The June 2005 Edition

As the program year for your chapter comes to a close, your board is preparing for the annual general meeting where we reflect back on the year of accomplishments and begin to prepare for the following year. I encourage ALL Members to attend the annual general meeting on June 15, 2005 at the Kinsmen Clubhouse in Edmonton's beautiful river valley. I promise the business portion of the meeting will be kept to a minimum so we can get on with the socializing, dinner and networking. There's no charge; there will be lots of fun and IFMA merchandise door prizes! Come on out and show your appreciation for the hard work that the board has engaged in this past year to deliver you quality programs and support services. This is the same venue where we held our very successful Christmas party - rain or shine it promises to be a great time!

The big news from your board and with the help of IFMA headquarters staff from Houston is that we have embarked on a strategic planning process. Primarily because of dwindling membership over the last few years and the need to revitalize the chapter, we thought it was time to formally reflect on where we want to go and how we should get there. I think it was John Peters who said "if you don't know where you are going, any road will get you there". So we need you help, in the following ways:

1. We need all members to complete the on-line survey that you'll soon receive. Yes we know we surveyed you about 15 months ago, but this is more thorough, it will consider the views of new members, and it will only take a few minutes of your time.

2. We need several non-board members to participate in our 1- day strategic planning workshop planned for a weekend in September, date to be confirmed.

Please call me now at 917-7487 if you are interested in participating in this strategic planning process.

The Strategic Survey Link

As part of our Strategic Planning initiative for 2005-06, your chapter board wants your input on improvements and changes that we should consider to better meet your needs. Please provide your input by taking about 10 minutes to complete the on-line survey - by visiting the link http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.asp?u=860191067255.

Those chapter members completing the survey by the deadline, June 14, 2005, will be entered into draws for IFMA Engraved Merchandise, worth approximately $500. This includes a briefcase, portfolio, denim shirts, and various FM gizmos. The draws will be made at the Annual General Meeting on Wednesday, June 15, 5 to 7:30 p.m. when many lucky IFMA members will go home with one of these draw prizes. You also must be present on the 15th at the Kinsmen Clubhouse, to be eligible for a draw prize; Please call Vicki at 435-8716, to confirm your attendance. However even if you can't attend on the 15th, please complete the survey; otherwise we'll miss your input and ideas.

While June 15 is our the date of our official "Annual General Meeting", the formal portion of the event will be short, so we can move promptly onto celebrating another year as FMer's by networking over a free steak dinner and refreshments.

New Construction News

Edmonton, May 16, 2005 - The Alberta government has approved $46.1 million in funding for the construction of the new Health Care Learning Centre at Grant MacEwan College.

The centre will be located on the corner of 104th Avenue and 109th Street and will provide classroom and laboratory space for MacEwan's health science programs. The new facility will expand access to health care learning and house MacEwan's nursing program, one of the largest nursing schools in western Canada. The 240,000-square-foot facility will have a capacity to accommodate 2,000 additional students at the City Centre Campus and construction could be completed as early as September 2007.

Chapter Liaison (Interim Solutions)

Heidi Balentine who has served you as Chapter Liaison for the past 14 months has accepted a position at another organization and her last day with IFMA is Wednesday, May 25, 2005. Amy Campbell, Chapter Resource Manager will serve you as Chapter Liaison in the interim until Heidi’s successor is trained.

Knowledge Management Retro-Innovation – Guru Management News

Hey this is cool – every now and then I will get in the mail (yes - right from the postman’s hands) a package of newspaper articles on a whole slew of management concepts, directions and ideas from some good friends of mine.

So here we go people a concise summary of all the bits and pieces of guru management that arrived in the mail.

· If “I was given only five minutes to speak to you and could convey only one thought that would help you to be more successful, I would tell you to write down your goals, make plans to achieve them, and work on your plans every day.”

· Problem solving – new questions for your tired process. Determine the unique aspects of the problem. Each situation must be individualized. Determining what information can be of help, rather than just seeking any information. Starting the problem solving by determining the people who need to be involved in the quest to understand the problem, come up with the solutions and implement them. Figuring out what the main purpose is, which means thinking broadly about the problem and the system. Devising the ideal solution – even if it’s unrealistic in the near future – that would achieve the purpose. Determining the best living solution – the ideas that can be installed today that will lead in time to the ideal future solution.

· Managerial behaviors – the four kinds. The frenzied ~ 40% - highly energetic but very unfocused. The procrastinators ~30% - lack energy and focus, feel insecure and fear failure. The detached ~20 % - disengaged from their work, focused but lacking energy, seem aloof, tense or just apathetic. The purposeful ~10% - highly focused and energetic, reflective and calm amid the chaos.

· Soft skills - When you are golfing with your boss – cream him. It shows you are a tough competitor.

· Keep your resume short – no more than two pages. Practice your 30 second sales pitch - who you are, what you do, what you’re looking for.

· Communications in changing times – frame what you are going to say from your employees’ perspective – use language your employees are comfortable with – connect personally with your team – simplify the complex – plan what you are going to say – don’t duck bad news – understand clearly what your organization is trying to accomplish – answer questions, start with a simple yes or no before proceeding with explanations – provide feedback to organizational leaders on how your employees have reacted to changes - and keep the communications rolling in a constant two-way flow.

· Dealing with uncertainty. Be prepared – stay in touch with the marketplace. Define yourself independently of your job and title. Create your own sense of security. Identify your accomplishments and skills. Maintain security in other aspects of your life. Don’t think catastrophically. Don’t ruminate about a future you can’t predict. Don’t act rashly. Benefit from the doubt and ambiguity.

· In the fast lane. Pursue your dream. Learn from other leaders. Surround yourself with other winners, not whiners. Change makes you stronger. Check your ego at the door. Have measurable goals. Keep honing to keep the edge. Performance, not face time counts. Encourage experiments. Stay focused on the goal. Preparation gives you confidence. Don’t push beyond the limit.

· Break up with your job? Hone in on the real issues – I hate this job is global language, get specific and figure out what you do not like. Acknowledge that you have a problem. Don’t expect a magic-button solution. Make a plan. Identify what is holding you back. Give yourself permission to dream. Don’t overestimate the consequences of change. Get support. Think about the consequences of not doing anything versus the consequences of trying and failing.

· Toxic workplaces and management practices to avoid. Imposing unreasonable demands on subordinates and withholding information. Refusing to give employees reasonable discretion over day-to-day means and methods of their work. Failing to credit or acknowledge contributions and achievements. Creating a treadmill at work – too much to do all the time. Perpetuating an environment in which employees are never sure what is happening around them. Allowing mistrusts to take root (office politics). Tolerating, even fostering, unclear company direction and policies, job ambiguity and unclear expectations. Sub-par performance management practices (employee performance reviews). Lack of two-way communication up and down the organization. Managers rejecting out of hand, an employee’s concerns about workload.

· Fear Factor. Fear – has become one of the most pervasive emotions in the workplace today. Fear – prevents real learning. Fear in the workplace retards the flow of information. No one tells the truth about anything for fear they will be reprimanded or wrong, and therefore few people know what is really going on inside the company. Compliments on good performance are even held back just in caste that person turns out to be expendable. “Fear-Lock” is a paralysis brought about by a lack of clear instructions.

· Passion in your job. Acknowledge your self-worth. Reframe your perspective. Practice positive self-talk. Keep your sense of humor, which is as good for your physical health as it is for your spirit. Cut yourself some slack. Rev up your energy (eat right, get enough sleep, get exercise). Nurture relationships. Keep improving.

Resilience 7+7

The following factors and skills listing are an excerpt from the below noted publication and provide a reference on the aspects of resiliency and how one reacts to the unexpected challenges and conflicts that we face on a daily basis.

The resilience inventory: Seven essential skills for overcoming life’s obstacles and determining happiness by Rachel Jackson and Chris Watkin, Hay Group, from Selection & Development Review, Vol. 20, No. 6, December 2004.

1. Emotion regulation – the ability to manage our internal world in order to stay effective under pressure. Resilient people use a well-developed set of skills that help them to control their emotions, attention and behavior.

2. Impulse control – the ability to manage the behavioral expression of thoughts emotional impulses, including the ability to delay gratification explored in Daniel Goleman’s work in Emotional Intelligence. Impulse Control is correlated with Emotion Regulation.

3. Causal analysis – the ability to accurately identify the causes of adversity. Resilient people are able to get outside their habitual thinking styles to identify more possible causes and thus more potential solutions.

4. Self-efficacy – the sense that we are effective in the world – the belief that we can solve problems and succeed. Resilient people believe in themselves and as a result, build others’ confidence in them – placing them in line for more success and more opportunity.

5. Realistic optimism – the ability to stay positive about the future yet be realistic in our planning for it. It is linked to self-esteem but a more causal relationship exists with self-efficacy and involves accuracy and realism – not Pollyanna-style optimism.

6. Empathy – the ability to read other’s behavioral cues to understand their psychological and emotional states and thus build better relationships. Resilient people are able to read others nonverbal cues to help build deeper relationships with others, and tend to be more in tune with their own emotional states.

7. Reaching out – the ability to enhance the positive aspects of life and take on new challenge and opportunity. Reaching out behaviors are hampered by embarrassment, perfectionism and self-handicapping.

1. ABC – Learning to recognize the impact of your ‘in the moment’ thoughts and beliefs on behavioral and emotional consequences of adversity

2. Thinking traps – Recognizing the errors in thinking we are often unaware of; for example, jumping to conclusions.

3. Detecting icebergs – Building an awareness of the deep-seated beliefs we have of how the world works and how this can impact upon our emotions and behavior.

4. Calming and focusing – Finding ways to step back from adversity, create breathing space and think more resiliently.

5. Challenging beliefs – A process by which the breadth and thus accuracy of our understanding of events can be enhanced, leading to more effective and sustained problem-solving behaviors.

6. Putting it in perspective – Learning to stop the spiraling of catastrophic thinking and turn it into realistic thinking.

7. Real-time resilience – Putting it all into practice in the moment; this skill is reliant on mastering the others and offers a ‘fast skill’ which does not rely on having the time to think through a resilience reaction in depth.

Despair.com – Bring it on just for the fun of it

Despair.com is actually a really neat website so please check it out. Appreciate the entire idea of taking a motivational stroll in the opposite direction. http://despair.com/indem.html Oh, and if anyone does purchase the Chairman Edition of “The Art of Demotivation” I would really like to see that fine art copy.

Other Fun Stuff – Sudoku

For those of you with other things better to do continue on and do not engage in Sudoku. For all but one person who continued on please enjoy the following backgrounder on Sudoku and then go explore the web or your local newspaper for the resurgence of this popular puzzle game. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudoku Have fun finding the solution.

New Members and Renewing Members - IFMA NAC Welcomes

Dawn L. Veltikold, Facilities & Office Services Team Leader, Husky Energy, Inc. Lloydminster.

We thank these new members and renewing members for choosing the full option of chapter membership in the NAC. These members are entitled to the full range of Chapter and IFMA benefits. Thank you for supporting the Northern Alberta Chapter of IFMA. And for those IFMA base members, well, we still like you and value your contributions, but just cannot extend any special benefits to you.

As always, if you are a member and bring a potential new member to a meeting there is movie pass in it for you and your guest. This is just another example of the great value and benefit of being a member of the NAC.

Heat Recovery Systems -Technology Profile

All commercial and institutional buildings require a specified number of air changes per hour as stipulated by building codes. This is generally accomplished through fresh air supply systems brought into the building and heated to required temperatures. As heating and cooling energy costs have escalated, building envelope designs have been made increasingly more air-tight, reducing infiltration and allowing all the air exchange to be handled by mechanical ventilation systems. To capitalize on the energy efficiency there is a need for efficient heat recovery systems that capture some of the energy used to condition the air that is exhausted from a building. Typical heat recovery systems transfer heat from the outgoing air stream directly to the incoming air stream. Energy is saved, as the incoming air requires less additional heating before being reintroduced into the building.

Heat recovery ventilation (HRV) systems are used in applications where the building uses heating equipment only. .

Energy recovery ventilation (ERV) systems are used in buildings that are space conditioned with HVAC equipment.

All require adjacent and parallel outdoor air intake and exhaust ducts. When heat needs to be transferred from a remote location, a run-around loop system can be installed. This requires the installation of heat transfer coils in both the intake and exhaust ducts (or other source of heat). A pump circulates the heat transfer fluid—moving the heat to where it is needed. Air-to-air heat pumps are occasionally used to extract heat from warm exhaust air. Higher installation and operating costs limit this application.

Conditioning (cooling or dehumidification) of ventilation air with exhaust air energy recovery in hot and humid climates is very important. Bringing unconditioned, humid ventilation air into a building has many obvious negative impacts on indoor air quality, comfort, and HVAC system operation. ERV's for conditioning ventilation air typically use desiccant or refrigeration dehumidification methods.

When an ERV system is integrated with HVAC systems, the resulting conditioning and/or heat recovery allow installation of smaller HVAC systems. This provides savings in both capital investments and operating costs.

Another advantage of retro-designing ERVs is that they can actually increase efficiency of cooling and heating systems already in place by reducing the incoming load put on them. Most ERV manufacturers also have optional charcoal and pleated filtration systems to trap airborne odors and particulates, another selling point for energy-conscious owners, and those concerned with indoor air quality.

For more information on energy efficiency, go to the Energy Solutions Alberta web site at www.energysolutionsalberta.com or contact ESA/Climate Change Central at 1-866-609-2700.

Occupancy Sensors Reduce Wasted Electricity

It makes sense to light areas only when they are being used. In office buildings, for example, different areas can have significantly varying levels of occupancy. Depending on the location and usage, lighting areas only when they’re used can save between 22% and 65% of the electricity bill. That’s why installing occupancy sensors for energy efficiency can be one of the most effective and economical decisions a building owner can make.

In the past, building systems were designed based on the assumption that all the space was continuously occupied. Commonly, the lighting for an entire office-building floor would be switched from one location, usually by a circuit breaker in the distribution panel. More recently, the practice has been to provide a simple on-off switch in each work area and in individual offices, boardrooms and washrooms. Both these systems are left to the vagaries of human nature to turn them off.

Occupancy sensors are much more dependable. They are designed to turn lights on or off in the presence or absence of people. Sensors consist of a motion detector, electronic control unit and a relay. Operation occurs when the sensor detects presence in the controlled space, signalling the control unit to operate the relay turning the lights on. Conversely, after a preset time when no presence is detected, the lights are turned off.

There are also sensors designed for use with lighting dimming systems to maintain lighting levels while making use of available daylight. Sensor units are available in wall or ceiling mounted configurations depending on the size of room and coverage area required.

Most detectors sense motion based on passive infrared and/or ultrasonic methods of operation.

Passive infrared (PIR) sensors respond to sudden changes in background heat energy by detecting the appearance of heat energy at a wavelength emitted by humans. They must be able to have a direct "line of sight" to an occupant to detect their presence. The sensor’s sensitivity to motion decreases with distance from the sensor.

Ultrasonic sensors use a quartz crystal that generates a high-frequency (25-40 kHz) signal, which is then emitted into the sensor’s field of coverage, where it bounces off of objects, surfaces and people. When the signal bounces back to the sensor, its frequency is measured. Motion is detected via a slight shift in frequency, triggering an occupancy signal. Ultrasonic sensors can "see" around objects and surfaces if the surfaces in an enclosed area are hard enough to bounce back the sound waves for detection. Generally, ultrasonic sensors cover a larger area, can result in more false triggers and are slightly more expensive than PIR.

Dual-technology sensors utilize both PIR and ultrasonic technology for maximum reliability and coverage with a minimum of false triggers. Both PIR and ultrasonic signals are required to switch on the lights and switch them off, while one or the other is required to keep the lights on. The main factors to be considered in regard to occupancy sensors are:

Control can only be applied to lighting which has quick re-start capability – most high intensity discharge (HID) installations are unsuitable because of their inherent cool-down and warm-up cycle times.

On fluorescent systems, programmed-start ballasts should be used to preserve lamp life in the frequent switching environment that is characteristic of occupancy sensor control.

Table 1 provides an estimate of savings with the installation of occupancy sensors for various spaces.

Space Type	% Savings
Locker/ change room	65
Large work space	55
Washroom	50
Filing room	45
Small work space	40
Corridors	25
Small office	22

Though the most common occupancy sensors are lighting occupancy sensors, there are other applications in the larger commercial field for heating, ventilating and air conditioning (HVAC) systems, which can also reduce energy loads.

For more information on energy efficiency, go to the Energy Solutions Alberta web site at www.energysolutionsalberta.com or contact ESA/Climate Change Central at 1-866-609-2700.

Mark your Calendars for these upcoming Events

Annual General Meeting starts at 5:15 pm
Food: Steak dinner and refreshments to follow until 7:30 pm
Place: Kinsmen Clubhouse located at 9150 Walterdale Hill
Cost: Free Admittance

We know how you love these events so remember it is about reporting to you the member about what we have done this past year on your behalf. It is also about prizes, food, beverages and most importantly the company. Be there and have fun.

And of course there is World Workplace 2005 in Philadelphia, Pa. October 23-25, 2005.

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It has been an interesting year as your Editor (you get a new one this Fall) so I will leave off with these brief words of advice.

Summertime sunshine. It is as simple as that. So take off that watch of yours, get a nice cool glass of water (or other beverage) and go sit outside and listen to the grass grow. And when you are done that pick up a book and read until it gets too dark to see. After that use your imagination and solve the problems of the world and then sleep a good solid eight (yes 8) hours. Now that is a recipe for a good day that will lead into another even better day as you implement the solutions to the problems of the world. So take off your watch…..

Lead where we can ~ follow where we must ~ listen always ~ understand patiently.

In this issue

Presidents Message – John F. McLaughlin, CFM