It’s surprising that the edict came from the tech industry, where competition for talent is fierce. But there it was, in a memo to all Yahoo! employees: “Beginning in June, we’re asking all employees with work-from-home arrangements...

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...

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...

An emergency preparedness plan is an insurance policy. And like any insurance policy, it doesn’t pay off until something bad happens. There is no stream of cash from lower energy costs, no gains in comfort, no staff time saved. Without such immediate...

In our society, competition is everywhere you turn, from our political system and economy to sporting events and the television shows that pit singers, dancers, chefs, and even those trying to lose weight against one another. For facility managers, the...

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...

One thing that President Obama can’t claim a mandate for is action on climate change. Obama never made the topic a high-enough profile issue in his re-election campaign to claim broad popular support for his ideas on climate change. But the push...

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?...

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...

It could be a server room that has turned into a data center. Or it could be an old data center that now supports growing functions like e-commerce. Maybe it’s a hospital where robotic operating suites can’t afford to be offline for the few...

Anyone who thinks that cutting costs is the only reason to give employees less space should consider what Facebook did when it moved into the old headquarters of Sun Microsystems. Sun, one of the tech stars of the 1990s, designed its headquarters with...

Pity the poor politician who has to defend deficit spending these days. After a period in which deficits were gradually brought under control, the last decade has seen the return of enormous budget shortfalls. When critics lambaste deficit spending, the...

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’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...

It certainly wasn’t good news: There was a serious fire in my son’s residence hall, which forced students to evacuate at 4:30 on a Sunday morning. But I can’t consider it bad news that the university emailed parents within hours to let...

I heard some really good news not too long ago. I was at a presentation for top executives, and the topic was sustainability. One of the speakers started describing tax deductions for energy efficient upgrades in buildings. The takeaway, and I quote:...

In case you forgot to make a New Year’s Resolution, here are some retroactive resolutions to consider: Get more exercise. Save more money for retirement. Expand your network across the organization. Good ideas, right? And what better way to start...

When it comes to facilities, there are plenty of opportunities to complain — it’s too hot, it’s too cold, this is leaking, that isn’t working. But if you ever start thinking that no one notices the good things about facilities...

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...

Facility managers get handed so many problems that it’s no wonder some adopt a sort of fullback mentality. Take the ball, put your head down and try to plow ahead. That works, up to a point, but you take a lot of pounding along the way — from...

What I want to ask all of you, of course, is, “Well, what do you think?” We’ve spent months working to improve Building Operating Management , and now, ta-da, here it is. I imagine you feel much the same way when you renovate a building...

When we developed the FMXcellence program, we decided that we would recognize facility departments rather than individual facility managers. It’s easy to understand why. Achievements in facility management take hard work by a lot of people. Strong...

This isn’t good. Two years in a row I’ve gone to visit a college campus with my son. Both times I’ve come back with disasters on my mind. This year it was shooters. The most attention-grabbing part of the orientation program for parents...

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...

Facility managers have a reputation for being skeptical about new technologies. No surprise there. If a product doesn’t perform as expected, it’s the facility manager who has to deal with the impact, whether that’s premature replacement...