New Chapter Address at Leighton Centre
Green Build Asia 2008
Shanghai Energy Conference
Green Sustainability Round Table Report
Green Space Buildings Initiative
Working Outdoors in Warm Climates
It's Too Darn Hot
Saving Energy in Data Centers
Pickard's View
ISO Launches Project Committee to Develop International Standard for Energy Management

The Hong Kong Chapter of IFMA have moved to a new virtual office address due to the closure of the Causeway Bay Post Office. The new registered postal address for the Hong Kong Chapter of IFMA is:

International Facility Management Association (Hong Kong Chapter)
Rm 1301-03, Leighton Centre
77 Leighton Road, Causeway Bay
Hong Kong

Tel: (+852) 2512 0111
Fax: (+852) 2512 0555
e-mail: hk-ifma.administrator@ifma.org.hk
website: www.ifma.org.hk

Energy Revolution in Commercial Buildings

Energy Conference: 17 - 18 July 2008, Four Points By Sheraton, Shanghai

The building construction industry is rated as one of China's biggest energy consuming industries, which is accountable for 37 percent of the country's total energy consumption. Consequently, the Designing Standard for Energy Conservation in Civil Building promulgated by the Ministry of Construction in China went into effect in 2006, requiring construction contractors to use energy efficient building materials and adopt energy saving technologies.

Facing the uphill battle to significantly reduce energy consumption and drive towards zero-energy intelligent building, real estate developers, architectural firms and property management companies start to invest on energy-saving schemes in building construction. However, with the high-cost of investment on sustainability and challenges of putting energy efficiency into practices, industrial players are eager to seek out the solutions to deliver and manager a high-performance but low-cost building.

Presented by Marcus Evans, this timely two-day conference brings together the best professionals in the field to deliver variable cases and practices from nuts and bolts logic to cutting-edge advances in building energy management area. Participants will be fed with the real stories behind the design and construction, and gain the recipe on how to integrate technologies into energy saving scheme and maximise the effectiveness of energy-saving products.

This conference is featuring Government speaker, Mr. Hao Bin, Director of the Center of Science & Technology of Construction and the Center of Energy Efficiency in Buildings of, Ministry of Construction China. Also presenting at the event eminent speakers such as, Mr. Jeff Sheu (Manager of Engineering Operation Department, Taipei 101), Mr. Ruan Zhen Ji (GM of Technology Department, Jin Mao Group), Mr. Frank Yang (Senior Manager for Engineering, Hang Lung Property), Mr. David Monaco (Technical Division Director, Carrefour China) and others.

Join this event to gain real insights in shaping and implementing integrated energy efficient solutions to deliver and manage a high-performance and low-cost building. Further information can be obtained by contacting Amy at Tel: 603 2723 6763 or email: LimA@marcusevanskl.com

Hong Kong Chapter of IFMA
Green / Sustainability Roundtable Report

IFMA Green Week digs up sustainability questions and answers

Last month, IFMA chapters in the U.S., Canada and the Pacific Rim participated in a “Green Week” discussion with their members. The discussions ranged from assessing current efforts and drivers toward sustainability, determining where IFMA members can make the biggest measurable impact with their sustainability efforts to identifying potential strategies for initiating energy and water conservation practices within a month. Scheduled between January 28th and February 1st 2008, the campaign was launched to help IFMA develop the association’s formal sustainability platform. The Hong Kong chapter participated in the event and the results of their round-table discussions will help IFMA HQ develop a facility management sustainability platform.

Please click here to download the full report

For the past four years RFP Magazine has been providing quality information on all aspects of our built environment. Having started with a strong focus on corporate interiors, we now look at all areas from issues as diverse as real estate fund management to managing shopping centre security risks. At all times we have also paid attention to sustainability, one of our first was devoted to green building practices and almost all our features address environmental concerns in one way or another. After all, buildings are there for a purpose; to serve human needs. A sustainable, healthy living environment is a basic human need, buildings that fail to meet that need fail in their purpose -simple as that.

Over time we have come to see how building valuation, construction practices, real estate decision-making, facilities management, architecture and design project management all affect our natural and built environment. In combination each of these areas affect the quality of our lives and the availability of resources for future generations. In our new initiative we are compiling all our past articles that have a strong eco focus on this page and we invite submissions from companies who have a green project they would like featured in the magazine or on this page. It is also a great opportunity to advertise your organisation’s eco-friendly products and initiatives [link to submit]. If your company is reassessing its environmental credentials you might want to consider ordering the full set of RFP environmental articles (in electronic format of course!)

For more information see: www.rfpmagazine.com/environment.html

A U.S. Occupational Safety & Health Administration (OSHA) fact sheet highlights precautions to take if working in extreme heat.

Please click here to view the pdf document.

The huge cost of powering and cooling data centers has the tech industry scrambling for energy efficiency

In the Alps: Michel of IBM devised a way to cool chips with water jets.

A 35-minute drive south of Iceland's capital of Reykjavik lies the tiny fishing village of Grindavik. One January day, Kristinn Haflioason steers his car a few minutes out of town to a vast, snow-swept expanse of volcanic rock that juts out into the Atlantic Ocean. He climbs out and launches into an unlikely sales pitch that he hopes will persuade corporations from the U.S. and Europe to locate operations there. "Dozens of companies have expressed interest," he says.

This is no joke. Haflioason works for Invest in Iceland, a government agency. He's pitching the desolate spot outside of Grindavik as a site for data centers, the sprawling facilities chock-full of computers that tech companies build to handle the swelling oceans of digital information.

It's a testament to the challenges companies face in operating data centers that Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft have all checked out this remote corner of the world (although none has made a commitment so far). The reason: Iceland has a rare combination of vacant land, cheap geothermal energy, and chilly climate that makes cooling a data center nearly free.

The tech industry is facing an energy crisis. The cost of power consumption by data centers doubled between 2000 and 2006, to $4.5 billion, and could double again by 2011, according to the U.S. government. With energy prices spiking, the challenge of powering and cooling these SUVs of the tech world has become a major issue for corporations and utilities. "The digital economy is pervasive," says Andy Karsner, Assistant U.S. Energy Secretary for energy efficiency. "The demands for computing will grow exponentially, but electric consumption can't grow the same way."

The race is on to come up with creative solutions. Companies are scouring the globe for new technologies and advantageous locations. Iceland may have the ideal climate; Saudi Arabia may offer the lowest energy costs. Every company in the business is looking to squeeze expenses in hopes of becoming the low-cost producer in the Digital Age.

Where will the breakthroughs come from? Utilities, construction companies, and tech outfits all are working on the issue. Bruno Michel, a researcher at IBM's Zurich lab is developing ways that the biology of the human body can be translated into cooling systems for computers. Mark Bramfitt, principal program manager at Pacific Gas & Electric, is experimenting with incentives to curb overall energy use. Just a few watts per computer can add up. An efficient data center uses about 25% less electricity than a run-of-the-mill one. In a midsize facility, that could amount to $4.5 million a year in savings.

STATE SECRETS

The modern data center is like a vast refrigerator with hundreds or thousands of ovens blazing away inside. Six-foot-tall metal racks stacked with pizza box-size computers, storage devices, and network-routing machines are lined up in rows. Chilled air blows through the equipment from vents in the floors of "cold aisles." Hot air blows out of the back ends into "hot aisles" and is drawn off and vented out of the building. Inside the centers, there's a dull roar as large quantities of air shoot through ducts, vents, and computers.

So intense is the competition among tech companies to lower their costs of processing data that some treat information about their energy use like state secrets. When Google built a data center along the Columbia River in Oregon a few years ago, it bought the land through a third party so its involvement was hidden, and the city manager had to sign a confidentiality agreement. In North Carolina, the state's sunshine laws forced it to disclose the incentive package it offered Google to locate a data center there, but the company's plans for power consumption were redacted as trade secrets.

Little wonder, perhaps: In the future, the competition between Google and Microsoft in the Web search business might be determined as much by data center energy efficiency as by which company writes the best search algorithm.

Think of the data center as the factory for the info economy. Every day, in thousands of nondescript buildings in the hinterlands or in the basements of office towers, trillions of chunks of information coded in ones and zeros are moved, stored, and assembled into new shapes. Those electronic packets include millions of e-mails, Facebook pages, blog entries, and YouTube videos; vast quantities of electronic transactions; plus an ever-expanding universe of data that needs to be stored, sliced, diced, and analyzed. Tech market researcher IDC estimates that, each year, the digital world creates about 3 million times the information contained in all the books ever written.

People don't typically think of information as having substance, but the essence of computing is physics. When bits of data in the form of tiny electrical charges move across the wires of semiconductor chips, with millions of transistors switching on and off, they meet resistance. Overcoming resistance requires energy and creates heat. (If they're run too fast, chips won't burst into flames, but they will crack like an overheated automobile engine block.) Move enough bits around, and you have one huge bill for powering and cooling the equipment: The $4.5 billion spent in the U.S. in 2006 is the equivalent of the electric bills for 5.8 million U.S. households.

Energy consumption in data centers emerged as a major issue in the past couple of years. According to a January survey of its members by AFCOM, an association of data center managers, 88.5% of them described energy consumption as a serious or very serious concern, up from 36.1% five years ago. "You're realizing the cost of all that power. You look for opportunities to reduce costs, but now the cost of power is soaring," says Sal Cefalu, a vice-president for data center operations at telecom giant Verizon, which has 18 data centers nationwide. These days, for every $1 spent on computing equipment in data centers, an additional 50 cents is spent each year to power and cool them. About half of the energy is for air conditioning.

HEAT MAP

Three years ago, Microsoft began to tackle the energy issue in earnest. CEO Steve Ballmer and other top executives had decided to greatly expand the services offered over the Web to consumers and businesses, including e-mail and instant messaging, to parry threats from Google. So a group of about 20 people gathered at an off-site meeting at the Salish Lodge in Redmond, Wash., with a view of a waterfall out the window, to hash out a forecast of data center needs. "We decided to take the most aggressive, craziest plan we could come up with," says Michael Manos, senior director of data center services. "In hindsight, we were conservative."

Since then, Microsoft has spent more than $2 billion building four gigantic facilities—in Chicago, Dublin, San Antonio, and Quincy, Wash. Now it's looking at locations overseas, including Iceland and Siberia. Its computing needs have doubled each year for the past three years, and Microsoft expects them to continue doubling each year for the foreseeable future.

Energy consumption is a major factor in Microsoft's planning. The company has created what it calls a "heat map" of the globe that takes into account 35 factors in site selection, including cost and availability of power. A group of scientists studies the latest advances in data center design and computing efficiency. And Manos looks for local resources he can take advantage of—such as water from a waste-treatment system that cools computers at the new data center in San Antonio. As a result of all of this effort, Manos believes his 20 data centers are 30% to 50% more efficient than the industry average.

Solutions to tech's energy crisis won't come easily. The largest data centers can cost more than $200 million to construct and are expensive to upgrade to the latest energy-saving technology.

There are a number of relatively quick fixes, however. Most server computers use only about 10% of their capacity at any given time, so data center operators are using software that shifts computing jobs between servers to make the most of their capabilities. New power management systems shut off servers and other equipment automatically when not in use. And most computer companies have caught the green religion. They claim their newest equipment is ultra-energy-efficient.

The problem is that widely accepted yardsticks don't exist for comparing one server computer with another to show which is the more green. For servers or data centers, there's no equivalent of the miles-per-gallon ratings for cars. The Environmental Protection Agency and Energy Dept. are working with industry groups to set up benchmarks.

Although more progress is needed, there have been some major advances in data center energy conservation. In each case, the breakthroughs were the result of scientists and others questioning the conventional wisdom in their industries.

Take the design of the chips themselves. A decade ago the chip industry had a single focus: making chips process bits and bytes ever faster. But Marc Tremblay, a top scientist at Sun Microsystems, saw a fatal flaw in that strategy. The faster chips ran, the hotter they got, and eventually they'd be too hot to work properly. So he designed a so-called multicore chip, which has several processors on a single sliver of silicon. Each core runs slower and cooler than a processor that does the same amount of work all by itself.

ABOUT-FACE

Because of the complexities of semiconductor technology, it took nearly a decade for Tremblay's innovation to come to market. Since Sun's server computers based on Tremblay's designs went on sale two years ago, they have helped turn the company around and have dramatically slashed energy consumption. Each chip in those servers consumes just 70 watts of power, about one-third that of a conventional microprocessor.

Even the traditionally slow-moving utility industry is showing signs of surprising change. Take PG&E. Two years ago, after Bramfitt was handed the job of designing conservation incentives for Northern California's tech companies, he came up with a creative solution. He decided to provide financial incentives to companies that decide to use what's known as virtualization software. Without the software, each server computer typically handles only one program at a time, and only a fraction of the capacity is used. With virtualization software, many programs can be run on a single computer.

The result is that managers can pack more programs onto each server, thus burning less electricity and reducing the number of computers needed. Under Bramfitt's incentive program, PG&E pays customers for every kilowatt-hour of energy they save using the software.

Bramfitt's program is a business model innovation, but most of the data center energy savings are likely to be found in technology advances. IBM researcher Michel is focusing on a seldom-trod territory—where biology and physics meet. Michel, who has a PhD in biochemistry from the University of Zurich, is designing devices that he expects will one day cool chips with a system modeled after the human body. While the processors in server computers are typically cooled with air, these chips are chilled with a liquid delivered through a system similar to the body's capillaries. One of Michel's inventions is a metal cap that fits over a processor and sprays jets of water out of some 50,000 nozzles into microscopic channels etched in the metal. The channels circulate the liquid efficiently and cut the amount of energy required to pump the water.

While there have been substantial improvements, more innovations will be necessary in fields from technology to utilities. Putting data centers in Iceland or Siberia may help, but that on its own won't be enough to solve tech's energy crisis.

Article from MIT Review 2008

Saving Energy in Data Centers

A group at Microsoft Research attacks the problem on two fronts.

Monitoring the conditions: This sensor, a prototype developed by the Networked Embedded Computing group at Microsoft Research, is sensitive to heat and humidity. The group envisions using sensors like these to monitor servers in data centers, enabling significant energy savings. The sensors could also be used in homes to manage the energy use of appliances.

Data centers are an increasingly significant source of energy consumption. A recent EPA report to Congress estimated that U.S. servers and data centers used about 61 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity in 2006, or 1.5 percent of the total electricity used in the country that year. (See also "Data Centers' Growing Power Demands.") Concern about the amount of energy eaten up by data centers has led to a slew of research in the area, including new work from Microsoft Research's Networked Embedded Computing group, which was showcased last week in Redmond, WA, at Microsoft's TechFest 2008. The work attacks the energy-consumption problem in two ways: new algorithms make it possible to free up servers and put them into sleep mode, and sensors identify which servers would be best to shut down based on the environmental conditions in different parts of the server room. By eliminating hot spots and minimizing the number of active servers, Microsoft researchers say that the system could produce as much as 30 percent in energy savings in data centers.

The sensors, says Feng Zhao, principal researcher and manager of the group, are sensitive to both heat and humidity. They're Web-enabled and can be networked and made compatible with Web services. Zhao says that he envisions the sensors, which are still in prototype form, as "a new kind of scientific instrument" that could be used in a variety of projects. In a data center, the idiosyncrasies of a building and individual servers can have a big effect on how the cooling system functions, and therefore on energy consumption. Cooling, Zhao notes, accounts for about half the energy used in data centers. (He believes that the sensors, which he says could sell for $5 to $10 apiece, could be used in homes as well as in data centers, where they could work in tandem with a Web-based energy-savings application.)

Another aspect of the research, explains Lin Xiao, a researcher with the group, is new algorithms designed to manage loads on the servers in a more energy-efficient way. Traditionally, load-balancing algorithms are used to keep traffic evenly distributed over a set of servers. The Microsoft system, in contrast, distributes the load to free up servers during off-peak times so that those servers can be put into sleep mode. The algorithms are currently designed for connection servers, which are employed with services for which users may log in for sessions of several hours, such as IM services or massively multiplayer online games. Because long sessions are common, shifting loads requires complex planning in order to avoid disconnecting users and other problems with quality of service. Xiao says that the group has developed two types of algorithms: load-forecasting algorithms, which predict a few hours ahead of time how many servers will need to be working, and load-skewing algorithms, which distribute traffic according to the predictions and power down relatively empty servers.

The beauty of the system, Xiao says, comes when the two systems work in tandem. The sensors monitor the servers to make sure they're not being overcooled (a common problem in data centers, he says, since people often set the cooling system conservatively, to protect the equipment). In addition, the sensor system watches for hot spots, which can make the air-conditioning system work inefficiently. This information is then used by the load-skewing algorithms. Knowing that you want to shut down 400 servers is one thing. The sensor helps determine which ones to shut down.

Jonathan Koomey, a staff scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the author of several reports on data-center energy consumption, says that he sees this type of research as one step toward a big-picture vision for data centers. "There's a focus by the big players in the data-center area to try to get to a point where they can shift computing loads around, dependent on not just electricity prices, but also weather and other variations." Ultimately, Koomey says, this could mean shifting loads not only within a data center, but also from region to region.

The group ran simulations using data from the IM service Windows Live Messenger and found that the system could produce about 30 percent in energy savings, depending on the physical structure of the data center and on how the system is configured. Zhao says that the savings produced by the group's system does depend on how the user chooses to deal with some inherent trade-offs. For example, he says, Microsoft is working on several areas of research that will help in modeling the unexpected, such as load spikes. However, a user might choose to keep more servers than is strictly necessary powered on as a reserve in case of a spike, at a corresponding loss in energy savings. "Our research shows the trade-off between energy saving and performance hit, and lets users choose the right balance," Zhao says.

Other researchers are working on developing techniques for shutting down servers at optimal times. Xiao says that the Microsoft group's work is distinguished by its focus on connection servers and the problems that come with shifting loads when users typically stay logged in for many hours.

"Servers are only being used [about] 15 percent of their maximum computing ability, on average," Koomey says, "so that means a lot of capital sitting around." He expects companies to be very motivated to implement the research that they do in this area, since "they want to make better use of their capital," he says. Wasting energy and computing power doesn't make good business sense.

These articles were originally published on www.i-fm.net

Have you noticed how much hot air and printers ink has been expended recently on the subject of casual dress in business. I am puzzled as to why this generates so much debate. It seems to me to be the natural progression of the general liberating trend that we have seen in offices for the last thirty years.

During my working life I am delighted to have seen many unnecessary rules disappear. No longer do you have to call your line manager “Sir” or “Madam”. It’s many years since I had to sign a register on arrival in the office and seniority is no longer shown by a wooden trim around your desk edge. Nor are line managers generally referred to as “superiors”, a term I detest. All of this seems perfectly reasonable now. Generally speaking the people in our offices are responsible souls capable of making decisions about marriages and mortgages or even electing a government. If that is the case then they ought to be able to decide on appropriate clothes to wear to work. Your average engineer or accountant should recognise that a shirt and tie is probably a good idea for that important clients visit or that a polo shirt and chinos won’t disrupt a team meeting.

So why are HR departments all desperately trying to write corporate dress code policies. Perhaps a look around your own office reveals the truth. The majority of middle aged men actually have no dress sense at all. Possibly this is just a lack of practice but even within the constraints of a dark suit, plain shirt, sober tie dress code they get it horribly wrong. Chunky rubber soled shoes, obscure golf club ties and those bugs bunny socks from Fathers day. Brown shoes with a black belt. Thick rimmed eighties glasses the size of saucers and that ear warming hair cut that he has treasured and preserved ever since that office party in 1974 when Trish from the typing pool told him it made him look like the handsome one from the Dukes of Hazard.

Just imagine what frightful apparitions would be unleashed if these poor souls were given complete wardrobe freedom. Safari jackets, tank tops, Cliff Richard tour shirts and Noel Edmonds jumpers would greet you every day. Some of course would never be able to adjust. A Finance Director I once knew turned up on a dress down day with a cardigan over his shirt and tie and under his pin striped jacket. That was as casual as he could get.

So what does this have to do with FM? Well, judging from the number of books, web sites and even training videos being produced on the subject (See www.corporateetiqueette.com for example) there may be a need for a new service to join our ever growing list. Style consultants, personal shoppers, fashion police will soon be in demand. As for me I have already outsourced the whole operation to my wife. Recognising my own taste and style disability she has long since taken complete control of my wardrobe and makes all my dress code decisions for me. That of course leaves me to concentrate on the important decisions like our position on global warming and electing the next government. True partnership in action.

Article from www.iso.org

ISO has just approved the creation of a project committee mandated to develop an international standard on energy management.

The standard will provide all types of organizations and companies a practical and widely recognized approach to increase energy efficiency, reduce costs and improve their environmental performance by addressing both the technical and management aspects of rational energy use. The standard is intended to be broadly applicable to various sectors of national economies, including utility, manufacturing, commercial building, general commerce, and transportation sectors, and therefore, could have influence on as much as 60 % of the world’s energy demand.

ISO Secretary-General Alan Bryden commented: “The urgency to reduce GHG emissions, the reality of higher prices from reduced availability of fossil fuels, and the need to promote energy efficiency and the use of renewable energy sources, provide a strong rationale for developing this new standard building on the most advanced best practices and existing national or regional standards”.

Following the successful examples of the ISO 9000 series on quality management and the ISO 14000 series on environmental management, the project committee ISO/PC 242, Energy management, will consider the development of a standard containing relevant terms and definitions and providing management system requirements together with guidance for use, implementation, measurement and metrics.

The standard will be based on the continual improvement and Plan-Do-Check-Act approach utilized in ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 to provide compatibility and integration opportunities.

Among the main benefits of the future standard are that it will:

• provide organizations and companies (utilities, manufacturers, commerce, buildings, transportation, both private and public) with a well-recognized framework for integrating energy efficiency into their management practices
• offer organizations with operations in more than one country a single, harmonized standard for implementation across the organization
• provide a logical and consistent methodology for identifying and implementing improvements that may contribute to a continual increase in energy efficiency across facilities
• assist organizations to better utilize existing energy consuming assets, thus reducing costs and/or expanding capacity
• offer guidance on benchmarking, measuring, documenting, and reporting energy intensity improvements and their projected impact on reductions in GHG emissions
• create transparency and facilitate communication on the management of energy, promote energy management best practices, thus reinforcing the value of good energy management behaviours
• assist facilities in evaluating and prioritizing the implementation of new energy-efficient technologies
• provide a framework for organizations to encourage suppliers to better manage their energy, thus promoting energy efficiency throughout the supply chain
• facilitate the use of energy management as a component of GHG emission reduction projects.

The secretariat of ISO/PC 242 will be held jointly by the ISO members for the United States and for Brazil: ANSI (American National Standardization Institute) and ABNT (Associação Brasileira de Normas Técnicas)