ARCHIBUS Applications: Telecommunications & Cable Management

Manage every aspect of your network infrastructure to facilitate planning, improve asset management, and enhance customer service

Benefits

• Shortens the planning process by maintaining a well-documented physical network and simplifies trouble-shooting tasks
• Extends the lifecycles of telecommunications and data assets by facilitating reassignment of surplus items
• Coordinates information and resources among responsible departments to ensure employees get network access quickly
• Manages telecom inventory from the Web or intranet to facilitate organizational efficiency

With the rapid pace of technological change and adoption, it is critical that updates to your network are accurately reflected to facilitate planning, improve inventory control, and enhance network up-time. With the ARCHIBUS Telecommunications & Cable  Management application, you can manage the network’s system capacity information, the location of system connections, maintenance histories, upgrades, and much more. This indispensable solution does everything from simplifying trouble-shooting to eliminating communication discontinuities during the move/add/change process so you gain more control over your network instead of letting it control you.

*Information provided by ARCHIBUS

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How Carly was introduced to ARCHIBUS

Bob: How were you introduced to ARCHIBUS?

Carly: I was working for a client and I was asked to space plan. At the time, they hadn’t got ARCHIBUS off the ground and I was a contractor. They said, “If you can get ARCHIBUS off the ground, we will hire you.” So I tried my best to get it off the ground. 

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Green Tips: Water Efficient Landscaping

To those of you who don't already know, RSC is headquartered in sunny California. Right now, California is in a very serious drought, so this particular green tip hits close to home. Today we'd like to share with you a little more about how to help your business grow a little greener and take a step towards it's LEED certification with Water Efficient Landscaping.

Requirements

This one is actually quite simple. The intent is "to limit or eliminate the use of potable water or other natural surface or subsurface water resources on or near the project site for landscape irrigation," - aka reduce the amount of water you're using on landscaping. Reduce landscape irrigation by different percentages will gain you varying points toward your certification

Source

In order to effectively do so, LEED has outlined three options for calculating water reduction:

1. "Calculate the baseline irrigation water use by determining the water use that would result from using an irrigation system typical for the region using the mid-summer baseline case or the month with the highest irrigation demand and compare this with the building’s actual irrigation potable water use, which can be determined through submetering. Use the baseline and actual water use values to calculate the percentage reduction in potable water or other natural surface or subsurface resource use. More detail about completing this calculation is available in the LEED Reference Guide for Green Building Operations & Maintenance, 2009 Edition."
    
2. "Calculate the estimated irrigation water use using the mid-summer baseline case or the month with the highest irrigation demand by determining the landscape area for the project and sorting this area into the major vegetation types. Determine the reference evapotranspiration rate (ET0 ) for the region and determine the species factor (ks ), density factor (kd) and microclimate factor (kmc ) for each vegetation type. Use this information to calculate the landscape coefficient (KL ) and irrigation water use for the design case. Calculate the baseline case irrigation water use by setting the above factors to average values representative of conventional equipment and design practices. Use the estimated and baseline case to determine the percentage reduction in potable water or other natural surface or subsurface resource use. Factor values and other resources for completing these calculations are available in the LEED Reference Guide for Green Building Operations & Maintenance, 2009 Edition."
    
3. "If independent irrigation performance and ranking tools are available from local, regional, provincial, state, territorial or national sources, use such tools to demonstrate reductions in potable water or other natural surface or subsurface resource for irrigation purposes."

Ideas

Source

Some ideas for water efficient landscaping include:

Reducing the amount of grass on your premises

• Often times turf grass is the biggest "water hog." It is often over watered and irrigation is set to timers that run at inefficient times or unnecessarily (e.g., how many of you have been to a park when the sprinklers have gone off right after it rained). Instead of turf grass, try artificial grass.

Stone, Pavers, & Tambark

Source

• Strategically use stones or pavers to create a unique look around any plants, trees, or bushes you might have to give depth and character to your landscaping. Stones, pavers, and tambark also help release ground heat all while keeping the ground cool reducing your need to water.

Plant drought tolerant vegetation

• Succulents are known for their ability to thrive in desert like conditions. They are a great optionif you're still looking to maintain plants. Succulents come in a wide variety of sizes, shapes, and colors.

Watering at night

• Make the most of your watering! Rather than watering during the heat of the day, wait till it's cooler and darker out to reduce the potential for water evaporation.

Have any tips? We'd love to hear how you help save water!

*All quotes are from the LEED website*

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Challenges within the IWMS world

Bob: In today’s arena of ARCHIBUS, what are some of the largest challenges you’ve faced?

Carly: I think we’ve faced a lot of challenges with politics. It’s very hard for different departments to work with each other. We work across the board: real estate, facilities, HR, IT. I think the hardest part is making sure everyone’s working together and that everyone is benefitting from the tools that we are providing. 

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Why consult on IWMS?

Megan: You were an architect, that’s what you were trained to be, so what drew you to this side?

Bob: I went to an architecture firm, so I thought I was going to be doing architecture, but I was introduced to the software, so it was kind of a slight-of-hand. I actually think that it was the universe in alignment. I’d been looking for something that fulfilled me a little better than what I had chosen, even though I loved doing architecture. This seemed to fit very comfortably for me. I knew how to program, I was a big stickler on details, I knew AutoCad, I knew graphical space design. When we were tracking spaces for these companies, it was everything I had learned over my forty years of life all focused into one spot. It was very appealing for me. One of the other aspects that made it comfortable was that the pressure of architecture is very demanding. We are to protect the public, we are licensed in states. Our desire is to protect the health, safety, and welfare of the public, even though we are trying to design a very beautiful space. In the IWMS world, those pressures of safety and making deadlines to the city council were gone. It relieved me of the pressure and provided meaningful information for the companies. It was a very fascinating godsend. 

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The Two Scheduling Approaches for Preventive Maintenance Work Orders

Preventive maintenance work orders are proactive actions, like changing oil in a car regularly, or putting a new roof on a house every fifteen years. Companies require maintenance requests on air handling units, elevators, life safety equipment, etc.

In IWMS, there are two types of preventive maintenance requests: fixed and floating. Each has its uses and its downfalls.

Fixed Preventive Maintenance Requests

A fixed request follows a set schedule as to when the maintenance needs to be performed and sends out notifications accordingly. For example, if a regulatory agency requires that a certain piece of equipment needs to have work done every three months, the IWMS system can be set to send out a notification every three months regularly.

The downfall to this type of maintenance request is that if the craftsperson gets busy, as they do, and cannot complete the request according to the schedule, the notification will still be sent on the preset three month schedule, whether the work has been checked as completed or not.

Floating Preventive Maintenance Requests

A floating request does not follow a set schedule, but instead adds the interval from the last date the maintenance was performed. So, if a piece of equipment needs to be maintained every three months, the three months will be added from the last date on which the work was completed. 

The downfall to this type of request is that if a regulatory agency requires that the maintenance be done four times a year and the craftsperson is unable to complete the work, it may not fulfill the deadlines and regulations the agency has put. This feature is better for equipment that does not require a regulatory review.

Either of these two features are good for maintaining a variety of equipment depending on the different regulations put on them. Companies can use either or both of these features for an effective and regular maintenance.

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ARCHIBUS Applications: Furniture & Equipment Management

The purpose of ARCHIBUS' Furniture & Equipment Manager is to monitor and control physical asset cost and utilization to increase organizational accountability.

Benefits

• Manages asset ownership and usage to increase organizational accountability and reduce costs
• Reduces the need for write-offs by tracking the location and depreciation of assets
• Facilitates trial layouts for analyzing various move options before executing them
• Executes simple moves, adds, and changes to maximize/minimize disruption and sustain productivity
• Analyzes the financial impact of furniture and equipment inventories

Effectively managing physical assets, such as furniture and equipment, is vital to maintaining the financial health of an organization. Yet trying to track the changeover of assets and staff while keeping an eye on costs can often seem overwhelming. The ARCHIBUS Furniture & Equipment Management application is an AutoCAD®-based solution that helps you manage those assets cost-effectively and design more productive work environments. This application also helps minimize costs and maximize productivity in the planning and execution of individual or small group moves,
adds, and changes. Organizations encountering large group moves or complex move/add/change processes can also implement the Web-based ARCHIBUS Enterprise Move Management application.

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Talking about Kerry

Carly: I would like to highlight Kerry Montalvo. She’s the RSC angel. She is another person to who you can give anything. It could be ten o’clock at night, the night before a project is due, and you can call her in complete panic and she will, no matter what, step in and either help fix whatever you broke, or build something even better. You may have an expectation that a project is going to take a certain amount of time and it’s going to look a certain way, but she consistently exceeds expectations with timeline and scope. 

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ARCHIBUS Applications: Asset Portal

Track and manage physical assets to improve data accuracy, increase asset utilization, and optimize acquisition or disposition decisions.

Benefits

• Delivers improved furniture and equipment utilization rates, which can reduce capital expenditures by as much as 10% annually
• Tracks and manages asset ownership and usage to increase organizational accountability and promote redeployment opportunities
• Ensures compliance with financial accounting requirements and/or regulatory mandates
• Establishes a coherent process for integrating asset planning, acquisition, tracking, disposal and investment recovery
• Maintains an accurate inventory of network infrastructure to facilitate improved planning and a high level of internal customer support
• Asset Management Screenshot

Asset Portal provides the means to improve data accuracy of the asset registry, increase asset utilization, and optimize asset acquisition and disposal decisions within an overall capital plan

Increasing asset utilization and optimizing acquisition and/or disposition practices are essential to increasing organizational efficiency and achieving superior financial results. ARCHIBUS Asset Portal provides the means to improve data accuracy of the asset registry, increase asset utilization, and optimize asset acquisition and disposal decisions within an overall capital plan. Asset Portal’s capabilities go beyond a merely financial focus and can also trace assets to the entity that is responsible for the asset, the cost center or department that depends on the asset, and/or the physical location where the asset resides. This helps increase organizational accountability and facilitate asset redeployment, when appropriate.

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