January 28, 2010 Seminar

K.C. Bills, from Amsource, spoke at seminar and gave the students a good look at the process from a builder/developers point of view. K.C. is a graduate from the program and wanted to help the students see what life could be like working for a developer. The facility management process is a little different for a developer than for an owner or renter. He went into detail with how the program requirements relate to the development industry. The students enjoyed the seminar and thought his comments were very important.

January 21, 2010 Seminar

Bryan Gillespie came to seminar this week and briefly spoke on the advantages of an International Facilities Management Association (IFMA) membership. He is the current Utah IFMA chapter president and talked about how to help the students become more involved. As a result, a good discussion resulted which may allow for a combined meeting between the Utah chapter of IFMA and the BYU student chapter. After that discussion, Bryan, talked about the things he wish he would have focused on while he was in the program. A few of his points were technical writing, interior design, and building systems. It was a great overall seminar and the students are looking forward to the possibility of meeting with the Utah chapter of IFMA later this year.

January 14, 2010 Seminar

Dr. Campbell, along with Beverly Harmon, came to seminar to help the students understand the importance of internships. They shared not only the importance of internships but also how to go about doing the entire process. Sister Harmon showed the students her website and how to use it for resumes, internships, etc. Halfway through the seminar, the students were split up into groups according to the students desired internship experience and were able to ask questions to the students who already have completed internships to those experiences. It proved to be a very successful experience for all students who attended.

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.