Thursday November 19, 2009 Seminar

Bruce Alexander and Frank Mendez came to present at our Facility & Property Management Seminar. Bruce is the Director of Operations for Millrock park in Holladay, Utah. Frank is the Building Automation Division Manager. They came to inform the students about commissioning, retro-commissioning, re-commissioning, and ongoing commissioning. One major topic that Bruce brought up was that the building engineer should not be looked at as the person who will be able to fix a problem later. There is no good reason to build something poorly with the hopes that the engineer will “fix it” later. Mr. Alexander and Mr. Mendez gave the students a great look at what our students may be going out in the field to do.

Seminar for November 12, 2009

Tim Adams, from ASHE – American Society of Healthcare Engineer - came to BYU to address the Facility & Property Management students today in our weekly seminar. He addressed Life Safety in hospitals and emergency management. Life Safety is critical in a hospital and the code has saved many lives. He brought up the fact that there are COWs in hospitals. COWs stands for computer on wheels. These carts can be a hazard if left in the way of an automatic closing doorway. After the life safety discussion, he talked about emergency management. In that section, Mr. Adams emphasized planning. Plan for everything imaginable and then continue to plan for the unimaginable. Mr. Adams told the students that the Facility Manager is often the person who can make the call, after an emergency, to continue to defend in place or to abandon ship and shut down the hospital facility.