The RELLIS Data and Research Center will be a public – private development with Texas A&M University. The data center will be built on the new RELLIS Campus located in College Station, Texas. It will offer cloud storage and outstanding managed services. The RELLIS Academy and Research Lab offers the ability for Texas A&M University to give real world data center experience to both students and faculty.
“The Tower of Babel” 1563 | Pieter Bruegel the Elder
“Wer von Fremdsprachen nichts versteht, kennt seine eigenen nichts.”
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Disagree with someone and cannot persuade them? Do you need to hide your intransigence or ulterior motive? Then change the basis of discussion by changing the subject with a different definition.
This happens routinely in political discourse and rather frequently in best practice discovery and promulgation in building construction and settlement infrastructure standards[1]. Assuming all parties are negotiating in good faith resolution may lie in agreement on a common understanding of what a satisfying agreement might look like. Admittedly, a subtle and challenging topic outside our wheelhouse[2].
Examples of Variations in Translations of Homer’s Odyssey
Today we sweep through language changes by the ANSI-accredited standards developers whose titles have the most influence over the interoperability of safety and sustainability technologies that create and sustain the built environment of education communities
American Institute of Architects: Definitions for Building Performance
Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers
National Fire Protection Association
Every building construction discipline has its own parlance and terms of art.
This is enough for a one-hour session and, depending upon interest, we will schedule a breakout session outside of our normal “daily” office hours. Use the login credentials at the upper right of our home page.
Large Language Models
Electropedia: The World’s Online Electrotechnical Vocabulary
Footnotes:
(1) The United States government defines a “Green Building” as a building that has been designed, constructed, and operated in a way that reduces or eliminates negative impacts on the environment and occupants. The government has established various standards and certifications that buildings can achieve to be considered “green.”
The most widely recognized green building certification in the United States is the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification, which is administered by the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC). To achieve LEED certification, a building must meet certain standards related to sustainable site development, water efficiency, energy efficiency, materials selection, and indoor environmental quality.
In addition to the LEED certification, there are other programs and standards that can be used to measure and certify the sustainability of buildings, such as the Green Globes rating system and the Living Building Challenge.
Overall, the goal of green building is to create buildings that are not only environmentally sustainable but also healthier, more comfortable, and more efficient for occupants, while reducing energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. By promoting green building practices, the U.S. government aims to reduce the environmental impact of the built environment and move towards a more sustainable future.
(2) The U.S. Green Building Council is a conformance organization. See the discussion our ABOUT for background on incumbent stakeholders.
Electropedia is produced by the world’s peak standardization organization that oversees 214 technical committees that provide a neutral and independent platform where agreement can be found on electrotechnical solutions with global relevance and reach.
International Electrotechnical Commission | CDV Consultations
Because electrotechnology changes continually, definitions (vocabulary) in its best practice literature changes continually; not unlike any language on earth that adapts to the moment and place.
The changes reflect changes in technology or changes in how the technology works in practice; even how the manufacturers create adaptations to field conditions by combining functions. Any smart electrical component has a digital language embedded in it, for example.
Consider the 2023 National Electrical Code. Apart from many others the NEC will contain a major change to Article 100 (Definitions); the subject of elevated debate over the past three years.
When we refer “language” we must distinguish between formal language, informal language, colloquial language and dialect which may differ the language spoken, language written at the office and language used on the job site. “Terms of art”
FREE ACCESS: 2020 National Electrical Code (NFPA 70)
2023 NEC Public Input Report CMP-1 (868 pages)
2023 NEC Second Draft Public Comment Report (914 pages)
Are these terms (or, “terms of art”) best understood in context (upstream articles in Chapters 4 through 8) — or should they be adjudicated by the 14 Principals of Code Making Panel 1? The answer will arrive in the fullness of time. Many changes to the National Electrical Code require more than one cycle to stabilize.
Code Making Panel 1 has always been the heaviest of all NEC panels. As explained n our ABOUT, the University of Michigan held a vote in CMP-1 for 20+ years (11 revision cycles) before moving to the healthcare facilities committee for the IEEE Education & Healthcare Facilities Committee. Standards Michigan continues its involvement on behalf of the US education facility industry — the second largest building construction market. There is no other pure user-interest voice on any technical committee; although in some cases consulting companies are retained for special purposes.
To serve the purpose of making NFPA 70 more “useable” we respect the Standards Council decision to make this change if it contributes to the viability of the NFPA business model. We get to say this because no other trade association comes close to having as enduring and as strong a voice: NFPA stands above all other US-based SDO’s in fairness and consideration of its constituency. The electrical safety community in the United States is a mighty tough crowd.
If the change does not work, or work well enough, nothing should prohibit reversing the trend toward “re-centralizing” — or “de-centralizing” the definitions.
Public comment on the First Draft of the 2026 Edition will be received until August 28, 2024.
#ANSINews: ANSI Releases March 2024 Edition of Government Relations and Public Policy Update:https://t.co/a0TbgRP7sO pic.twitter.com/7EndBOJmfx
— ANSI (@ansidotorg) April 1, 2024
Calling all students! How do standards support safe and effective implementation of AI? Share your thoughts in ANSI’s Student Paper Competition: https://t.co/lP8tIIkKwv#ANSIpapercompetition #standards #AI #artificialintelligence #engineering #computerscience #scholarship pic.twitter.com/VL57XYVEUY
— ANSI (@ansidotorg) April 1, 2024
CLICK ON IMAGE FOR COMPLETE PRESENTATION
With many non-profit organizations also challenged by the pandemic we are likely to see fewer experts at technology, finance and management gatherings where leading practice is discovered and promulgated. That does not mean that many gatherings will not be offloaded onto the internet but, with fewer paid experts involved, one wonders whether there will be fewer unpaid experts — or will there be more unpaid experts? We shall see.
Since the United States federal government can print money it is likely that more decision-making will be drawn back to Washington D.C. — where the money is. The likelihood that we shall see greater federal control over education facility industry originating at the federal level inspires a revisit of the United States standards system. The National Institute of Standards and Technology is the oversight agency and the American National Standards Institute is the private non-profit organization that oversees the development of voluntary consensus standards for products, services, processes, systems, and personnel in the United States.
To understand ideal balance in the US standards system See § 2.3 ANSI Essential Requirements: Due process requirements for American National Standards
FROM OUR ARCHIVE:
In 1936, a team of @NIST researchers, including optical physicist Irvine Gardner, joined National Geographic Society to observe June solar eclipse with a 9-inch astrographic lens Gardner designed. He has 9 patents, including for the wide-angle binocular telescope & range finder. pic.twitter.com/BblX8FnTBL
— USPTO (@uspto) April 3, 2024
…When we talk about standards in our personal lives, we might think about the quality we expect in things such as restaurants and first dates. But the standards that exist in science and technology have an even greater impact on our lives. Technical standards keep us safe, enable technology to advance, and help businesses succeed. They quietly make the modern world tick and prevent technological problems that you might not realize could even happen…”
Once every eighteen months we spend a week drilling into the National Electrical Code by submitting new proposals or comments on proposed revisions. Today we review the actions taken by the technical committees last month ahead of the ballot deadline for the First Revision Report — now set for April 16th.
Interconnected Electric Power Production Sources “Microgrids”
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
Standards Michigan Group, LLC
2723 South State Street | Suite 150
Ann Arbor, MI 48104 USA
888-746-3670
 |
 |
|
 |
 |
|
 |
 |
