Risk identification/mitigation can be found on the opposite side of the crisis coin — and every facilities pro would benefit from identifying and planning for scenarios that can bring a controlled environments facility to its knees. Often, future focused initiatives are pushed off, as we battle day-to-day issues. Finding the way to plan for resilience will pay huge dividends.…
Striking Back When Disaster Strikes
Q: Can you offer any tips on how to recover when a disaster impacting manufacturing strikes, and what we should have/would have/could have done to plan for it? A: “Plan for what is difficult.” Sun Tzu Disasters happen, and they’re never opportune — despite that famous claim that “every cloud has a silver lining.” Regardless of the cause…
Proper Materials Handling Prevents Disasters
Q: Materials handling seems to be growing in complexity in today’s manufacturing world, especially hazardous production materials. Can you offer some thoughts about key things to consider in relation to handling, as well as facility design and renovations? A: “Fools ignore complexity. Pragmatists suffer it. Some can avoid it. Geniuses remove it.” Alan Perlis While…
Smart Buildings
Building automation systems are one of the marvels born of the integrated circuit age, and now a mainstream apparatus in the toolkit of today’s building management professional. Going back a number of years, many of us in the engineering and facilities world could be forgiven for invoking the colloquialism, “Whoever would have thunk?” The capabilities,…
Renovation Roadmap
Renovations are messy affairs, often fraught with hidden problems capable of inflating costs and expanding schedules. Controlled environments, requiring a myriad of construc- tion parameters supported by significant building system controls and structural considerations, make any renovation process messier.