Category: Grounds Management

5 Security Measures You Can Take to Help Protect Your Facility

Business owners with workplaces or commercial facilities have a duty to provide a safe environment for workers and visitors alike. This includes protecting people within the grounds while keeping the premises safe from breaches of security. Below, we discuss five essential safety measures for the external protection of your premises.

Modern Parking Garage at Night

Parking Structures—Be Smart about Maintenance

As a facilities manager, are you prepared for the task of managing a parking structure? These multistory facilities are complex. A parking structure is more like a highway bridge than a traditional building with an envelope because a parking structure’s framing system is exposed to environmental conditions that include freezing and thawing cycles, moisture, and […]

Snow shovel on facility sidewalk

Holiday Hazards: Ice and Snow Removal

It could be a long, cold winter. If your workers have to dig out, can they do it without hurting themselves? Most workers know that shoveling snow and breaking up ice can be exhausting, but they may not be aware of the extent of their risks.

Aerial view of cars in parking lot

Safety Tips for Your Facility’s Parking Lot

Under the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA), business and/or facility owners have a responsibility to provide a safe and healthy workplace. While this is straightforward on its surface, what many facility managers may not realize is that maintaining a safe work environment at their (or their organization’s) facilities can extend beyond their front door and […]

Businessman Smoking Outside Facility

What’s the Tobacco Policy at Your Facility?

The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) says that approximately 20% of working adults use some sort of tobacco products, with almost 5% of these folks using two or more tobacco products “every day” or “some days.”

Christmas lights resting on metal ladder

Holiday Hazards: Electrocution

34-year-old James Byrnes of North Beach, Maryland, was working from a ladder, hanging Christmas lights at his neighbor’s home in December 2013, when he came into contact with an overhead power line and was electrocuted. That same month, 13-year-old Georgia Marshall of Barry, South Wales, United Kingdom, was electrocuted while helping her father retrieve Christmas […]

Office lobby decorated for Christmas

Holiday Hazards: Fires

By itself, winter carries a heightened risk of fire, because it involves more of the things that create warmth and light—fireplaces, space heaters, candles, cozy blankets. During the holidays, even more light, heat, and potentially flammable decorations are added to that mix.

Wildfire hazard sign with wildfire in background

Wildfire Preparation Tips for Your Facility

Wildfires can happen at any time, though changes in land use combined with the steady and continuing rise of global temperatures over the past decades have helped create the perfect environmental conditions for them to thrive. To compound the problem, more and more people are living and working in communities where the risks posed by […]

Shredded tire, tire crumbs

Do You Use Tire Crumb Rubber at Your Facility? You Should Read This Study

Recycled tire crumb rubber has a variety of potential uses in facility design, from flooring to mulching to playgrounds or playing fields. The EPA, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention/Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, and the Consumer Product Safety Commission have released the first report in their investigation into recycled tire crumbs, […]

water sprinklers watering the lawn

Winterizing Your Irrigation System: What’s the Process?

In yesterday’s post, we took a quick look at professional and do-it-yourself (DIY) options for winterizing your irrigation systems, with a deeper focus on choosing the right equipment for the job. Today, we’ll take a walk through the process of winterizing, once you have all your equipment—including an appropriately sized air compressor—in place.