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Guidance for Grants and Agreements
The Office of Management and Budget is proposing to revise sections of Title 2 of the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) Subtitle A-OMB Guidance for Grants and Agreements. The proposed revisions are limited in scope to support implementation of the President’s Management Agenda, Results-Oriented Accountability for Grants Cross-Agency Priority Goal (Grants CAP Goal) and other Administration priorities; implementation of statutory requirements and alignment of 2 CFR with other authoritative source requirements; and clarifications of existing requirements in particular areas within 2 CFR. These proposed revisions are intended to reduce recipient burden, provide guidance on implementing new statutory requirements, and improve Federal financial assistance management, transparency, and oversight.
Guidance for Grants and Agreements
Comments are due March 23rd.
We place selected legislative proposals that may affect infrastructure funding to education facility units on the standing agenda of our monthly Federal Legislation teleconference. See our CALENDAR for the next online meeting; open to everyone.
S. 2928 / Higher Education Sustainability Act of 2019
Photo by Architect of the Capitol | Left: The teacher and children in a “little red schoolhouse” represent an important part of American education in the 1800s.
Right: Students attend a land grant college, symbolic of the national commitment to higher learning.
Large Occupant Office Chairs
The Business and Institutional Furniture Manufacturers Association (BIFMA) produces a suite of product safety and performance standards that should of interest to the education facilities industry. After academic and administrative staff, interior cleaning and maintenance staffs employ the largest number of people.
Recent action in the development of furniture design, manufacture of safe and sustainable furniture in healthcare settings and for heavier occupants is noteworthy. Accordingly, BIFMA has released a redline of its standard BIFMA General-Purpose Large Occupant Office Chairs for public review.
Comments due March 30th
You may obtain an electronic copies for in-process standards from David Panning, (616) 285-3963, dpanning@bifma.org You are encouraged to send comments directly to BIFMA (with copy to psa@ansi.org).
John Peace Laptop Library Lounge | University of Texas, San Antonio
We find a great deal of interest in sustainable furniture climbing up the value chain and dwelling on material selection and manufacture. We encourage end-users in the education industry — specifiers, department facility managers, interior design consultants, housekeeping staff and even occupants — to participate in BIFMA standards setting. We keep the BIFMA suite on the standing agenda of our monthly “Interior Stuff” teleconference. See our CALENDAR for the next online meeting; open to everyone.
Issue: [15-267]
Contacts: Mike Anthony, Christine Fischer, Jack Janveja, Dave Panning
Category: Architectural, Facility Asset Management
LEARN MORE:
A Guide to United States Furniture Compliance Requirements
Methods of Testing HVAC Air Ducts
“The Wind” 1910 / Félix Vallotton
First published in 2000, Standard 126 is a joint project of ASHRAE and the Sheet Metal and Air Conditioning Contractors’ National Association (SMACNA). It was created to provide methods of testing to determine the strength and durability characteristics of HVAC ducts under various loading and environmental conditions. The intent of Standard 126 is to address all duct shapes and materials. To the project committee’s knowledge, no other publication addresses all of the structural and durability tests as comprehensively as this standard, although individual tests are covered under other standards
ASHRAE/SMACNA Standard 126 Methods of Testing HVAC Air Ducts
SMACNA uses the ASHRAE Public Commenting Facility:
Comments due April 6th
We maintain the ASHRAE/SMACNA suite on the standing agenda of our Mechanical Engineering Monthly teleconference. See our CALENDAR for the next online meeting; open to everyone.
Standing Agenda / Leviathan
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Archive / ASHRAE 62.1 Ventilation for Acceptable Indoor Air Quality
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Commercial & Food Service Water Treatment Equipment
“The Dining Room Table” | Frank Weston Benson
We follow the development trajectory of the IAPMO Group’s suite of standards because of IAPMO’s tenure in water safety codes and standards in the United States. IAPMO co-develops selected consensus documents with the American Society of Safety Professionals (ASSP). The landing pages for the IAPMO and ASSP onsensus product development enterprises are linked below:
Because the education facility industry is steward to 100’s of thousands of food preparation enterprises we track leading practice in the technical standards for water systems that support safety in the food services that are essential to education industry food preparation enterprises: ASSE 1087‐2018 Performance Requirements for Commercial and Food Service Water Treatment Equipment Utilizing Drinking Water.
From the ASSE 1087 prospectus:
Commercial water treatment equipment is used in point-of-entry and point-of-use applications connected to building plumbing to improve the water-quality characteristics of potable water. This standard includes testing requirements for components and complete systems. Electrical compliance is not covered by the standard. Plumbed water treatment units include any device or component, point-of-entry and point-of-use that is used in building to improve the quality of the water. This standard covers all water-treatment products that are connected to the building’s plumbing system for potable water. This standard is not intended to cover water-treatment products used for process water or wastewater applications. Examples of water-treatment equipment include: Deionization, Filters, Softeners, Physical Devices, Reverse Osmosis, UV, Ozone, and Distillation. Tests verifying claims regarding changes to water chemistry, microbiology, and aesthetics (i.e., smell, taste, appearance, etc.) are not included in this standard. Devices may claim such performance via other standards or test protocols.
Large research universities with district energy systems will supply high temperature potable water to healthcare facilities for centralized steam sanitation, to housing facilities for food preparation and bathing. Some systems are local to a single facility or a group of facilities.
George Mason University
While the public commenting opportunities for the 2018 release of this particular standard is now closed; the project administrators typically collect public input across the full 3 to 5 year time frame in which the current standard is active. We link the public review copy below but keep in mind that it has been superseded:
For information about how to obtain the completed document or how to participate on this or any other ASSP technical committee you may contact ASSE directly: CLICK HERE. Additionally, we host periodic Water Management and Food Safety standards teleconference during which time to sweep through the rapidly expanding constellation of water management documents relevant to our industry and others. See our CALENDAR for the next online meeting; open to everyone. Use the login credentials at the upper right of our home page.
Issue: [16-136]
Category: Water Management
Colleagues: Richard Robben, Larry Spielvogel
LEARN MORE:
ASSE Joins IAPMO as International Chapter
ASSE Expands Services to the Drinking Water-Conditioning and Treatment Industry
Electrical Safety in the Workplace
“Telegraph Poles with Buildings” | Joseph Stella (1917)
Optimal electrical safety and reliability is strongly correlated with electrical maintenance — i.e. functional checks, servicing, repairing or replacing of necessary devices, equipment, machinery, building infrastructure, and supporting utilities in industrial, business, governmental, and residential installations. These activities take place either before or after a failure. In either case, normal maintenance is “likely” to expose electrical workers to hazard. In healthcare facilities, for example, there is risk of failure of backup systems (described in Article 517 of the National Electrical Code) unless maintenance is undertaken while equipment is live.
The trade-offs are well known. Because of optimal maintenance, we have a commercial airline industry. Because of optimal maintenance the United States has one of the most reliable power grids in the world.
In electrical power systems, equipment and systems that control energy are designed to work, perhaps, only once or twice dependably in 25 to 50 years; if that. Only safety-by-design and recommended maintenance can sustain the likelihood that safety and reliability expectations can be met. Electrical maintenance usually involves exercising breakers, testing trip settings, confirming signaling paths in controls, software and the like. Safety by design usually involves applying methods to minimize occupational hazards early in the design process, with an emphasis on optimizing employee health and safety throughout the life cycle of materials and processes.
There are several leading practice documents in this space; one of the first among them NFPA 70E Electrical Safety in the Workplace — a trademarked document available for use by the public:
You will likely find NFPA 70E incorporated by reference into federal occupational safety laws and in state-level electric utility regulations. The technical committees writing the 2021 revision met in August 2018 and again in July 2019 and produced the draft results linked below:
First Draft Report 2021 NFPA 70E
Second Draft Report 2021 NFPA 70E
Note the considerable “back-and-forth” on stored energy system, interactive, direct current and multiple source safety. There are others.
After the Second Draft Report is released for public review no later than January 22, 2020, NITMAM comments are due February 19th.
We usually coordinate our response to NFPA electrical safety consensus products with IEEE SCC-18 and IEEE Education & Healthcare Facilities Committee which meets 4 times monthly in European and American time zones. See our CALENDAR for the next online meeting; open to everyone.
Issue: [3-3], [18-135]
Category: Electrical
Colleagues: Mike Anthony, Tammy Gammon, Jim Harvey, Daleep Mohla, Joe Tedesco
*OSHA develops electrical safety documents of its own; the topic of a separate post since the jurisdictional politics are sensitive. CLICK HERE for a preview.
LEARN MORE:
BICSI Certification Programs
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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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