Students who were among the 30 who participated this year. Click to play video.

Click to play video. On March 9, 2012 at Adobe headquarters, the Silicon Valley Chapter of AFE hosted the 50th Anniversary of Day with a Facility Professional. It was another exciting sneak peak to the world of facility management for a new generation of students. Conceived 50 years ago by AFE Fellow Eric Bergtraun, the format remains the same. Professional hosts are paired with students for a day of job shadowing. It may sound simple, but the experience has transformed the lives and career paths of several generations of Silicon Valley facility managers.

This video provides an overview of the event and highlights the students’ enthusiasm about what they learned from the facilities professionals.

For more information go to the Silicon Valley Chapter of the Association for Facility Engineering.

Click to see additional videos of recent AFE tours.

For additional information on joining the Silicon Valley Chapter of the Association for Facilities Engineering contact Jim Elder at 408-855-1105 or go to http://afe39.org/.

Michael Bukay is New Media Chair for the AFE Silicon Valley Chapter and owner of Michael Bukay & Associates which produces educational and marketing videos for the web. He can be reached at 510-232-9830 or http://bukaymedia.com/. Download a brochure on how web-based informational and marketing videos can help your organization to better reach its goals.

Male Bluebird alond the SF Bay trail in Point Richmond, CA. Click to play video.

Over the years I would occasionally spot Western Bluebirds on sunny afternoons in Miller Knox Regional Shoreline Park in Point Richmond on my frequent walks. However, I had a difficult time consistently locating them. They are small birds–about the size of a sparrow. This winter, I decided to make a concerted effort to locate them and film them. After several hikes, I found a small flock of about eight Bluebirds spending the late afternoon in an off-limits fenced in area between the Ferry Point fishing pier and the picnic area. That is where I was able to get most of the video shots for this movie.

As time went by, I have seen them throughout the entire park. They like semi-open areas and often catch insects flying above the grass or on the ground in the grass. They are very social and seem to be curious about humans who watch them. On my last visit they would perch on picnic tables and nearby tree branches until they saw an insect to catch. They would allow me to get to within 20 feet of them.

I am continually amazed with the immense diversity and beauty of the wildlife that live in the Point Richmond area. I hope you enjoy the video!

NASA Sustainability Base relies on an exoskeleton supporting the building from outside. Renderings by William McDonough + Partners

This is a special video tour of the new NASA Sustainability Base at Moffett Field CA. Almost 50 Silicon Valley Association for Facilities Engineering members and guests got to explore the new “lunar-shaped” structures that incorporate a long list of state-of-the-art features including:

* A ground-source heating system that uses 106 geothermal wells
* Plumbing systems that target a 90% reduction in potable water consumption
* Natural lighting optimization
* An exoskeleton supporting the building from the outside
* Energy-efficient power system using roof top photovoltaics and 2nd generation Bloom Box fuel cells, and
* Radiant cooling ceiling tiles that also reduce ambient noise.

Following the tour, we enjoyed food, wine, beer, an extensive Q & A period, and an array of networking opportunities. Special thanks to Computer Air Power Systems (CAPS) for sponsoring the event along with the many NASA participants, contractors and AFE members who made this eye-opening event possible. Please see the credits at the end of the video for additional people and organizations that made this event possible.

Our AFE Holiday Party was well-attended. A lot of networking took place and fun was had by all. Click to play video.

Our party, held at the beautiful Arya Restuarant in Cupertino, was well-attended and the food was delicious! Chapter president Bob Adamo of Technical Builders, Inc. provided a brief summary of the chapter’s accomplishments in 2011, and thanked our sponsors and advertisers for providing financial support for the chapter. Board members were acknowledged and upcoming events and tours were announced for 2012. For additional information on joining the Silicon Valley Chapter of the Association for Facilities Engineering contact Jim Elder at 408-855-1105 or go to http://afe.org/.

Michael Bukay is New Media Chair for the AFE Silicon Valley Chapter and owner of Michael Bukay & Associates which produces educational and marketing videos for the web. He can be reached at 510-232-9830 or http://bukaymedia.com/.

After much persistent effort, this frog finally captured the elusive flower. Click to play video.

This frog was obsessed with attacking a flower at the BioPark in Albuquerque, New Mexico. I used to play this game with frogs when I was fishing as a kid. Goofing on a frog was one way to pass the time while waiting for the fish to bite. I am amazed at how far a frog will go away from the water when chasing a small wiggling object that it is programmed to think is food. The frog in this video chased the flower about 5′ onto dry land.

Reinhard Hanselka describing the cause and results of a hydrogen explosion at a battery storage facility. Click to play video.

According to Reinhard Hanselka, “We have enough regulations! Now the challenge is to streamline the regulations so that we can do business correctly, safely, and competitively.” At his recent presentation to AFE members and guests, Reinhard communicated the logic behind the regulations along with strategies for mitigation.

On November 17th Reinhard presented “Upcoming Changes to the Building, Electrical, Fire, and Mechanical Codes” to an interested group of facility professionals who posed many questions.

The presentation provided valuable information useful to facilities managers, architects, and their vendors. Reinhard emphasized that although many of the upcoming regulations have been reduced and streamlined, some have become more stringent. He emphasized how the new “L” Occupancy rules provide architects with greater flexibility when designing high rise buildings that contain laboratories that use hazardous chemicals. He also presented numerous case histories of emergencies resulting from mistakes and/or non-compliance, and emphasized how the proper selection of construction materials is critical to cost-effective operations, safety, and compliance.

Topics discussed in the November 17th presentation included changes in:

* Local amendments to international codes
* Regulations that allow the dilution of toxic gases via ventilation as an acceptable mitigation method
* Fire hazards of chromatography instruments commonly used in laboratories
* Requirements for standby, emergency, and continuous backup power supplies
* Laboratory Toxic Gas Ordinance guidelines
* Maximum allowable quantities of hazardous chemicals, and containment requirements, for different levels of high rise buildings
* Regulations affecting egress
* Fire safety during construction
* Compressed gas regulations
* Biosafety in microbiological and biomedical laboratories
* Less stringent laboratory occupancy requirements

Reinhard mentioned that an excellent resource is the http://unidocs.org website for inventory reporting and for finding information about classification of chemicals. If you are concerned or confused about how current and upcoming Code regulations may affect your business, Reinhard encourages you to submit your questions to:

Reinhard Hanselka, PE, REA of MW Group, PO Box 361656, Milpitas, CA 95036, or rhanselka@aol.com.
He receives about two thousand questions a year and answers all of them. Some of these are published in the “Reinhard’s Code Corner” of AFE Silicon Valley Chapter of the Association for Facilities Engineering newsletter.

This activity was sponsored by the Silicon Valley Chapter of the AFE. In addition to being a lot of fun, these gatherings provide excellent networking opportunities. We bring together professionals who ensure the optimal operation of plants, grounds and offices at Fortune 500 manufacturers, universities, medical centers, government agencies and innovative small firms from around the world. And, they all look to AFE as the leading technical resource on engineering issues. AFE’s mission is to provide education, certification, technical information and other relevant resources to plant and facility engineering, operation and maintenance.

Michael Bukay is New Media Chair for the AFE Silicon Valley Chapter and owner of Michael Bukay & Associates which provides industrial video communication services to facilities and vendors. He can be reached at 510-232-9830 or http://bukaymedia.com/.

Red Fox hunting along the Landfill Loop Trail in Richmond, CA. Click to play video.

I encountered this red fox while walking around the Landfill Loop Trail at Garbage Mountain. I was surprised to see the fox out in mid day. It appeared to be hunting. Unlike our native tree-climbing little native grey fox, which feeds primarily inland on berries and small rodents, the red fox is a larger predator that preys on ducks and shore birds, including rare and endangered rails.

The Landfill Loop Trail incorporates fantastc views of San Pablo Bay, Wildcat and San Pablo Creeks with remarkable examples of industrial water conservation and reuse, resource recovery, electrical generation, recycling and recreation.
click here for a trail guide and additional information.

I thought the web-building process was amazing before I grabbed my camera–but even more so after I slowed down the footage to 10% of normal speed! Click to play video.

Spiders are incredible engineers. This is a slow motion and normal speed close-up movie of a common garden spider building a web. I thought the web-building process was amazing before I grabbed my camera–but even more so after I slowed down the footage to 10% of normal speed! So fast and efficient is this spider as it extracts silk from its abdomen, shifts its grip on the silk fibers from claw to claw, measures distances, and creates just the right amount of tension to keep the web taught. Of great interest to me was how the spider attached the silk fiber at each junction.

After a little research on “How Things Work” at http://tinyurl.com/3vewxjk I learned that spiders make both sticky and non-sticky silk fibers when constructing a web. The non-sticky silk fibers are the radial fibers going from the center of the web to the outside edges. The sticky “cross beam” fibers are the ones that are being constructed in this film. At each silk junction a new sticky silk fiber is attached to a supporting non-sticky fiber. While watching how the spider adeptly manipulated the web, its position, tension on the silk, extraction of the silk from its abdomen, and the attachment of the thread at each junction, I was filled with wonder! So, I decided to slow the motion to 10% of normal speed so I could better see the details.

At first I thought the spider tied some sort of a knot at each junction. However, when I watch in slow motion, this does not appear to be the case. The spider uses a claw to grab the target non-sticky fiber, and appears to attach the sticky fiber to a location below the claw. I suspect that the spider’s leg has another claw or spike (hidden from view) that it uses to line up the thread and hold it in place at the junction point while it pulls the abdomen away to extract the next thread of silk. What really amazes me is how well the silk threads stick together! It looks like they are being held together by a natural form of contact cement! If any spider experts watching this better understand how the silk junction bond is formed, please leave a explanatory comment.

In case you are wondering what the white stuff that the spider is chewing on at the end, it is pieces of silk that it cleaned up from the old web that it is recycling.

Here are some technical details about this shoot: The spider is about 1″ long and my lens distance varied from about 6-12′ from the spider. I used a Panasonic GH2 with the stock 14 – 140 mm lens and recorded the footage at 1080i and edited it at 720p30.

Meanwhile, I also discovered that scientists have successfully implanted silk making genes from spiders into goats and are harvesting the silk from the goat’s milk! The high tensile strength of spider silk combined with its flexibility and stretch ability appear to have great potential for use in many fields including medicine.
For more on this go to http://tinyurl.com/2eew8n5.

The tour included a demonstration of how improperly sized piping can result in water hammer. Click to play video.

Facilities operation and maintenance personnel are typically kinesthetic learners. They tend to learn best by doing and observing, rather than following complex written procedures. On July 27, 2011 the Association for Facilities Engineering (AFE) members and guests toured of the state-of-the-art, 100,000 square foot Loyd E. Williams Pipe Trades Training Center, where UA 393 apprentices and journeymen learn and hone their skills. You will be amazed at the vast array of hands-on training technologies, labs, and demonstrations used to train our local trades professionals. The tour included visits to:

·    Rigging Area for training how to lift heavy objects such as air handlers, boilers, and chillers;
·    Basic Electricity and Digital Control Lab for training on how to work on the vast array of energy management control systems;
·    Pneumatics Lab for learning how to work with compressed air and how to integrate pneumatic control systems with the newer digital control systems;
·    Backflow Prevention Lab for learning how to install, test, and repair backflow preventers;
·    Test and Balance Lab for learning how to adjust and balance HCAC systems for optimum efficiency;
·    Model Hospital Operating Room for learning about piping systems for medical gases and adjusting air flow in an operating room;
·    Steam Lab that uses glass piping to facilitate learning by enabling students to observe the liquid/gas change of state; and a
·    Water Hammer Demonstration using ultraviolet light and glass piping to illustrate how improperly sized piping can result in water hammer.

Click for more information on the Pipe Trades Training Center.

Presentation on the Use of Video
After the tour, Michael Bukay gave a presentation about how facilities personnel and vendors can harness the power of video to save time and money. Click to view a synopsis of the “Don’t Just Tell Me…SHOW ME!” presentation.

Michael Bukay is an Industrial Video Producer and the New Media Chair of the Silicon Valley Chapter of the AFE. Examples of his work can be seen at http://bukaymedia.com/.

A video demonstration of the rope-eating Chopper Pump. Click to play video.

• Demonstrate the benefits of your company’s products, capabilities, and services;
• Show how to operate and maintain complex equipment;
• Train personnel on how to deal with site-specific critical equipment during emergencies; and the importance of
• Documenting special projects for training, archiving, and marketing purposes.

This video is based excerpts from a presentation made to the Silicon Valley Chapter of the Association of Facilities Engineering (AFE) on July 27, 2011.

A special thank you goes out to the staff of the Pipe Trades Training Center for hosting this event; and to Jim Elder of Computer Air/Power Systems, Bob Adamo and Kady Blake of Technical Builders, and Raffy Espiritu of Clean Innovation for helping create and organize this event.

This activity was sponsored by the Silicon Valley Chapters of the AFE. In addition to being a lot of fun, these gatherings provide excellent networking opportunities. We bring together professionals who ensure the optimal operation of plants, grounds and offices at Fortune 500 manufacturers, universities, medical centers, government agencies and innovative small firms from around the world. And, they all look to AFE as the leading technical resource on engineering issues. AFE’s mission is to provide education, certification, technical information and other relevant resources to plant and facility engineering, operation and maintenance.

Michael Bukay is New Media Chair for the AFE Silicon Valley Chapter and owner of Michael Bukay & Associates which provides industrial video communication services to facilities and vendors. He can be reached at 510-232-9830 or http://bukaymedia.com/.