Browse by Tags

There’s a lesson to be learned from this year’s FMXcellence honorees, but the lesson may not be obvious. ( Click here to read about the honorees. ) This year’s honorees were recognized for very large projects or programs. The enterprise real estate group of TD Bank Group helped meet...

For the past decade, Glenborough LLC, a full service real estate investment and management firm, has focused on improving the energy efficiency of its portfolio. Today, the average Energy Star score for one of the firm's buildings is 84. Click here to learn more about how Glenborough uses a structured...

Over the past decade, many commercial real estate firms have seen the light about the virtues of energy efficiency. But the base building is at best half the story of energy consumption in commercial buildings. And tenants, which may use 50 percent or more of the energy in a building, often focus far...

You’ve heard this old question: If a tree falls in the woods, and no one hears it, does it make a sound? Here’s a facility management version: If a project reduces energy costs, but top management never hears about it, does it save money? In reality, the answer is yes. But in the minds of...

Brand new technology. Familiar products that keep getting better. Fresh ideas about design and operation. Taken together, these developments have multiplied opportunities to reduce energy use. Keeping up is almost a full-time job. A range of products that didn’t exist or weren’t ready for...

What would you do if you benchmarked a building using Energy Star’s Portfolio Manager and got back a score of 42? Or 22? Or 2? I’m not sure how many facility managers would clap their hands and run to the CEO to announce the good news. But it is good news, albeit of the good news/bad news...

It’s easy for facility managers to think of themselves as having a bricks and mortar job. This year’s FMXcellence recognition program shows how accurate that view is — and how limited. Behind all the heavy equipment and sophisticated technology of the projects that received recognition...

No one really wants to say this out loud, but the fact is that a LEED design alone won’t give you an energy-efficient building. Architects don’t want to say it because it sounds like they’re not doing their jobs when they design LEED buildings. The U.S. Green Building Council doesn’t...

Long before there was LEED , long before Energy Star , there was CBECS . The Commercial Buildings Energy Consumption Survey, as CBECS is formally known, provides a statistical baseline for the energy consumption of U.S. buildings. Never heard of CBECS? You’re not alone. But that doesn’t mean...

We didn’t plan it this way, but it just so happens that the 2011 FMXcellence honorees provide a pretty good picture of how FM departments are using sustainability to meet organizational goals. The FMXcellence program isn’t limited to green efforts. The ultimate test is adding value —...

President Obama came into office championing energy efficiency. But the biggest energy effort of his first two years — the cap and trade plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions — never passed Congress. And the November election results mean cap and trade is off the table. But energy efficiency...

Some things seem so obvious that it’s hard to believe that other people don’t get it. You almost have to think that they actually do understand the point but for some reason don’t want to admit it. For facility managers, the benefits of making investment decisions based on life-cycle...

Ten years ago, the idea of winning acceptance for green buildings represented a big challenge. In hindsight, green design seems more like it was an opportunity waiting to be taken advantage of. Green buildings bring real benefits, not just to the environment, but also to the people who use them and the...

Reports from McKinsey & Company are not on the required-reading list for most facility managers. McKinsey is a consulting group that targets senior management, and they’ve made a name for themselves by analyzing opportunities and challenges that have strategic importance. Lately, McKinsey has...

The rationale for commissioning is pretty straightforward. Invest a modest amount of money to find things wrong with a building, fix those problems, and get the investment paid back in a short period of time. Sounds logical. But top management often sees things differently. The executive viewpoint may...

At the heart of the House and Senate climate-change bills is cap-and-trade, a complex system that, put very simply, requires companies to pay for their greenhouse gas emissions. Opponents of cap-and-trade like to call the idea cap-and-tax. But the preferred alternative to cap-and-trade, in the eyes of...

Not long ago, any time you got an X-ray, the doctor would pull out a big floppy rectangle of film. Now, there’s a good chance the doctor will call up the images on a computer screen. In the not too distant future, the old approach to X-rays will seem as antiquated as mercury thermometers. On the...

Of all the developments in the building industry over the past 10 years, I can’t think of one that’s had as much impact as the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED system. Wouldn’t it be great if the same thing turned out to be true for the next decade? That is, LEED not only serves...

Justifying an energy efficiency project requires facility executives to walk the fine line between salesmanship and exaggeration, said Richard Lubinski, president of Think Energy Management , at the Facility Decisions conference and exposition in Las Vegas. (For more on his session, click here .) To...

Want to improve your chances of convincing bean counters that investments in energy projects are worthwhile? Stop talking about payback periods and start talking about return on investment, said speakers at the Facility Decisions conference and exposition in Las Vegas. Alan Whitson, president, The Corporate...

Utilities have long offered rebates and other incentives for energy efficiency. In the early and mide-90s, for example, rebates helped drive a market shift from T12 lamps and magnetic ballasts to T8s and electronic ballasts. By the end of that decade, the amount of rebates had dropped. But the tide has...

Do you think of utility incentives when you're planning a new construction project? Maybe you should. If you're considering a green building, you should visit your utility to see if they have energy efficiency incentives for new buildings. For example, Southern California Edison has a program...

It’s too late to prevent all the harm that will be caused by climate change, say some experts, so we now have to start dealing with the new risks. The idea of adapting to shifts in the climate is gaining momentum in the face of evidence that climate change is already taking place, and will continue...

YouTube probably isn’t the first place you’d think to look for information about new data center designs. But Allstate is proud enough of a recently opened data center that it made a video about the facility and posted it on YouTube. The video covers some of the green measures adopted by...

In a word, top management wants to have its cake and eat it too, suggests a report from CoreNet Global . Is the recession goes on, senior managers want corporate real estate execs to cut costs while simultaneously adding value. The key to doing that is to focus on corporate outcomes, not on real estate...