Case Studies February 2021

He’s the kind who’d rather repair than replace. There’s always something worth keeping in an old building, William Colby is wont to say. Not only does it save his employer and property owners money, it may also be easier to maintain than some new gadget that can’t be readily installed in a legacy system. Nowadays, […]

The equation may appear simple when designing a new parking garage. But while it’s still about how many spaces are needed and how traffic flows inside, 21st century variables are now part of the math. As Jose Morales of FlashParking notes, even the basic steps of getting a time-stamped ticket from a dispenser and then […]

Hard to believe, but 13,000 years ago, Ohio’s landscape was dotted with mastodons, giant sloths and prehistoric lions moseying around what is now the shores of Lake Erie. Toledo residents can now glimpse into that rare window of the world through Toledo Zoo’s ProMedica Museum of Natural History, says Jennifer Van Horn, the Toledo Zoo’s […]

It’s not as if Jerry Nadeau’s work in the early and mid-2000s was not unique and wide-ranging. As manager of global project planning for Biogen, he directed capital projects and facilities master planning for the biotech firm as it developed therapies for neurological and neurodegenerative diseases. It was rewarding, he says, working with an M&A […]

It’s not a pleasant memory for Lavernne Hudson, that her late, sight-impaired grandfather needed care beyond what the extended family could provide. He spent his last years in a very institutional facility, and while the place wasn’t uncomfortable, something seemed to be missing. The man deserved better surroundings and more personal attention, she recalls, especially […]

Faulty heating and cooling systems making students shiver or swelter—not to mention dimly-lit classrooms—are not only uncomfortable, but also may result in lower scores on standardized tests, says Dr. John Bailey of the National School Plant Management Association. He should know. Bailey studied classroom environments as part of his doctoral dissertation and found mean scaled […]

When an organization is in the midst of a major renovation project, it usually doesn’t expect the new guy on staff to make a suggestion that impacts the bigger picture. But that’s exactly what Karl Ingoldsby did—and his idea is paying off in more ways than one. When he was hired as the facilities director […]

Working at down to minus 20 degrees is a challenge for humans and machinery alike. For the former, it takes wearing the same kind of gear one might wear on an ice-cold snowmobile ride: gloves, long underwear, heavy duty outerwear and face masks covering every inch of fragile skin. For the latter, extreme cold isn’t […]

As Steve Eiss puts it, he and the team at Banner Health in Phoenix, Arizona, don’t build hospitals; they open them—and at a rapid pace. BH’s executive director of facilities development since June 2020, Eiss manages most project components including concept, design, construction and management. The company owns or leases 480 health care-related properties: medical […]

No matter what the health crisis at Medical City Plano in North Texas, Facilities Management Director Brian Martin says the 600+ bed hospital, located in thriving Collin County, is ready. As Collin County’s only Level I trauma center, Medical City Plano regularly accepts transfer patients from more than 200 hospitals in a four-state region. Level […]