7NOX Blog
Insights and helpful tips for facilities managers and property owners
What is an Overtime HVAC System?
If you have commercial tenants, they've likely scheduled heating or air conditioning outside of your building’s usual business hours. Managers and owners commonly refer to these extra hours as overtime HVAC, after-hours HVAC,...
Light Flicker and Its Effects on Tenant Health
Successful properties have lighting that suits the needs of their occupants. Proper lighting can boost productivity, mood and an overall sense of worker wellbeing. While bad lighting can do the opposite. Light flicker is...
5 Tips for Surviving Supply Chain Issues
Are you finding it hard to procure office equipment? Is your supply closet running short on toilet paper? Supply chain issues are a global problem, and shortages are hitting every sector. Office managers in the U.S. are finding...
3 Ways Your HVAC System Impacts Fire Protection
Fire protection systems are one of the most complex and ubiquitous structures within facilities today. They contain many parts intertwined with other building components. For example, emergency lighting and smoke detectors wire...
HVAC Systems and Hydrogen Peroxide Decontamination (Deprox)
The COVID pandemic increased awareness and use of relatively new decontamination methods for medical facilities. In addition to standard surface cleaning and disinfection, hospital managers employ vaporized hydrogen peroxide...
Prepping Your HVAC System to Lower COVID Transmission this Winter
Colder weather often brings spikes in COVID-19 and influenza cases. With this in mind, we should continue promoting vaccinations, mask wearing, social distancing, surface cleaning and handwashing inside your buildings. However,...
Best FM Online Learning Resources for 2022
In our quest to compile a list of the best FM online learning resources for 2022, we looked at several important factors. For one, we wanted a good mix of quality and convenience. Some FMs will be looking for professional...
4 Common Types of Touch Screens and How They Work
Touch screens are ubiquitous. We use them at the grocery store to check out, and at the airport to check in. They’re at visitor center kiosks, our banks, our homes and even in our cars. And today, because they’re the primary...
What is the Niagara Framework?
The Niagara Framework (NF) is developed by Tridium, and if you visit the company’s website, you will learn Niagara is a “comprehensive software platform for the development and deployment of connected products and...
How to Use Knowledge Transfer to Lower the Impact of Retiring Staff
Today baby boomers and seasoned FM pros are retiring at a hasty clip. According to IFMA Foundation’s Global Workforce Initiative (GWI), more than 50% of FMs will retire over the next decade or so. The change is having a dramatic...
Positive vs Negative Pressure Rooms
Many industries use pressurised rooms to stop cross-contamination between one area of a building and another. For example, semiconductor makers use positive pressure rooms (PPR) to ensure their integrated chips are free of...
Communication and the Art of Influence
In every act of communication, we strive to influence others. Even when our communication is simply to inform, we seek to align someone else’s view of reality to ours. While we can influence others’ behaviors, the higher aim is...
The FM Checklist for SaaS Procurement
Software-as-a-service (SaaS) is a growing trend in FM because of several advantages cloud-based services deliver over in-house development. For one, it’s generally cheaper to outsource your software needs rather than spend time...
6 Skills FMs Will Need Beyond 2021
Facilities managers must master many skills to be effective. Communication, multi-tasking, technical knowledge, and resilience to name a few. But in a market disrupted by pandemics, climate change, tech innovations and new...
Ransomware: Protecting Your Facilities
Ransomware attacks are now a global threat. Between 2019 and 2020, attacks rose by 62% worldwide according to the 2020 Internet Crime Report. Attacks like the Colonial Pipeline in May 2021 are high profile cases that garner...
5 Technical Writing Tips for Facilities Managers
Technical writing skills are essential for today’s facilities managers, who must produce a wide range of communications for a variety of readers. One day, you might be writing a CAPEX proposal for an executive, the next pinning...
Documenting Your After-Hours AC for NABERS
Counting every kWh your property uses is important for your NABERS Energy Rating assessment. The more detailed your records, the more accurate your rating will be. Getting a true picture of your energy consumption means...
Tips for Calculating an After-Hours AC Rate
After-hours HVAC charges are a sticky OPEX budget item. Normal core hour rates are predictable. Power providers determine your property's kWh costs for you. But with after-hours AC, managers must calculate the hourly rate...
What is After-Hours HVAC?
Definition: After-hours HVAC is the delivery and maintenance of a facility’s heating and air-conditioning services, outside regular operating hours, for the benefit of a tenant. Tenants pay an hourly rate (usually specified in a...
4 Reasons to Automate Your After-Hours HVAC Program
If you haven’t yet automated your after-hours HVAC program or, worse, have no program at all, you’re missing out on benefits that maximise your staff productivity and cut out wasted time. Automation also helps increase tenant...
After-Hours HVAC: 5 Reasons to Start Charging Tenants
Charging tenants for after-hours air conditioning (AHAC) presents many difficult questions for FMs. How do I calculate an hourly rate? How do I separate after-hours billing from normal utility OPEX? Do I have enough resources...
Including AHAC Charges in Your Commercial Lease
If you’re new to after-hours air conditioning (AHAC), you may find it hard getting started drafting a lease or tenancy notice. AHAC is a complex topic, and each property requires a bespoke solution. However, there are a few...
Lower Your Staffing Costs with After-Hours HVAC Automation
Scheduling after-hours AC can be an expensive and cumbersome process. It’s usually a mishmash of spreadsheets, sticky note reminders, voice mails, and impatient tenants — all trying to accomplish a task made overly complicated...
How Energy Management Systems Help Your Properties
The move to smart buildings is here, and with it the demand for “smart power.” Innovations in wireless technology, monitoring hardware and cloud-based data are all making energy management systems a must have for FMs. Energy...
