a particular eye on preparations for floods. A recent study from the University of Bristol in England offers more reason for concern: The risk of serious flooding across the United States is significantly greater than generally realized...

Facility management is full of pay-me-now-or-pay-me-later quandaries, and the product selection process offers a couple of great examples. The one most facility managers probably think of first is initial cost vs. life cycle cost. But there’s an equally good example involving an investment of hours, not dollars. It’s the question of what role the facility management team should play in the product selection...

Ever since new market data on building energy performance became available in 2016, staff at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Energy Star program have been working to update the rating system. It’s no small task, but the end is in sight: On August 26, recalibrated statistical models that determine Energy Star scores are scheduled to be released. Most buildings will get new scores, even though their...

Whether the numbers involve energy consumption, equipment performance or occupancy patterns, buildings are a rich source of data. But getting the value from Big Data, like mining gold from a lode buried deep in the earth, takes some doing. One person whose help you’ll need is a data scientist. That’s the person who can figure out how to crunch the stream of data available from sensors and building systems...