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Tag: Facilities Maintenance

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School Planning and Management, 2015

Washington, D.C., – Green Seal™, the nation’s first independent nonprofit certifier of sustainable products and services, has introduced a revised version of its GS-11 Standard that is expanded to cover most types of architectural coatings on the market today.

This new edition of GS-11, a compilation of the previous edition of GS-11 and the GS-47 Standard for Stains and Finishes, includes floor coatings, concrete and masonry sealers, and fire resistive coatings, in addition to the paints, primers, anti-corrosive coatings, and reflective coatings previously covered. Clear and transparent coatings are also included in the 24 product categories that are now eligible for certification.

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Williams, 2015

Among teachers, it’s known as the 2:30 headache, describing the pain that sets in after hours of breathing polluted air in an old school building or a temporary classroom. For Rachel Gutter—and educators and schoolchildren nationwide—it isn’t theoretical.

“My mom suffered permanent respiratory damage by working in a sick school,” says Gutter, the U.S. Green Building Council’s vice president for knowledge. A school administrator in metropolitan Washington, D.C., her mother had asthma and mold allergies, which were constantly irritated by the bad air. Gutter says one visit to a portable classroom triggered a particularly severe attack.

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Carson and Janssen, 2012

Background: Screen time activities (e.g., television, computers, video games) have been linked to several negative health outcomes among young people. In order to develop evidence-based interventions to reduce screen time, the factors that influence the behavior need to be better understood. High neighborhood disorder, which may encourage young people to stay indoors where screen time activities are readily available, is one potential factor to consider.

Methods: Results are based on 15,917 youth in grades 6-10 (aged 10-16 years old) who participated in the Canadian 2009/10 Health Behaviour in School-aged Children Survey (HBSC). Total hours per week of television, video games, and computer use were reported by the participating students in the HBSC student questionnaire. Ten items of neighborhood disorder including safety, neighbors taking advantage, drugs/drinking in public, ethnic tensions, gangs, crime, conditions of buildings/grounds, abandoned buildings, litter, and graffiti were measured using the HBSC student questionnaire, the HBSC administrator questionnaire, and Geographic Information Systems. Based upon these 10 items, social and physical neighborhood disorder variables were derived using principal component analysis. Multivariate multilevel logistic regression analyses were used to examine the relationship between social and physical neighborhood disorder and individual screen time variables.

Results: High (top quartile) social neighborhood disorder was associated with approximately 35-45% increased risk of high (top quartile) television, computer, and video game use. Physical neighborhood disorder was not associated with screen time activities after adjusting for social neighborhood disorder. However, high social and physical neighborhood disorder combined was associated with approximately 40-60% increased likelihood of high television, computer, and video game use.

Conclusion: High neighborhood disorder is one environmental factor that may be important to consider for future public health interventions and strategies aiming to reduce screen time among youth.

Keywords: Screen time, Neighborhood disorder, Youth

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Plank, Bradshaw, & Young, 2008

This article considers school climate and perceptions of social disorder. When a school is characterized by disorder or physical risk, basic educational goals and processes are jeopardized. We use survey data from 33 public schools serving grades 6–8 in a large mid-Atlantic city to examine relationships among physical disorder (e.g., broken windows and poor building conditions), fear, collective efficacy, and social disorder. Path analyses reveal a direct association between physical disorder and social disorder even when prior levels of collective efficacy are controlled—a finding consistent with traditional broken-windows theories. Further, there is evidence that the effects of physical disorder may be operating through increased fear and decreased collective efficacy to affect perceptions of threatening or violent interactions among people.

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Neighborhood perceived/built environment and physical activity (PA) associations have been examined for adolescents around homes, but not surrounding schools. To examine if positive perceptions/built environment in neighborhoods surrounding schools predict PA among low-income, urban adolescent girls.

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As the architectural and construction industries increasingly emphasize sustainability, more comprehensive methods are being developed to evaluate and reduce environmental impacts by buildings. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is emerging as one of the most functional assessment tools; however, presently there is a scarcity of clear guiding principles specifically directed towards the architectural profession in the use of building LCA during the design process. In this paper, we are providing those guidelines to help architects understand and use LCA methodology as part of the design process by identifying scenarios for the use of LCA in the design process and providing a set of proposed guidelines for the conductance of wholebuilding LCA. The scenarios were developed by an extensive literature review of previously completed whole-building LCA case studies, architect interviews, and an evaluation of a set of North American and international LCA tools for use in the proposed scenarios. Additionally, the study shows an example of whole building LCA of an institutional facility being designed in Georgia.

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The consistent use of appropriate terminology provides a foundation for the establishment of robust, scalable and repeatable processes, best practices, methodologies, standards, metrics and benchmarks for facilities and physical infrastructure management. Common terminology also enables effective communication among the various decision makers, building managers, operators and technicians involved with facilities and physical infrastructure investment and management.

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For an expanded explanation of the Federal guidance on the development and implementation of school emergency operations plans, released by the Administration in June 2013, please see the Guide for Developing High-Quality School Emergency Operations Plans. This document is located at http://www.efc.gwu.edu//library/guide-... and is also available, along with supporting resources, on the U.S. Department of Education’s Readiness and Emergency Management for Schools (REMS) Technical Assistance (TA) Center website, http://rems.ed.gov.

To view the entire series and to find resources visit the Educational Facilities Planning page.

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