Atlanta FM Blog

Annette Gorelick, our chapter’s Secretary, wants to make sure you know about two opportunities for education at some of our sister organizations.

First is a USGBC Georgia chapter educational event being held on Thursday, August 19. Attendees will be able to earn LEED AP continuing education credit and elevate their understanding about projecting, tracking, & evaluating costs & returns on green building initiatives. Greg O’Brien, Principal, Sustainable Options, LLC, will address design vs. actual performance and financial returns on sustainable investments. A walking tour to Colonial Properties Atlantic Center Plaza follows as Chief Engineer Jeff Johnson will discuss the condensate reclamation system as part of this LEED Gold property. For more information, send an e-mail to Annette Gorelick. Register directly at the USGBC-GA site.

Second, Annette encourages you to join IFMA Birmingham Chapter members as they attend the Green Building Focus Conference & Expo 8/24-8/26, 2010 in Birmingham, AL. You can register on the Green Building Focus website — please note that IFMA groups receive the Host Association rate listed on the left side. If you are interested in more details, please contact Michael McHugh at Green Building Focus.

President Joanne Cole points us to this article that was written for the Charlotte chapter by Rick Regan. She shares it here with their permission.

LED’s – Why Is Everybody So Excited?

A recent International Trade Show and Conference devoted to Architectural and Commercial Lighting held this year in Las Vegas, raised the question: Why is everybody getting so excited about LEDs? The LED products that most of us have seen have been too dim for serious commercial use, and kind of a blue-ish light to boot. Not ready for Prime Time!

Here’s the thing, LEDs have been steadily getting brighter and more powerful, year after year. And this year marks the first time that LED products will be able to challenge the performance of every kind of light: Incandescent, High Pressure Sodium, Metal-Halide and Fluorescent, to name a few.

The magic number is 100. That is: 100 lumens-per-Watt of electricity. The very latest T8 & T5 products hover around this 100 lu/W level, and HPS and M-H are in the 100 lu/W range too. After 40 years of development and improvements, 100 lu/W is about the best you can get out of conventional lighting. (source: IESNA Lighting Handbook)
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Are you a Facility Manager who is currently out of work? Would you like a chance to network with your peers – to share contacts and strategies for finding that next job?

If the above statements describe you, then you should join us for IFMA Atlanta’s new FM Job Club – a monthly networking event for facility managers in career transition. Led by HR guru, Joe Carroll, this group will attempt to support you during these tough economic times.

Come to the inaugural meeting of the group on Tuesday, June 16 from 11 – 1pm. We will be meeting at Corporate Environments, located at 1636 Northeast Expy, Atlanta, GA 30329. The job club is FREE to attend. There is plenty of parking at Corporate Environments, and bring your lunch, because we will take a short break to eat and chat. Please reserve your place today on the IFMA Atlanta website:

Early on the morning of May 12, a group of facility managers converged on the Newell Rubbermaid headquarters for a tour of the facility and a lecture about the Green Globes rating system for sustainable buildings. This was one of our series of “FM Breakfasts” that are open for free to professional members – great opportunities for both networking AND education.

Calvin Lower, Newell Rubbermaid’s Sr. Manager of Property and Construction and Bobby Johnson, its Facility Manager, led us on the tour of the 355,000-square-foot, 14-story facility – and it was fantastic! The relatively new space, features an open floor-plan and lots of natural daylight. Employees are provided with free coke products, an on-site cafeteria and gym and even a small Starbucks! Mr. Lower and Mr. Johnson are doing a great job at a facility manager’s dream-gig. We are very happy they generously opened their building up to us!

The second part of the tour – the explanation of the Green Globes rating system – was equally fascinating. We’ve all heard about LEED in its various forms (New Construction, Existing Building, Commercial Interiors, etc), but Green Globes is still fairly new to those of us in the USA. Kevin Stover, Commercial Programs Consultant at Green Building Initiative, led the presentation and explained the system to us. While not yet as established in the US as it is in Canada, Green Globes is a flexible alternative to LEED which offers many of the same benefits (the two systems have 80-85% overlap) at a potentially more affordable price (the architects for Newell Rubbermaid estimate that using Green Globes certification cost the company about ¼ of the fees and documentation costs compared to what going for LEED certification would have).

It was a compelling presentation- definite food for thought for any facility manager interested in green building. Be sure to join us for our next FM Networking breakfast in June (day/location to be announced), when we look at day-cleaning.

On a recent Thursday evening, a group of Facility Managers converged upon the Centers for Disease Control to check out a very interesting exhibit called “Design for the Other 90%.” The show features design innovations that are meant to provide affordable solutions for the health, energy, water, housing, education and transportation challenges faced by people in the developing world. For facility managers, who are charged with providing safe and productive environments for the employee populations of their companies, Design for the Other 90% provided some interesting perspective. Special thanks go out to Joanne Cole, who scheduled the private, led by the exhibit’s curator. Louise Shaw.

A group photo of the Facility Managers who toured the CDC's "Design for the Other 90%" exhibit.

Have you ever thought that you would like to become a CFM but… oh gosh! Those test questions… what if you sign up and the very first question is something you can’t answer, like…“What is the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow?” Nightmare! No, no, no, fear not – gentle reader, the CFM exam is not quite that obscure nor will this particular question ever appear on that exam. If you would like to learn what content may actually be on the CFM exam that would provide the key to open that door to CFM knowledge that would enhance your career opportunities, then the Atlanta Chapter of IFMA has an event that is definitely for you. Trivia Night on May 14th, 2009 from 6-8pm, is about as “low-stress” as you can get for picking up exam knowledge in, ahem… an appropriate university-setting while adding the proper portion of educational decorum. You can sign up here.

(Btw, to answer the question above you would have to know if it was African or European first.)