Case Studies Region: Southeast

Like so many places, the wellness center at the Medical University of South Carolina shut its doors in March 2020. Unlike other buildings, though, this one was converted by the MUSC hospital in just two weeks into a field hospital—300 cots replacing exercise equipment. As James Tomsic recalls, the university’s hospital had seen the state […]

With 17 stories and 202,000 square feet of office space, 2 MiamiCentral is highlighting a neighborhood transformation in the south Florida city. Underneath it is Brightline’s Miami Central station, which provides inter-city railroad service extending to West Palm Beach (and beyond, including Orlando, in 2022). Adjacent is 3 MiamiCentral, with 12 stories of office space, […]

Justin Moss didn’t go to law school to become a lawyer, but he still uses his degree every day, most recently in his role at Fairfax County Public Schools, where he managed many difficult contractors. Moss knows his degree is unusual for a director of facilities management, but he says it’s made him better at […]

She didn’t know it then, but when JoDee Johnson was a little girl growing up in Michigan, borrowing Uncle Jim’s binoculars and using them to study houses across Portage Lake, she was on her way to becoming a design and construction manager for some of the biggest restaurant brands in the U.S. “It’s funny how […]

For some, the phrase “safety is a top priority” is little more than a face-saving slogan. For Jerry Mathis, it’s his life’s calling and the basis of a budding career in the facilities trade. A retired Air Force flight engineer, Mathis spent more than 20 years flying some of this country’s top government officials across […]

Responding to COVID-19 has required some organizations to be more resourceful than others. That’s why the facilities staff of Prisma Health spent three days in January scrubbing, repairing and painting an abandoned retail store. When it became clear that there wasn’t enough room to administer vaccines at the hospital, they transformed the store across the […]

If you take your vehicle through a conveyor car wash, you’ll likely notice the process looks and feels much like it did 10 or 20 years ago: the streams of soapy water; the large cloth mittens bathing your car much like a zookeeper washes an elephant; and the high-velocity air dryers at tunnel’s end. But […]

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 […]

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 […]

He’s adept at juggling high-stakes projects with strict timelines and sometimes dealing with inherent geological challenges in the process. Such as in 2018, when Justin Smith was overseeing the development of student housing projects in both Fort Collins, Colorado, and Honolulu. Laying down a sprawling slab foundation in northern Colorado didn’t present too many challenges, […]