BU Today “I’d wanted to do seniors housing as a career since I was 14 or 15,” says Serena Lipton. Um, what? “We had to do volunteer hours when I was in high school, and I chose to start off volunteering at the place where my great-aunt was living, a Hebrew senior rehab,” says Lipton [...]

Facilities Net In 1966, at his University of Cape Town address, Robert Kennedy said, “Like it or not, we live in interesting times. They are times of danger and uncertainty, but they are also the most creative.” In 2020, shifts in environmental factors rapidly created new broad security challenges. The year began with the coronavirus [...]

ARC Facilities Spring is a good season for facility managers. With weather improving, this is the time to get outside and ensure environments are safe and equipment is up to standard, guaranteeing a safe working environment for everyone in the organization, including schools which are continuing to ramp-up for kids returning to buildings.  READ MORE

McKnight’s Senior Living Older adults are struggling to meet cost-of-living expenses in the nation’s 100 largest metropolitan areas, according to a new report from UMass Boston’s Gerontology Institute. But federal, state and local entities can play an important role in removing barriers to a secure retirement, the authors say. The Biden administration’s American Jobs Plan, [...]

FacilitiesNet The mechanical, electrical, and plumbing (MEP) equipment installed in facilities, among the largest and most complex systems in any building, have a tremendous impact on energy use and how rapidly organizations meet carbon emissions goals. While many facility managers have prioritized low-hanging fruit to drive down systems’ energy use, there’s a much bigger opportunity [...]

Planning, BIM & Construction Today Increasingly stringent energy conservation targets have led, not unsurprisingly, to the greater use of foamed polymers for thermal insulation. It is no secret that these materials are combustible, and we’ve moved to a position where we don’t just have fires in buildings but buildings on fire — where the building [...]

TravelPulse Loews Hotels & Co. announced that they are one of the first hospitality brands to achieve the WELL Health-Safety Rating for Facility Operations and Management through the International WELL Building Institute (IWBI). The WELL Health-Safety Rating is an evidence-based third-party assessment for new and existing buildings; it reviews everything from operational policies and maintenance [...]

Lodging Magazine Guests often consider a hotel’s amenities when choosing a place to stay. Hotel door locks are an overlooked amenity that have a big impact on the guest experience. Guests can misplace keys and cards, causing them to visit the front desk and get a new one, sometimes having to pay a fee for [...]

Lodging Magazine Marriott International, Inc. today announced the debut of a pilot program for contactless arrival kiosks at several select-service hotels, as well as the launch of a proof-of-concept for contactless grab-and-go marketplaces at two Fairfield by Marriott hotels. Both concepts build on ongoing measures to boost traveler confidence while reinforcing the company’s Commitment to [...]

WCBS-TV Retirees will soon have the option of living on a college campus in New York. As CBS2′s Kevin Rincon explains, SUNY Purchase has more than 4,000 students enrolled in its classes. In the not-so-distant future, they’ll be joined by seniors – senior citizens, that is.  READ MORE

Facilities Net Air quality sits at the intersection of sustainability, energy efficiency, health/wellness, productivity, climate change, and inequity. Even prior to 2020, this nexus of multi-level, overlapping issues centered on air quality drove a growing recognition of the need to conduct more research and spend more resources addressing air quality outdoors and indoors.  READ MORE 

Facility Executive In response to President Joseph Biden’s executive order on protecting worker health and safety, the U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has launched a national emphasis program (NEP) focusing enforcement efforts on companies that put the largest number of workers at serious risk of contracting the coronavirus. The program [...]

Senior Housing News Covid-19 has disrupted commercial real estate for the past year, but few asset classes have been hit as hard as the hospitality industry. From the early days of the pandemic, some senior living developers, investors and operators have said they anticipate opportunities to acquire and reposition hotel assets.  READ MORE

Utilities Currently, just over half the world’s population lives in cities, but that is expected to rise to 68 percent by 2050. As a consequence, world energy demand is set to increase by more than 50 percent by 2050, according to predictions by the U.S. Energy Information Administration — resulting in even higher energy consumption.  READ [...]

Hotel Executive We’ve all learned a lot more about what it means for something to be “clean” over the last several months. When we’re talking about spaces, there are three levels of environmental cleaning: clean, sanitize and disinfect. The first level is “clean.” Clean is best described as cleaning with soap and water to remove [...]

ASHE Health Facilities Management Health care organizations are currently required to comply with the 2012 edition of the National Fire Protection Association’s NFPA 101®, Life Safety Code® (LSC), as adopted in July 2016 by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). However, there have been three subsequent editions of the LSC published since the [...]

Washington Business Journal Tony Capuano, a longtime executive at Marriott International Inc., is the company’s choice to succeed Arne Sorenson as the Bethesda hospitality giant’s chief executive. Marriott made the announcement Tuesday morning, about a week after Sorenson died following a battle with pancreatic cancer.  READ MORE

AHLA The following is a statement from Chip Rogers, President and CEO of the American Hotel & Lodging Association (AHLA), on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) recent update to prioritize “Traveler Accommodation” under the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) Categories of Essential Workers.  READ MORE

FM Link Otis Worldwide Corporation, a global provider of elevator and escalator manufacturing, installation and service, recently released the results of a three-month academic study that investigates how elevator airflow affects potential exposure to the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus that causes Covid-19, and provides a science-based approach for how to mitigate that exposure in elevators.      [...]

FM Link Otis Worldwide Corporation, a global provider of elevator and escalator manufacturing, installation and service, recently released the results of a three-month academic study that investigates how elevator airflow affects potential exposure to the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus that causes Covid-19, and provides a science-based approach for how to mitigate that exposure in elevators.      [...]