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I have a lot of opportunities to learn from experts on the topic of planning energy upgrades. Lately, I’ve been listening for ideas about making deep cuts in energy use. It’s clear the best route to the greatest savings varies from one organization to the next. But there are some common themes for finding the right path. One is that there are plenty of easy opportunities for small energy gains. Switch to...

You have no doubt heard the old knock on value engineering — that it’s a way of engineering the value out of a project. And you have likely seen more than one case where cost-cutting reduced the price tag of a construction or retrofit project but added years, even decades, of higher operating expenses. So you can relate to this horror story: The initial price of a flooring project in a medical facility was...

Talk to any cybersecurity expert, and you’ll hear the same thing: almost all building automation systems have vulnerabilities a hacker could exploit to gain access to the system. The good news is that facility managers themselves can address many of those vulnerabilities. Part of the solution is adopting good practices, like changing passwords regularly. But before you can do the right thing, you have to know what...

For the past few years, Building Operating Management has surveyed facility managers about changes in capital budgets and staffing levels. Step by small step, those numbers have improved. While the changes from year to year have not been dramatic, the cumulative shift is noteworthy. In 2012, the first year we asked about capital budgets, 30 percent of respondents reported increases in the previous year, and 30 percent...

As many facility managers know by now, the Energy Star scores for most buildings dropped when the program plugged in newly available national data on average facility energy performance. Although Energy Star is reviewing the mathematical models on which the 1 to 100 ratings are based, the underlying facility energy consumption numbers haven’t changed. And those numbers offer good news: The new national performance...