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A Letter to Matt Adams

[Ed. Note: Matt Adams, president of Adams FM2 and creator of and longtime contributor to this column, passed away on November 27, 2020.] Dear Matt: For me, one of the hardest parts of losing someone is being left with unspoken words. You were an amazing mentor, but I never told you. I never said “thank […]

Colleges and Universities Should Invest in Outdoor Spaces

Consequences and changes resulting from the COVID-19 global pandemic are far-reaching. Colleges, universities, and schools have certainly felt the pandemic’s effects across offices and functions. The manner in which students learn and live on campus was thrown into instantaneous disarray last spring. Since early 2020, campus facilities professionals have undertaken a Herculean task to transform […]

Funding Sustainability Initiatives: A Reflection on Pandemic-Era Financing Innovation

Nowadays, we seem to be living in two worlds, caught between a longing for prepandemic culture and the wish for a different tomorrow. We are in a very similar situation regarding energy and sustainability in education. We celebrate our successes from the Y2K era while acknowledging the need for a paradigm shift that refocuses our […]

Giving New Life to Old Products

For more than 50 years, the world has been enamored with recycling. It seemed like the environmentally friendly solution to waste. But the truth is, recycling means chip it, shred it, grind it, or melt it. To recycle something means to convert it back into a raw material, which requires a lot of energy and […]

HVAC Maintenance in the Age of COVID-19

The world changed on March 11, 2020, when the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic. Since then, the massive disruptions caused by the virus have left millions of people without work, and their normal lives have been transformed. Everyone, it seems, is asking questions as to what needs to be done to stay safe […]

Keeping the Roof over Everyone’s Head

Facilities managers at schools, colleges, and universities must deal with a variety of ongoing issues, but none can be as cumbersome—or expensive—as replacing a roof. Preventive maintenance is the key to both a healthy roof and a stable budget. The goal is to stop problems before they arise in order to avoid costly repairs and […]

Strategies for Successful Facility Succession Planning

Facilities are in a crisis. Staff reductions due to retirement are straining our collective facility knowledge and impacting our ability to quickly respond to workloads and emergencies. Consider the complexity of a healthcare or school campus with dozens of buildings. How can we expect new hires to be as familiar with these facilities as our […]

The Buzz About Drones

Schools across the APPA regions have started to implement unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), also known as drones, to inspect facilities infrastructure. No more than five years ago, universities were paying for helicopters to capture images of their campus. Today, some universities have their own fleet of drones to oversee their facilities. The cost of equipment […]

The Buzz About Drones, Part 2—Interior Scanning

In the previous article [Jul/Aug 2021 issue], “The Buzz About Drones,” the discussion focused on outside scanning of university buildings. This article will go into detail on interior scanning and refer to cases where data was collected, as well as showcase different ways to scan, view, and utilize the data collected. The University of Texas […]

The New Budget Normal

Like everything else in the world around us, the facilities management (FM) business is set for changes resulting from the events of 2020. Considering the many changes in both our workplaces and our educational practices, there is no doubt that the “new normal” for our industry will change. Some changes are already taking place, and […]