Special Report: 4.9.2009

Posted by TED Magazine on Thursday, April 09, 2009

Bits and Pieces from the NFM+T Show (Part 3 of 3)

By Joe Salimando

Previous reports from the National Facilities Maintenance & Technology event covered EPAct & Green Purchasing and LEED-EB. What’s below provides bits and bytes, plus details on a session on “Total Light Management.”

Neatest-Ever Handout—from NEMA!

Certainly the neatest handout was a 6-inch by 4-inch flat thing from the NEMA booth. It was headlined as “NEMA’s Enlighten America Press Kit.” A press kit on a single, smallish piece of something.

Folks at NEMA are getting really cheap, I initially thought.

Then I looked at the thing (in this case, a photo won’t do). It has ragged edges. Basically, the info on the “press kit” tells you to go to www.nemasavesenergy.com.

What’s neat is that this thing doesn’t only “talk the talk,” it also “walks the walk.” The last two sentences:

“This paper card is eco-friendly and will actually grow wildflowers when planted in the ground. Watch your flowers blossom and your energy savings grow with lighting solutions implemented today!”

If it means what it says, the dingus is really a paper-like seed packet!

EMCOR’s 20 x 10 Booth

I wandered by the EMCOR Group booth several times. It’s important to remember that this company is not only the home of the nation’s largest electrical contractor, but also has a mechanical (HVAC) arm, which is the country’s largest mechanical contractor. The stool’s third leg is EMCOR Facilities Services.

If you look at the company, what you see is an entity that’s almost too difficult to explain (with almost $6.8 billion in 2008 revenues). Recent releases talked about contracts for work on a nuclear reactor plant refurbishment in Canada, installation of electrical systems in a medical center, and a job involving fire protection and mechanical systems at a hospital.

 

EMCOR advertises its services. But it has too much to talk about. An eight-page brochure obtained in the booth covered “energy-use optimization,” facilities management, “mobile mechanical services,” predictive and unscheduled maintenance tasks “that prevent equipment failure and decline,” and renovations and retrofits.

All that on just one spread. I’m not sure what message the intended recipient actually gets from all that.

A trade show full of potential customers (such as NFM+T) offers EMCOR abundant opportunities. The company’s services are probably best sold in individual conversations. With such a wide range of possible services for facility managers, EMCOR’s initial sale probably doesn’t approach the potential it can harvest from a given customer.

Over time, then, it probably can obtain more and more revenue from that customer.

Therefore, what EMCOR really needs is a foot in the door. If the company gets into a building to do an electrical retrofit, it can offer additional electrical (and low-voltage) options, a panoply of mechanical services, and, of course, the Facilities Service unit’s full menu.

NOTE: Much of what appears above about EMCOR applies, in a different way (but along similar lines) to electrical distributors. Despite that, there were only three distributors with booths at this show.

Another Contractor

I stumbled across the booth of On Services, a nationwide mission-critical contractor. I’m not sure the company’s people would describe it as “an electrical contractor,” but that’s the most useful label.

Having been in and around electrical construction since 1979, I know that companies like this exist. Like you, I’m aware of the 7x24 Exchange (if you’re not, click through!).

But I’d never heard of On Services, which offers 24-hour emergency back-up power assistance (including “scheduled predictive and preventive maintenance”). When I checked in with the guys at On’s booth, I learned that their company is, indeed, involved with the 7x24 Exchange.

Too Much Green

Visit the NFM+T event website and you’ll see that it incorporates several conferences, including GreenTech. It seems certain that few attendees saw a separate “green conference and show” going on alongside the maintenance/facilities management shindig, but that’s what’s implied.

 

Certainly, as photos above and below (only a sample!) demonstrate, there was enough green stuff to look at on the show floor.

 

Along these lines, it crossed my mind (while ambling around) that Sonepar’s naming its effort “Blue Way” might be a masterstroke. Perhaps that thought was implanted by the fact that two electrical distributors on the NFM+T show floor were units of Sonepar?

Total Light Management

Doesn’t the phrase “Total Light Management” ring in your ears? Glenn D. Hughes, who worked 18 years in facilities management for the New York Times (and now runs Glenn D. Hughes Consulting Associates), talked about it for 50 minutes.

Hughes is somehow allied with Lutron; he told attendees they could find him in that company’s booth if they had additional questions. And Lutron was the winning responsive bidder to supplying lighting control systems (including daylighting and occupancy sensors) that make the new NYT building such an interesting 21st-century lighting case study.

Essentially, the NYT building hosts knowledge workers. Some write articles; others edit; and still others provide photos and graphics. Each group works best under slightly different light levels (artistic types want 20 FC, writer/editors want 30, Hughes said).

In designing a brand-new building, the NYT went to Renzo Piano of Genoa [and you thought Genoa’s time in the spotlight ended when Columbus went to Portugal and then Spain, huh?]. In Piano’s design, the building sports lots of glass. There is a screening system of pipes that reportedly lets useful light in but eliminates glare.

Hughes has talked previously about the installation at various venues. To read a brief Lutron-written profile, go here. A six-page PDF from Lutron can be found here. Take a look at some pix at the Jetson Green site. NOTE: Whether you like Lutron or compete with it, you need to get this information into your head. “Total Light Management” makes sense.

Perspective: My experience with the New York Times is as a reader. As a young magazine editor living and working in New York City more than 30 years ago, I often found myself walking (or jogging, something my body allowed me to do back then) down 43rd St., past the “Old Gray Lady” of...Times Square!

While daylighting is the focus of all that glass in the new NYT building, we all know that it’s the headquarters of a morning newspaper, and that means people will work after the sun sets. What was fascinating about Hughes’s presentation was the way the building’s lighting control system was designed to adapt to changing needs during the day, the varying light levels of the seasons, and the proclivities of personnel working in a given space. The needs of individual groups and daylighting coming into various spaces are reflected in each floor’s design.

What’s being learned in this building is that, when it comes to lighting (with a stiff serving of daylighting), less is more. People who work at the NYT are using less and less light, as they adapt (and the system adapts to their use). Designed to provide 1.28W per square foot, the system is averaging 0.38W per square foot in spring, 0.33W per square foot in summer, and 0.37W per square foot in the fall and winter.

“The Times is enjoying more savings,” as facility managers learned to fine-tune the system, Hughes said. “The building was designed to provide an average of 50 footcandles, but it is only using 30 footcandles.”

Most impressive (to me, anyway): Hughes made an important point: You may save a lot of energy with a given lighting installation, but—if you are worried about things like money and the return on a given investment—what counts is the productivity of the building’s occupants.

(My thoughts were on lighting and productivity before this session. In earlier workshops, folks spoke about using recycled paper in computer printers. My nightmarish “vision” was of 58-year-old workers, looking at something printed on recycled paper under light provided by CFLs...squinting, miscomprehending, and getting headaches.)

Hughes provided back-of-the-envelope math on productivity gains: A 1% productivity loss would cost the NYT about $4 million dollars a year. But it looks more like they are picking up at least a 1% productivity gain.

If that’s the case, Hughes said (and lighting-driven productivity gains or losses are notoriously impossible to document), then the Total Light Management system might have an outstanding return on investment. It might have paid for itself in just a few months.

Three-Report Summary

Having covered Blueway, EMCOR, EPAct, green purchasing, LEED, NEMA, 7x24, Total Light Management, and more, we’ve squeezed plenty from three days at NFM+T. Yes, there is more in my notes. But I’d end up slamming some speakers for appearing to be green when they aren’t, and others for being incredible blockheads.

Suggestion for show sponsors: Get young, environmentally-oriented speakers on the program (not wild-eyed extremists, but savvy folks who back up enthusiasm with knowledge, contrasting with some 2009 presenters who held solid dollups of ignorance behind their readily expressed skepticism).

Final note: NFM+T 2010 is set for mid-March (again in Bawlmore). You might put it to work for you.

	Joe Salimando of EFJ Enterprises is a consultant, web content provider, and wordsmith based in Oakton, Va. To contact him, call 703-255-1428. See also The EleBlog.
Personal Disclaimer: The appearance of the ambling pachyderm is indicative of the writer’s obsession with elephants, not his political leanings.
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