William M. (Bill) Elvey, P.E.
Director for Facilities Management,
Engineering, Planning & Construction
The University of Texas at Dallas
Richardson, Texas
Podcast: Management Strategy
The Facilities Management Tip of the Day podcast discusses essential maintenance and engineering management issues. Topics include paints and coatings, flooring, HVAC, ADA, emergency preparedness, security, plumbing, landscape management and roofing.
News: Facilities Bill Would Fund School Renovations
Public school buildings around the country could receive billions of dollars for renovation and modernization under legislation recently approved by a House committee. The House Education and Labor Committee passed the 21st Century High-Performing Public School Facilities Act, H.R. 3021. The legislation would provide funding to states and school districts to help ensure school facilities and learning environments are safe, healthy, energy efficient,
environmentally friendly, and technologically advanced.
Webcast: Green Plumbing Systems
Winston Huff, project manager with Smith Seckman Reid consulting engineers, discusses green issues that affect plumbing systems, including the growing use of waterless urinals, low-flow water closets, low-flow showerheads, low-flow lavatories, touchless fixtures, and waterless toilets. This free webcast helps managers better understand: how the fixtures operate; how the fixtures are installed; health concerns; user acceptance; and maintenance issues.
What You Say: Lighting Systems
Managers need to understand the quality of savings projections for lighting upgrades can vary. Generally, have the savings from your lighting upgrades met expectations? Submit an answer and view results.
Artificial Turf: Safety First
Three yards and a cloud of… crumb rubber?
Doesn’t quite have the same ring to it, does it? But instead of a cloud of dust hovering over football fields on Saturday and Sunday afternoons, athletes are getting a face full of rubber pellets.
Many of today’s common artificial playing surfaces are comprised of polyethylene and polypropylene — both plastics — and rubber pellets from recycled car and truck tires, according to USA Today. The new fields have garnered rave reviews, but some won’t fully embrace their benefits due to problems associated with the turf’s predecessor.
Older artificial surfaces, which were installed at playgrounds, athletic fields and parks, feature nylon “grass” about one-half-inch tall. Health officials are concerned the carpet-like playing surfaces are contaminated with lead, posing health risks to children and athletes. Lead has been discovered in the pigment used to color the artificial fields. Six artificial surfaces in New York and New Jersey have closed due to lead content in the turf fibers ...
Lighting Technology: More Than Green
When the I-35W bridge collapsed in Minneapolis last August, I tried to make cell-phone calls to my friends in the Twin Cities.
I spoke to one person right after I saw the news coverage on TV. After that, I was out of luck. Hours went by, and the busy tones continued, call after call. I was reminded of this situation after reading an article in USA Today regarding college and universities preparing for campus emergencies, such as the shootings at Virginia Tech.
The article highlights the varying technologies organizations are specifying to notify students of a campus emergency. Colleges and universities are “installing high-tech alert systems that beam emergency e-mails and voice messages to thousands of cell phones, pagers, and personal computers to alert staff and students both on and off campus,” according to the paper.
But colleges and universities are not stopping there. They also are specifying low-tech devices, such as loudspeakers and sirens, to ensure students get the emergency message quickly and clearly ...
WiMAX: A Giant Leap into Facilities
Technology never rests, and wireless, or wi-fi, technology is hardly an exception.
In health care facilities, for example, it’s now more common for wireless systems to transport signals to and from a host of devices — computers, refrigeration-monitoring devices, pagers, medical-telemetry systems, supply-order entry systems, physician bedside devices, patient-wandering systems, and bedside equipment.
But just as building managers and owners start to get their arms around wi-fi applications and installations, the technology leaps ahead.
The next challenge for managers is WiMAX, new wireless broadband technology with a range of up to 80 kilometers and a bandwith of up to 75 bits per second (bps). Developers are billing WiMAX as an alternative to wi-fi ...
RWater-audit Software
Title 24, Part 6 is California’s building energy-efficiency standard. This code includes performance and prescriptive requirements pertaining to roof assemblies. The Asphalt Roofing Manufacturers Association and the SolarSmart Roofing Alliance, in conjunction with Oak Ridge National Laboratories, have developed this tool to assist end users on issues specific to Title 24, Part 6.
