From the Editor
Say you’re planning a new roof project this year. You’re busy researching options and are leaning towards a cool roof — your calculations show a cool roof may result in several thousand dollars per year in energy savings.

Also, next year, you’re planning a facilitywide windows upgrade to replace the 50-year-old relics in place, and you’re pretty sure that within the next two to five years, you will have to replace your rooftop air conditioning units..

Sure, you’ll do your due diligence on each of these facility upgrades, making sure each piece of equipment is the right fit for your particular situation. But, do you consider how the roof you select may affect the types of windows and the size and efficiency of the rooftop units you’ll eventually have to select?

Facility managers are probably familiar enough with the idea of integrated design — considering how different facility strategies work together. Integrated design can result in significant cost and energy savings in the long term. But how about the idea of “integrated renovation”? How will product decisions you make today affect product decisions next year or five years from now?

To maximize the benefits of any product decision, it makes sense to consider carefully how that product will interact with other product decisions further down the line. Similar to how integrated design can help optimize energy savings over multiple facility strategies and product decisions, so too can integrated renovation.

As always, I’d love to hear from you. How do you consider future renovations or facility upgrades in present-day product decisions?

Cheers,

Green Strategies
Efficient With the Green

Sustainable strategies need not be costly to be effective. Here’s how some prominent organizations went green on a budget.

In the News
Sustainable Practices Through Effective Lighting Solutions Guide Available
The IFMA Foundation released Lighting Solutions, a free guide to help facility managers introduce and advance sustainable lighting principles.

Green Toolkit
Whole Building Design Guide: Operations and Maintenance
This site offers guidance on how to maintain facilities at peak efficiency through thoughtful operations and maintenance. The site includes specific guidance on real property inventory, computerized maintenance management systems, and computer aided facilities management.

GreenTech Conference & Exposition

BIM Opportunities for Facility Management

This presentation from GreenTech 2009 shows how Building Information Modeling used at the design phase can be brought into the operations and maintenance of the new facility.

Registration for NFMT 2010 is now open. The show will take place March 16-18, 2010 at the Baltimore Convention Center. Click here to register