Safety.BLR.com Following the deadly chemical explosion and fire at Verla International cosmetic factory in New Windsor, New York, U.S. Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer pushed hard in January for a new federal protocol aimed to ensure local emergency responders are notified of serious violations involving flammable liquids and chemical hazards. The senator’s office announced [...]

Hotel Designs Modular construction is an ever-growing market, with everything from hospital wards to student accommodation being built offsite and then shipped to the construction area. There are numerous advantages to this type of construction, making this forward-thinking technique a natural and powerful solution to progressive hotel design.  READ MORE

Construction Canada Guest room acoustics pose a significant challenge for hotels, with noise regularly topping the list of complaints across all property types. Unwanted sounds irritate guests during the day, prevent them from relaxing in the evening, and affect their ability to sleep. Noise issues can be attributed to a variety of interior and exterior [...]

BUILDINGS You can’t rest easy just because you have an evacuation plan. Can you find it at a moment’s notice? Have you updated it lately and practiced it? The threats that require evacuation of a building are many and varied: fire or release of environmental contaminants, weather, criminal threats and building equipment failures. Not all [...]

Youris.com via Phys.org Maintenance represents the bulk of the costs occurring in a building’s life. How can the advent of smart technologies lessen this financial burden? And are citizens ready to deal with the innovations? These are some of the questions we asked Antonio Disi, expert in energy efficiency, researcher at ENEA, the Italian National [...]

FacilitiesNet The Americans with Disabilities Act is in the cross-hairs. The ADA, which became law in 1990, is a civil rights law that prohibits discrimination against individuals with disabilities in all areas of public life. ADA’s Title III prohibits private places of public accommodation — from discriminating against individuals with disabilities. READ MORE

Buildings Inspecting your building envelope and roof is no easy feat. The taller your building, the more dangerous it is to gain access to the upper levels. Plus, the time-consuming nature of the work makes it expensive, especially if you have to send multiple inspectors to the roof. But a new technology is changing the [...]

MarketWatch Host Hotels & Resorts Inc. HST+0.39% has agreed to acquire three Hyatt-managed hotels for $1 billion. The three hotels under contract for acquisition are the 301-room Andaz Maui in Hawaii, 668-room Grand Hyatt San Francisco and 454-room Hyatt Regency Coconut Point in Florida, the lodging real estate investment trust said late Wednesday. The contract comes with [...]

Energy Manager Today HVAC, LED and lighting innovations have helped propel businesses toward unprecedented efficiency savings. According Forester Media’s white paper, “Efficiency on Multiple Levels,” the biggest change in energy efficiency is in capturing the energy savings from behavioral, optimized and attenuated devices. Here’s a breakdown of the drivers behind the innovation change within the [...]

Architectural Digest Adventurers, this one is for you. AD100 architects Snøhetta and local partner Vitar AS have announced their latest project in Norway: A highly sustainable hotel with a 360-degree view of the Svartisen glacier. Designed as a circular extension of the Holandsfjord shoreline, Svart is the Arctic Circle’s first energy net-positive hotel and also [...]

Construction Dive A hotel renovation has a unique end goal — generate enough appeal so potential guests want to take up residence, whether that’s for a day or a week or more. The major hotel chains are refreshing their units with a wide array of features and amenities patrons now expect, like work spaces, upscale [...]

Buildings The recently passed tax reform has many individuals and businesses wondering exactly what will change in 2018. Corporations are expected to save considerably under the new tax law, but what does that mean for the facilities industry? The only certainty is that the exact consequences of tax reform will reveal themselves in time. But [...]

USA Today he room of the future is being mapped out in a space tucked away near the lobby of a suburban hotel in Northern Virginia. Hilton’s new Innovation Gallery at the Hilton McLean Tysons Corner is filled with products that may soon find their way into a hotel guestroom. They include an earpiece that [...]

By Lark Gould What’s in store for the hotel room of the future? According to the pulse of this year’s Consumer Electronics Show, the word is plenty. CES 2018 was mostly about the Internet of Things — the connectivity between things that can be managed not as much by one cool app or one responsive [...]

CNBC Two California state lawmakers on Jan. 3 introduced a bill that would require hotels to provide housekeepers with a “panic button” to prevent violent assaults and sexual harassment. Assemblyman Al Muratsuchi, D-Torrance, jointly introduced the so-called hotel maid “panic button” bill with Assemblyman Bill Quirk, D-Hayward. If it gets passed, it would make California [...]

FacilitiesNet Heating and cooling systems in institutional and commercial facilities are essential for ensuring the comfort of both occupants and visitors. While these systems operate for most of their performance lives in a comfortable range of temperatures, that is not always the case. For maintenance and engineering managers in charge of the performance and reliability [...]

Proud Green Building Winter is here. Based on the most recent forecast of heating degree-days from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, temperatures this winter are expected to be colder than last winter across the country.  READ MORE

IFMA’s FMJ Magazine An FM’s inner geek cannot help but get excited when considering the technological capabilities available at our fingertips in today’s facilities. But the mood is quickly dashed with the realization that while such power and efficiency lie at our doorstep, most facility organizations have yet to truly embrace or leverage them.  READ MORE

Buildings Implementing natural light in your workspace isn’t always easy, especially in an existing building. Bringing in the most daylight possible sounds like a good idea until it brings solar heat gain and glare with it, driving up your cooling-related energy consumption and potentially prompting occupants to cover the window in the name of avoiding [...]

Planning & Building Control Today Following the Grenfell Tower disaster, the fire and building management industries have seen an increased focus on sprinklers, their role in fire suppression and the importance of regular maintenance. The London Fire Brigade has recommended that all high-rise residential buildings should be fitted with them, and the commercial sector is [...]