Latest news with #publicbuildings
CTV News
6 days ago
- General
- CTV News
N.S. prioritizing lumber in public buildings
Atlantic Watch Nova Scotia plans to use more wood to build and heat public buildings.
Zawya
04-07-2025
- Business
- Zawya
South Africa: A facility manager's guide to measuring water savings
Why water conservation is key to sustainable facility management ? Water is no longer an invisible utility; it's a vital resource under stress. Facility managers are on the front lines of sustainability, especially in public and commercial buildings where restrooms can account for up to 90% of water use. With rising operational costs, environmental regulations, and ESG commitments, water conservation is no longer optional, it's essential. Whether it's a commercial office block, airport, hospital, or shopping centre, smart water management is fast becoming a top priority. Measuring and verifying water savings helps build a compelling business case for sustainable upgrades and ensures compliance with green building standards like Leed, Breeam, CE marking, and Well. Our guide explores practical, data-driven ways facility managers can measure water savings, focusing especially on public washrooms where usage is high, visibility is low, and potential for impact is significant. Step 1: Understand your baseline water consumption Before savings can be measured, it's essential to understand current usage. This starts with establishing a baseline, ideally segmented by location, fixture type, and time period. How to create a baseline: - Pull historic utility bills (preferably 12 months) to calculate average monthly and annual usage in m³ (cubic metres). - Use sub-metering in high-use zones, like washrooms, kitchens, and maintenance areas. - Allow Propelair to conduct a washroom audit by counting the number and types of toilets and urinals in your washrooms and installing flush counters to provide you with an accurate toilet water usage. Fact: A typical 6-litre toilet flushing 100 times/day uses 219,000 litres/year. (that's a staggering 1,460 standard household bathtubs, considering that the average bath holds 150 litres) Multiply by the number of toilets, and you'll see how quickly water use adds up. Step 2: Install water-saving fixtures and track the difference Modern fixtures such as Propelair's OneThreeFive can significantly reduce water consumption, but savings only become meaningful if they're measurable. Example: A shopping centre with 20 Propelair toilets, each used 100 times/day, would save over 850,000 litres/year compared to 6-litre systems. These savings equate to thousands in monetary value, and in water and sewage fees. Step 3: Use IoT and QR code tracking to monitor performance Without visibility, waste continues. Installing IoT-connected fixtures and pairing them with QR code-enabled maintenance platforms (like the system built into Propelair), you are able to track usage volume by time period or location; identify leaks, and non-operational units quickly; and monitor performance trends to trigger alerts for overuse or underuse. Tip: Facilities using the Propelair Connect platform can benchmark across multiple sites, enabling group-wide sustainability reporting and ESG compliance. Step 4: Calculate true cost savings (including sewerage) A common pitfall is only calculating savings based on water supply charges. However, in many regions (including the UK, EU, and South Africa), sewerage costs are calculated at 90–95% of metered water use—and these charges can exceed the water bill itself. Simply stated, by passing less wastewater through commercial plumbing systems, sewerage costs are reduced. Together with the actual cost of the water being used, the total financial savings outweighs the water savings by far. Step 5: Benchmark and verify results To build credibility and secure future budgets for sustainable upgrades, measurable impact must be verified. Use tools like monthly water utility reports, smart meter systems, and IoT dashboards. QR code based asset tracking also helps. Conduct before-and-after comparison studies. Create water savings reports to share outcomes with stakeholders and compliance officers. These should include baseline consumption, upgrade summaries, projected vs. actual savings, and payback periods. A well-documented water reduction case study can also be used for green building certifications, grant applications, or award submissions. Step 6: Encourage behavioural change Technology alone won't save water. Engage your building users and cleaning teams to reinforce positive habits such as placing signage in cubicles encouraging responsible flushing, running staff awareness campaigns, training maintenance teams to report issues via app-based systems like Propelair Connect, rather than slower manual channels or traditional reporting structures. Step 7: Schedule preventative maintenance Leaky cisterns or inefficient valves can undo even the best water-saving plans. Include your washroom systems in a preventative maintenance schedule. Propelair offers a Periodic Service Plan that includes audio-visual inspections of toilet systems and surrounding pipework, leak detection, replacement of flow regulators and lid and seat seals, voltage checks to ensure reliable flushing and QR-code enabled service logging. Proactive service helps maintain optimal performance and extends product lifespan—preserving your investment and sustainability impact. Tip: Link water saving to your ESG goals. Measuring water savings isn't just a utility management exercise, it's an ESG advantage whereby facility managers can report verified water savings, reduce water-stress impact in drought-prone areas and demonstrating resource efficiency to investors and regulators. A connected washroom system like Propelair's provides auditable ESG data, a must-have for listed companies or those with international sustainability targets. Make savings happen! Visit our webpage now to calculate your savings and learn how to purchase a Propelair toilet. Conclusion: Make water a visible win Sustainable facility management starts with visibility. With modern data tools and low-water innovations like Propelair, water savings can be measured, verified, and celebrated. Facility managers are no longer just operations enablers, they're sustainability champions! Start with your washrooms: track usage, upgrade smartly, and measure results. Not only will you cut costs, but you'll also help preserve one of the planet's most precious resources. About Propelair Propelair is an international cleantech company that utilises technology to produce and install one of the worlds' lowest water-flush toilets. Our innovation replaces up to 7.65lt of water with 70lt of air to achieve an 85% water saving, per flush. We positively contribute and enable our global customers across the healthcare, manufacturing, retail, education, transport, commercial and industrial markets to change the way the world consumes water. info@ | | +44 1268 548322 (EU) | +27 83 273 5711 (SSA) | +971 52 108 4092 (UAE) | +66 90 983 2384 (APEC) | +27 83 273 5711 All rights reserved. © 2022. Provided by SyndiGate Media Inc. (
Irish Times
02-07-2025
- Business
- Irish Times
A depressing statement
Sir, – If the State is to prioritise 'cost and efficiency over design standards and aesthetics' according to Minister for Public Expenditure Jack Chambers (' Cost to take priority over 'aesthetics' in future State infrastructure projects ,' June 27th), this surely rates as one of the most depressing statements ever made by a Government Minister. It is breathtaking in its philistinism and extraordinary in its one-dimensionality. Good design needn't cost a fortune – other European countries such as Austria, Denmark and The Netherlands seemingly have had no difficulty in constructing beautiful and interesting buildings. An attractive environment also carries with it feelings of wellbeing and national pride. We are one of the richest countries in the world and can afford to build beautiful. READ MORE We are also one of most incompetent and inefficient when it comes to public projects, and that has little or nothing to do with the costs of aesthetically pleasing design. The Minister might consider that public buildings have long lives and the ugliness that men do will inflict it on many generations to come. Dublin City Council's offices at Wood Quay and Kildare County Council's headquarters in Naas are just two carbuncles about which one has to apologise to bemused foreign visitors. And these excrescences will be with us for a long time. Finally, 'design standards' are absolutely critical to the provision of proper and workable public infrastructure – they are not an optional extra. If the Minister is worried about costs (and he should be – see the national children's hospital, for instance) he would be more productively employed sorting out the not-fit-for-purpose planning and public procurement systems, and the seemingly complacent attitude of many public authorities to tolerating vast cost overruns for all sorts of projects. – Yours, etc, IAN D'ALTON, Naas, Co Kildare.
BBC News
19-06-2025
- Business
- BBC News
Hospitals, schools and courts to get funding boost
The UK government has pledged more money for "crumbling" hospitals, schools and courts as part of a ten year infrastructure strategy. It will spend £9bn a year over the next decade to fix and replace buildings, but is yet to publish a list identifying major projects such as new roads and rail strategy is a cornerstone of the government's plans to put some life into Britain's sluggish economic growth, and promises £725bn of funding over a announcements on Thursday focussed on what the Chief Secretary to the Treasury Darren Jones called a "soaring maintenance backlog" in health, education and justice buildings. The strategy promised a more rounded plan for major schemes, but the publication of a new pipeline of hundreds of projects has been delayed until said the projects will be shown on a map of the said the government would be doing "fewer things better instead of the same things badly", a sign that the list of more than 600 projects inherited from the Conservatives may be cut was no formal green light at this stage for the long-promised northern high-speed rail link between Liverpool and for the link were first revealed in May 2024 after the cancellation of HS2's northern Treasury also indicated it was looking at new models for funding economic projects, including public private partnerships, and would report back by the autumn Rachel Reeves said: "Crumbling public buildings are a sign of the decay that has seeped into our everyday lives because of a total failure to plan and invest."But Conservative shadow minister Richard Fuller said the previous government "had to deal with a series of economic disruptions including the impact of Covid, the unwinding of quantitative easing across all advanced economies, and the invasion of Ukraine by Russia"."The global impact of these were to disrupt supply chains, increase inflation, and raise interest rates, " Fuller these shocks, the last government increased public spending on capital projects, he said. The £725bn will be spent on projects including rebuilding and maintaining schools, colleges, and hospitals, and prisons will be will be an environmental planning reform package of £500m over three years to speed up how Natural England and the Environment Agency process planning £8bn will go on flood defences over the ten years, and £1bn has been earmarked for repairing bridges, flyovers and is £39bn for affordable homes, and £15.6bn for regional Murison, chief executive of the Northern Powerhouse Partnership, said the investments "will both boost productivity and support the decarbonisation of our economy".
BBC News
18-06-2025
- Business
- BBC News
Community hub to open in former council office in Williton
Three publicly owned buildings will be sold off following the completed refurbishment of a former council Somerset House, on Killick Way in Williton, was the joint headquarters of Somerset West and Taunton Council until the council's abolition in April taking over the building, Somerset Council had been carrying out refurbishment work to allow the village library and other services to operate out of the site, the Local Democracy Reporting Service the building due to reopen on 25 June, the council said it would sell off the former library, children's centre and Beckett House, with the proceeds being used to fund front-line services. Since Somerset Council officially took over, no in-person meetings had been held at West Somerset House – with all meetings of its planning committee west taking place in Taunton and being decision to remodel the building was taken by the council in March Federica Smith-Roberts, the lead member for communities, housing and culture said: "By bringing the library, customer access point and other services together under one roof, we're creating a hub where people can access vital services and get support."The ground floor of the revamped West Somerset House will comprise the library, registration service and children's addition to selling off the former library building and children's centre, the council also intended to dispose of Beckett House on Bridge head of property Simon Lewis said the council's ongoing financial emergency meant it was not in the public interest for these surplus assets to be council has declined to state how much it expects to raise from the sale of these three buildings, citing commercial sensitivity.
