“Indianapolis hosted the Trials in 1924 when that Olympic team swam in Paris. One hundred years later, Trials are back in Indy as a team is selected for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games. The nation’s fastest swimmers will take to the water at Lucas Oil Stadium – the first time a pool will be built in an NFL Stadium.” — USA Swimming
Big Ten Trials start at the University of Michigan February 15
NCAA D1 Men’s Swimming & Diving National Championships March 22-25 University of Minnesota
Standards Iowa | Standards North Carolina
Aramark | Compass Group | Sodexo
Standards Michigan: Food | Kitchen | Farm Agriculture
Americans eat too much:
Extension Service Report on Catfish
Some places just feel like home. From the big-time SEC experience to the even bigger opportunities, here’s what makes Mississippi State unforgettable. pic.twitter.com/rUjxUnq6FM
— Mississippi State (@msstate) August 29, 2025
Mississippi State University Facilities Management
A few Catfish from this year since I’ve been bad about posting! pic.twitter.com/hYFKgWDh3E
— Hannah Barron (@HannahBarron96_) July 13, 2025
2026 North American Fenestration Standard
The oldest door still in use in Pantheon (115 A.D.)
“No work of art can be great,
if it is not composed of the smallest things.”
— Vitruvius (Book VII, Chapter 9)
Today during our usual hour we sweep through standards action in building glazing, entrances and means of egress. The word fenestration (Latin: fenestra) has become a term of art for the design, construction, and placement of openings in a building, including windows, doors, skylights, and other glazed elements. While the word has sparse use in the International Code Council and National Fire Protection Association catalog it is widely used by the Construction Specifications Institute in its MasterFormat system for organizing construction standards, guidelines and building contracts.
The percentage of a building envelope “skin” that is comprised of doors and windows varies depending on the specific building design, function, and location. However, a commonly cited range is between 15% to 25% of the total building envelope. The actual percentage will depend on several factors such as the building’s purpose, orientation, local climate, and energy performance goals. Buildings that require more natural light or ventilation, such as schools, hospitals, and offices, may have a higher percentage of windows and doors in their envelope. In contrast, buildings with lower lighting and ventilation requirements, such as warehouses, may have a smaller percentage of windows and doors.
Fenestration presents elevated risk to facility managers. The education facility industry is a large target and a pattern of settling out of court. For example:
These cases illustrate that colleges and universities can face legal action related to doors and windows, either due to alleged negligence in maintaining or repairing them, or due to issues related to student housing and accommodations.
Our inquiry breaks down into two modules at the moment:
Exterior facing fenestration
Interior window walls and doors
Join us online at the usual time.
University of Arkansas at Little Rock
Related:
Rijksuniversiteit Groningen
— Ramin Nasibov (@RaminNasibov) May 25, 2024
Design and Construction Standards | CSI Division 08 Openings & Door Hardware
Towering Tribute: New Engineering Building Named for Oil Pioneer Autry C. Stephens
North façade: a curtain-wall system uses a custom frit pattern. Architecturally, the frit makes the glass read as more solid and relates its pattern and limestone-like coloration to the adjacent building. Functionally, CO says explicitly that the frit reduces solar heat gain.
East façade: instead of relying entirely on the glazing, the designers introduced angled vertical aluminum fins to respond to the harsh morning sun. The fins also echo the curved geometry of the terra-cotta elsewhere on the building. That’s a particularly nice example of an external architectural element simultaneously becoming a passive solar-control device.
South façade: interestingly, CO uses masonry itself to establish some of the visual rhythm normally supplied by curtain wall. The brick gradually racks outward and eastward, creating changing shadows through the day; its proportions and shadow lines intentionally mimic those of the north curtain wall.
Abstract: Indoor signage plays an essential component to find destination for blind and visually impaired people. In this paper, we propose an indoor signage and doors detection system in order to help blind and partially sighted persons accessing unfamiliar indoor environments. Our indoor signage and doors recognizer is builded based on deep learning algorithms. We developed an indoor signage detection system especially used for detecting four types of signage: exit, wc, disabled exit and confidence zone. Experiment results demonstrates the effectiveness and the high precision of the proposed recognition system. We obtained 99.8% as a recognition rate.
Is this not precious? I ❤️ 🐶’s pic.twitter.com/tCRblzdAIO
— Riley Nuttall (@nuttallriley1) January 11, 2024
The Clery Act has been amended by the Stop Campus Hazing Act. Institutions must now include hazing incidents among their reported campus-safety statistics and include policies concerning hazing, reporting, investigation and prevention in their Annual Security Reports.
Institutions must also develop a Campus Hazing Transparency Report identifying student organizations found responsible for hazing violations. The report includes the organization, a general description of the violation, sanctions and relevant dates. Where violations have occurred, the report must be published on the institution’s website and updated at least twice annually.
Update: February 26, 2025
The federal requirement for a school safety plan is outlined in the Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act, commonly known as the Clery Act. The Clery Act requires all colleges and universities that participate in federal student financial aid programs to develop and publish an annual security report that includes certain safety-related policies, procedures, and crime statistics.
The Clery Act requires that schools include specific information in their security reports, including:
While the Clery Act only applies to colleges and universities that receive federal student financial aid, many states and school districts have adopted similar requirements for K-12 schools to develop and implement comprehensive safety plans. These plans may include many of the same elements as Clery Act-compliant security reports, such as emergency response protocols, crime prevention programs, and policies for addressing incidents of violence and harassment.
Example Reports:
University of Michigan Ann Arbor Annual Security and Fire Safety Report 2024
Michigan State University: 2022 Annual Security & Fire Safety Report
Davenport University: 2022 Annual Security and Fire Safety Report
Central Michigan University: 2022 Annual Security & Fire Safety Report
Related:
Record-Breaking $14 Million Fine Imposed for Noncompliance with the Clery Act
March 2020 Update
The most recent changes to the Clery Act were made in March 2020, when the Department of Education published the final rule amending the Clery Act regulations. The changes include:
These changes aim to strengthen the Clery Act’s requirements for campus safety and to better address sexual harassment and other forms of violence on college and university campuses.
Clery Act Appendix for FSA Handbook
| Every new federal law involving paperwork creates an uncountable number of trade associations and compliance enterprises. A simple web search on “Cleary Act” will reveal half the internet full of pages for more information. Our focus is on the user-side — i.e. making inquiries and pushing back on the gaudy proliferation of regulatory requirements, the integrity of purpose of the law notwithstanding. We maintain this title on the standing agenda on all of our Security colloquia. See our CALENDAR for the next online meeting; open to everyone. |
Today at the usual hour we sort through the NFPA stack for fire safety system aspects during renovation, alteration, or rehabilitation of buildings. Two sections come to mind:
Chapter 43 (NFPA 101): Building Rehabilitation
Educational and Day-Care Occupancies (July 23, 2025 Second Draft Transcript)
The Life Safety Code addresses those construction, protection, and occupancy features necessary to minimize danger to life from the effects of fire, including smoke, heat, and toxic gases created during a fire. It is widely incorporated by reference into public safety statutes; typically coupled with the consensus products of the International Code Council. It is a mighty document — one of the NFPA’s leading titles — so we deal with it in pieces; consulting it for decisions to be made for the following:
(1) Determination of the occupancy classification in Chapters 12 through 42.
(2) Determination of whether a building or structure is new or existing.
(3) Determination of the occupant load.
(4) Determination of the hazard of contents.
There are emergent issues — such as active shooter response, integration of life and fire safety systems on the internet of small things — and recurrent issues such as excessive rehabilitation and conformity criteria and the ever-expanding requirements for sprinklers and portable fire extinguishers with which to reckon. It is never easy telling a safety professional paid to make a market for his product or service that it is impossible to be alive and safe. It is even harder telling the dean of a department how much it will cost to bring the square-footage under his stewardship up to the current code.
The 2021 edition is the current edition and is accessible below:
NFPA 101 Life Safety Code Free Public Access
Public input on the 2027 Revision will be received until June 4, 2024. Public comment on the Second Draft 2027 Revision will be received until March 31, 2026.
Since the Life Safety Code is one of the most “living” of living documents — the International Building Code and the National Electric Code also move continuously — we can start anywhere and anytime and still make meaningful contributions to it. We have been advocating in this document since the 2003 edition in which we submitted proposals for changes such as:
• A student residence facility life safety crosswalk between NFPA 101 and the International Building Code
• Refinements to Chapters 14 and 15 covering education facilities (with particular attention to door technologies)
• Identification of an ingress path for rescue and recovery personnel toward electric service equipment installations.
• Risk-informed requirement for installation of grab bars in bathing areas
• Modification of the 90-minute emergency lighting requirements rule for small buildings and for fixed interval testing
• Modification of emergency illumination fixed interval testing
• Table 7.3.1 Occupant Load revisions
• Harmonization of egress path width with European building codes
There are others. It is typically difficult to make changes to stabilized standard though some of the concepts were integrated by the committee into other parts of the NFPA 101 in unexpected, though productive, ways. Example transcripts of proposed 2023 revisions to the education facility chapter is linked below:
Chapter 14 Public Input Report: New Educational Occupancies
Educational and Day Care Occupancies: Second Draft Public Comments with Responses Report
Since NFPA 101 is so vast in its implications we list a few of the sections we track, and can drill into further, according to client interest:
Chapter 3: Definitions
Chapter 7: Means of Egress
Chapter 12: New Assembly Occupancies
Chapter 13: Existing Assembly Occupancies
Chapter 16 Public Input Report: New Day-Care Facilities
Chapter 17 Public Input Report: Existing Day Care Facilities
Chapter 18 Public Input Report: New Health Care Facilities
Chapter 19 Public Input Report: Existing Health Care Facilities
Chapter 28: Public Input Report: New Hotels and Dormitories
Chapter 29: Public Input Report: Existing Hotels and Dormitories
Chapter 43: Building Rehabilitation
Annex A: Explanatory Material
As always we encourage front-line staff, facility managers, subject matter experts and trade associations to participate directly in the NFPA code development process (CLICK HERE to get started)
NFPA 101 is a cross-cutting title so we maintain it on the agenda of our several colloquia —Housing, Prometheus, Security and Pathways colloquia. See our CALENDAR for the next online meeting; open to everyone.
Issue: [18-90]
Category: Fire Safety, Public Safety
Colleagues: Mike Anthony, Josh Elvove, Joe DeRosier, Marcelo Hirschler
More
When lives are at stake, alternative approaches are welcome. #LifeSafety #AlternativeApproaches #Code #NFPA101 @NFPA
https://t.co/JvWyyZtuLP— ANSI (@ansidotorg) December 20, 2018
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New update alert! The 2022 update to the Trademark Assignment Dataset is now available online. Find 1.29 million trademark assignments, involving 2.28 million unique trademark properties issued by the USPTO between March 1952 and January 2023: https://t.co/njrDAbSpwB pic.twitter.com/GkAXrHoQ9T
— USPTO (@uspto) July 13, 2023
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