Case Studies June 2023

In 2015, members of the Johnson Govies, the student leadership program at Saint Paul Public Schools’ Johnson Senior High School, shared concerns about bathrooms with the facilities department staff tasked with replacing antiquated water piping and plumbing fixtures. And they weren’t talking about the facilities not being in good working order. “Students told us that […]

One of the oldest and largest convenience chains in the Pittsburgh region, Coen Markets has been serving customers since 1923. In those 100 years, it’s undergone many business evolutions, from selling oil and fuel in bulk to handling shipping and transport. “No matter its product or services, the Coen name has weight in this area,” […]

When the Orthodox Union moved several blocks from its old New York City headquarters, the organization had a chance to start over. With the vision and direction of the executive vice presidents, Shoshana Polakoff and her colleague took a cavernous, bare-bones space with random wood planks and wires lying about and turned it into a […]

The year 2005 was a significant one in Ian McDermott’s career—and in the lives of numerous cancer patients across the globe. For the two years prior, he and his research facilities planning and safety team had been immersed in a $200 million project for a 388,600-square-foot, 15-story building, with 14 floors wholly dedicated to research. […]

Seeing Duke University’s two coal-fired power plants is one of Russell Thompson’s indelible memories from touring the campus before he was hired as director of utilities and engineering in 2007. Then, one of the first initiatives he led was replacing coal-powered plant boilers with ones powered by natural gas—the last chunk of coal was burned […]

No matter how well-crafted an air conditioning system is or whether it’s cooling one bedroom in a ranch home or 500 offices in a 15-story skyscraper, it’s completely worthless if a maintenance person can’t service it. According to Herbert Chu, architects and engineers design heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems based on what the books […]

Stephen Lewis recently had to find a seemingly impossible solution to a prevalent problem in schools: The lack of security and monitoring measures in bathrooms, which can lead to anything from vaping to bullying. Using research and decades of experience, he and his facilities team at Monticello Central School District decided to install sensors. The […]

As a longtime member of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Gustavo Salas has spent many hours exploring the de Young Museum in Golden Gate Park and the Legion of Honor in Lincoln Park. Yet, he never expected he’d one day get to work at his favorite places to visit. Only when he began […]

From launching an automatic orbital welding program for installing high-purity stainless steel piping in pharmaceutical pilot plants to working as a sheet metal supervisor, Steve Eckert has accomplished a lot in his three-plus decades as a project engineer and in facilities management. He started his career in October 1990 as a project engineer at Summa […]

With 29,000 acres and 233 miles of shoreline, Lewisville Lake is one of the largest lakes in northern Texas. It offers an abundance of parks, beaches and campgrounds with plenty of areas for fishing, boating, water skiing and swimming. The Lewisville Lake area is also home to the rapidly growing Little Elm Independent School District, […]