Practical Facilities Tips, News & Advice.
Facilities managers depend on standards to efficiently and consistently do good work, and when it comes to safety, there are many resources for them to consult. The U.S. Chemical and Safety Hazard Investigation Board (CSB) released a Safety Spotlight recommending that employers closely apply industry consensus standards to safeguard employee and public safety. Titled “The […]
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) requires facilities to have a detailed fire prevention plan when applicable standards require it. However, the agency “strongly recommends” that all facilities develop and implement a plan. How does your facility’s fire prevention plan stack up?
Wildfires can happen at any time, though changes in land use combined with the steady and continuing rise of global temperatures over the past decades have helped create the perfect environmental conditions for them to thrive. To compound the problem, more and more people are living and working in communities where the risks posed by […]
As facility professionals, we pay close attention to newsworthy workplace disasters. Based on the scale and severity of these incidents, perhaps we assume they could not occur in our own organizations—after all, this is what we work to prevent. But the fact is, disasters can happen anywhere.
At 5:50 p.m. on May 9, 2015, with the workday wrapping up, a transformer exploded at the Indian Point nuclear power plant in Westchester, New York, 50 miles north of Manhattan. The sprinkler systems triggered, and emergency response crews scrambled, working to keep the fire from reaching the nuclear installation just 200 yards away. The […]
To accompany their article, University of Southern California Price School of Public Policy’s online Executive Master of Urban Planning program put together an infographic that takes a look at some longitudinal data regarding wildfire intensity and severity. In accordance with these increases, the data highlight the exponential increase in the cost to fight each fire, […]
The summer of 2018 was particularly devastating for much of the wildfire-prone western states. And though the drought has broken in some of the most devastated regions — helping to alleviate some of the immediate danger — wildfire risk remains high in 2019. The lessons learned from battling the Carr and Camp fires can hopefully […]
Every facility needs to have an adequate fire prevention and preparedness strategy. This is especially true for facilities with warehouses on site, where facility managers need a unique strategy depending on the types of products or materials that are stored on site. These concerns were on attendees’ minds in the standing-room-only crowd for Tim Dietz’s […]
At a retail facility in Indianapolis, the new tenants wanted to create more space in the older storefront to make room for their new tattoo parlor. To do so, they tore out the walls around the sprinkler control room and finished by hanging drywall over the sprinkler riser and control valve. The only access they […]
Workplace fires and explosions have the potential to kill hundreds and injure thousands of workers each year. One way to limit the amount of damage from such fires is to make portable fire extinguishers an important part of your fire prevention program. OSHA says employers must choose one of four options regarding workplace fire extinguishers, […]