Mike Menzel
Manager of Plant Operations and Maintenance
Barnes-Jewish Hospital, St. Louis, Mo.
Facilities Management Tip of the Day is an informative podcast that touches on essential maintenance issues for managers. Topics include landscape management, HVAC, emergency preparedness, security, plumbing and roofing.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has issued a memorandum stating epinephrine salts are not hazardous waste and do not need to be managed as such. The memorandum clarifies that Resource Conservation and Recovery Act hazardous-waste regulations do not include epinephrine salts. This announcement could have significant impact for hospitals because dilute solutions containing epinephrine salts are widely used in local anesthetics, treatment of severe allergic reactions and certain surgeries. Wastes containing epinephrine salt solutions include vials, ampules, bottles, bags, tubing and syringes, all of which hospitals can generate in large amounts.
With hundreds of CMMS applications to choose from, how can managers avoid information overload? What criteria should be used to evaluate the alternatives? Is there truly an optimal solution for any organization? Jim D’Orazio, president of Vista Advantage, discusses successful CMMS specification strategies.
Achieving good indoor environmental quality (IEQ) often means taking a variety of factors into account. Do certain factors get priority when it comes to IEQ? Submit an answer and view results.
During my first month with Maintenance Solutions magazine, the flourishing concept of going green was a popular topic of conversation.
I wasn’t quite sure how significant the phrase was at the time, but that was before I traveled to Chicago on Nov. 6-8 for Greenbuild 2007. A record crowd of 22,835 packed McCormick Place to get an inside look at the newest products and ideas that will fuel the green industry for years to come.
Knowing California is recognized as the leader of the green movement, I ventured into an educational session aptly titled, California Raises the Bar: Environmental Product Standards and Specifications. Dan Burgoyne, sustainability manager for California’s Department of General Services, discussed Executive Order S-20-04 and California’s ambitions to make its buildings more environmentally friendly in the next 5-10 years …
Green success stories are coming in fast and furious these days, but here’s one that definitely stands out from the crowd. The Dell Children’s Medical Center of Central Texas, a new 500,000-square-foot, $200 million facility designed to be certified at the LEED-Platinum level, uses a natural-gas-fired, combined-heat-and-power (CHP) turbine to generate all its electricity.
Now, there are a lot of stories in that sentence alone, but the real story here is that the owner – Seton Healthcare Network – didn’t have to pay a dime for the plant that was built on its site …
Suppose you manage a data center that uses the underfloor plenum for cooling. Then imagine that the raised floor extends to the outside walls of the building. And now picture a gigantic hole in the wall that lets two-thirds of the chilled air escape.
Unthinkable? Certainly. But a new group argues that a very similar situation exists with IT equipment.
The problem isn’t a literal hole in the wall, says the Green Data Project. The problem is that disk drives are as riddled as Swiss cheese with figurative holes. The group cites the claim of Sun Microsystems that only 30 percent of the average disk drive contains useful data. Of course, electricity is still going to power that unused space, which in turn is kicking out heat that needs to be dealt with ...
The Green Guide for Health Care is a best-practices guide for healthy and sustainable building design, construction, and operations for the health care industry. Version 2.2 of Green Guide is free for download, and includes guidance on operations and new construction.
