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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...

Facility managers have always been consumers of technology. More and more, I think, facility managers should become students of technology as well. As technology consumers who are selecting products that may be in place for decades and that can help or hinder the organization to achieve its mission, facility managers have to scrutinize new offerings with very critical eyes. It’s essential to cut through the sometimes...

Thirty years ago, a new team took control of Trade Press, the company that publishes Building Operating Management , as two top managers bought out the previous owner. The sale began a new era for the company. The goal of our CEO, Bob Wisniewski, was to grow the company, and he succeeded. Under his leadership, Trade Press built itself from being publisher of two magazines into a diverse media company with an array of...

That’s an easy question, right? More use of colocation or cloud facilities surely means that legacy data centers are being downsized if not decommissioned. And that you can forget about building a new enterprise data center. Well, maybe. It all depends. At the recent C ritical Facilities Summit , I got a sense of how complex that question is. For example, when Hennepin County completed a major data center renovation...

The launch of a building certification program can be powerful driver for change. Consider Energy Star and LEED . Both arrived at times when the opportunity for gains was significant. Both helped to transform the facility market by providing sought-after stamps of approval. Smart buildings is another arena that could benefit from a widely accepted stamp of approval. An abundance of smart technology exists to reduce...