“A Philosopher Lecturing on the Orrery” | Joseph Wright (1766)
Most nations follow the day/month/year format (07/01/19 for January 7, 2019, for example), but the United States adheres to its own format of month/day/year (1/7/19 or 1/7/2019). The potential for misinterpreting dates across national boundaries is the logic for ISO 8601:2019 – Data Elements And Interchange Formats – Information Interchange – Representation Of Dates And Times, the ISO format for dates represents year, month, and day from the largest unit to the smallest, most specific unit of time. The ISO date format is the date format used in SQL and is the default date setting on many computers.
Left Panel Of George Julian Zolnay’s Allegorical “Academic, Business & Manual Education” Granite Frieze At Francis L. Cardozo High School (Washington, DC)
All fifty United States have their own “signature” disaster with which to reckon; some more than others. California has earthquakes, Florida has hurricanes, Missouri has floods; and so on, Life and property loss are preventable; but losses will persist because technical solutions notwithstanding, culture determines human behavior. It is impossible to be alive and safe.
FM Global is one of several organizations that curate privately developed consensus products that set the standard of care for many industries; education communities among them. These standards contribute to the reduction in the risk of property loss due to fire, weather conditions, and failure of electrical or mechanical equipment. They incorporate nearly 200 years of property loss experience, research and engineering results, as well as input from consensus standards committees, equipment manufacturers and others.
If you want FMGlobal as your insurance carrier, or to supplement your organization’s self-insurance program, then you will likely be assigned an FMGlobal conformity professional.
A scan of its list data sheets indicate a number of noteworthy updates of documents establishing minimum requirements for safety technologies common in education facilities:
Note that the bulk of the safety concepts in the foregoing titles incorporate by reference the safety concepts that cross our radar every day FM Global provides direct access to the full span of its documents at this link:
To respond to calls for public consultation you will need to set up (free) access credentials.
We keep FMGlobal titles — and the literature of other property insurers involved in standards setting — on the standing agenda of our Risk, Snow and Prometheus colloquia. See our CALENDAR for the next meeting.
“Neither party shall be liable for any failure or delay in performance of its obligations under this agreement due to events beyond its reasonable control, including but not limited to acts of God, war, terrorism, civil commotion, labor strikes, and natural disasters. The affected party shall promptly notify the other party of the force majeure event and take reasonable steps to mitigate its impact on performance. During the continuance of such events, the obligations of the affected party shall be suspended, and the time for performance shall be extended.”
Example 2: Detailed Force Majeure Clause
“In the event that either party is unable to perform its obligations under this agreement due to a force majeure event, the affected party shall promptly notify the other party in writing, specifying the nature and anticipated duration of the force majeure event. Force majeure events shall include, but are not limited to, acts of God, strikes, lockouts, government action or inaction, war, terrorism, epidemics, and natural disasters. The affected party shall use reasonable efforts to overcome or mitigate the effects of the force majeure event. If the force majeure event continues for a period of [specified duration], either party may terminate this agreement by providing written notice to the other party.”
The College World Series begins this weekend in Omaha between Louisiana State University and Coastal Carolina.
Baseball is a pastoral game and lighting changed the experience of it. Since a baseball is less than 3-inches in diameter and routinely travels 400 feet at 100 miles per hour, illumination design must have outfielders in mind as well as other players and spectators.
After athletic facility life safety obligations are met (governed legally by NFPA 70, NFPA 101, NFPA 110, the International Building Code and possibly other state adaptations of those consensus documents incorporated by reference into public safety law) business objective standards may come into play. For business purposes, the documents distributed by the National Collegiate Athletic Association inform the standard of care for individual athletic arenas so that swiftly moving media production companies have some consistency in power sources and illumination as they move from site to site. Sometimes concepts to meet both life safety and business objectives merge.
During the spring baseball season the document linked below provides guidance for illumination designers, contractors and facility managers:
Athletic programs are a significant source of revenue and form a large part of the foundation of the brand identity of most educational institutions in the United States. We focus primarily upon the technology standards that govern the safety, performance and sustainability of these enterprises. We cover the objectives of the energy conservation advocates in separate posts; notably advocates using the International Code Council and the ASHRAE suite to advance their agenda to press boxes and the entire baseball experience (interior and exterior) site in separate posts.
We collaborate very closely with the IEEE Education & Healthcare Facilities Committee where subject matter experts in electrical power systems meet 4 times each month in the Americas and Europe.
See our CALENDAR for our next Sport colloquium. We typically walk through the safety and sustainability concepts in play; identify commenting opportunities; and find user-interest “champions” on the technical committees who have a similar goal in lowering #TotalCostofOwnership.
Issue: [15-138]*
Category: Electrical, Energy Conservation, Energy, Athletics & Recreation
Standards Michigan, spun-off in 2016 from the original University of Michigan Business & Finance Operation, has peppered NFPA 70 technical committees writing the 2016-2026 National Electric Code with proposals to reduce the size of building premise feeder infrastructure; accommodating the improvements made in illumination and rotating machinery energy conservation since the 1980’s (variable frequency drives, LED lighting, controls, etc.)
These proposals are routinely voted down in 12-20 member committees representing manufacturers (primarily) though local inspection authorities are complicit in overbuilding electric services because they “bill by the service panel ampere rating”. In other words, when a municipality can charge a higher inspection fee for a 1200 ampere panel, what incentive is there to support changes to the NEC that takes that inspection fee down to 400 amperes?
The energy conservation that would result from the acceptance of our proposals into the NEC are related to the following: reduced step down transformer sizes, reduced wire and conduit sizes, reduced panelboard sizes, reduced electric room cooling systems — including the HVAC cooling systems and the ceiling plenum sheet metal carrying the waste heat away. Up to 20 percent energy savings is in play here and all the experts around the table know it. So much for the economic footprint of the largest non-residential building construction market in the United States — about $120 billion annually.
The market incumbents are complicit in ignoring energy conservation opportunity. To paraphrase one of Mike Anthony’s colleagues representing electrical equipment manufacturers:
“You’re right Mike, but I am getting paid to vote against you.”
For decades, application of National Electrical Code (NEC) rules for sizing services, feeders and branch circuits has resulted in unused capacity in almost all occupancy classes. US Department of Energy data compiled in 1999 indicates average load on building transformers between 10 and 25 percent. More recent data gathered by the educational facilities industry has verified this claim. Recognizing that aggressive energy codes are driving energy consumption lower, and that larger than necessary transformers create larger than necessary flash hazard, the 2014 NEC will provide an exception in Section 220.12 that will permit designers to reduce transformer kVA ratings and all related components of the power delivery system. This is a conservative, incremental step in the direction of reduced load density that is limited to lighting systems. More study of feeder and branch circuit loading is necessary to inform discussion about circuit design methods in future revisions of the NEC.
“Quiet people have the loudest minds.” — Stephen Hawking
Donegan Acoustics
With acoustic considerations a substantial contributor to the effectiveness of learning spaces — classrooms, lecture hall, performance arts and athletic venues, etc. — we follow action in the Acoustical Society of America (ASA) suite of ANSI-accredited standards.
For example, building codes in the United States identify horizontal and vertical acoustic insulation between floors and between walls, respectively, as design considerations. Section 1206.2 of the International Building Code deal with horizontal and vertical wall sealant applications for “airborne sound” mitigation, for example. Fire protection and mass notification systems identified in NFPA 72 and UL 2572 depend upon alarms actually being heard by the occupants underscore the importance of acoustic design. When lively art spaces are also instructional spaces we seek to understand the standard of care for acoustic design of classroom spaces. Of particular interest to us in the ASA bibliography is the title linked below:
This is a fairly stable standard; though other sound related technologies we cover in other sound related technologies (ISO TC/43 Acoustics and IEC Electroacoustics TC 29). Last year’s update was required by ANSI and we had no comments to submit; absent queries from students, faculty and staff. It is wise to keep it on our radar, however, given the step-change in education communities owed to the pandemic.
On your own you may communicate with Caryn Mennigke at ASA: (631) 390-0215, asastds@acousticalsociety.org. The ASA uses ANSI Standards Action for issuing live public consultation notices.
Since acoustic technologies cut across many disciplines we maintain it on the standing agenda of our Construction, Lively Art and Nota Bene teleconferences. See our CALENDAR next scheduled meeting; open to everyone.
Abstract: In this paper, correlation coefficients between the five objective estimates of speech quality, on the one hand, and the Speech Transmission Index as speech intelligibility measure, on the other hand, were estimated. This comparison was performed using binaural room impulse responses corresponded to different points of the three university auditoriums of different sizes. Speech quality was assessed using intrusive speech quality measures: Segmental Signal-to-Noise Ratio, Logarithmic Spectral Distortion, Frequency-Weighted Segmental Signal-to-Noise Ratio, Bark Spectral Distortion, and Perceptual Evaluation of Speech Quality. The formation of signals distorted by reverberation was performed by convolving of pure signals with binaural room impulse responses of the premises. A high level of correlation (0.6-0.99) of Bark Spectral Distortion estimates with estimates of the Speech Transmission Index for rooms of different sizes was revealed. Correlation of estimates (0.65-0.98) of Frequency-Weighted Segmental Signal-to-Noise ratio with Speech Transmission Index estimates was observed for medium and large rooms. Significant correlation (0.96-0.99) of Perceptual Evaluation of Speech Quality with Speech Transmission Index estimates was observed only for large audiences. At the same time, estimates of the Segmental Signal-to-Noise Ratio and Logarithmic Spectral Distortion turned out to be practically uncorrelated with Speech Transmission Index estimates for all studied premises.
Campus exterior lighting systems generally run in the 100 to 10,000 fixture range and are, arguably, the most visible characteristic of public safety infrastructure. Some major research universities have exterior lighting systems that are larger and more complex than cooperative and municipal power company lighting systems which are regulated by public service commissions.
While there has been considerable expertise in developing illumination concepts by the National Electrical Manufacturers Association, Illumination Engineering Society, the American Society of Heating and Refrigeration Engineers, the International Electrotechnical Commission and the International Commission on Illumination, none of them contribute to leading practice discovery for the actual power chain for these large scale systems on a college campus. The standard of care has been borrowed, somewhat anecdotally, from public utility community lighting system practice. These concepts need to be revisited as the emergent #SmartCampus takes shape.
Electrical power professionals who service the education and university-affiliated healthcare facility industry should communicate directly with Mike Anthony (maanthon@umich.edu) or Jim Harvey (jharvey@umich.edu). This project is also on the standing agenda of the IEEE E&H committee which meets online 4 times monthly — every other Tuesday — in European and American time zones. Login credentials are available on its draft agenda page.
Issue: [15-199]
Category: Electrical, Public Safety, Architectural, #SmartCampus, Space Planning, Risk Management
Contact: Mike Anthony, Kane Howard, Jim Harvey, Dev Paul, Steven Townsend, Kane Howard
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/njrDAbSpwBpic.twitter.com/GkAXrHoQ9T
