Facility Maintenance

Update Your Offices by Adding Full Wall Planning Surfaces

Update Your Office with Full Wall Planning Surface

Tired of the same old boring walls in your conference room? How about that size challenged white board that always seems to run out of space and needs to be erased just when ideas are really flowing?   A&K Painting Company has winning solutions for your team. We can turn your offices and meeting rooms into exceptional work and learning spaces, by adding planning and work surfaces to any wall or area of your choosing.

We provide the design know how and many options to update and improve the value of your offices.  A&K Painting is the recognized commercial painting contractor with expertise in paint and wallcovering.  We make it easy to turn a section of a wall, a whole wall or a whole room into a dry erase work surface.  We can turn your conference room’s walls into excellent learning tools by utilizing these types of products.  We offer many options and different types of material to choose from based on your, needs, preferences and budget. CRE Pros, property owners and others, contact the A&K Painting Team to add innovative learning environments.

Indoor GPS- How it Will Benefit Users and Business

indoorGPSIn recent years, companies have been developing something called IPS, or indoor positioning service, which would allow your phone, tablet or any other wireless enabled device to be constantly tracking certain signals in your location by using Wi-Fi signals that already exist in the building.   Some companies, such as Google, already offer mobile maps of locations like shopping malls and airports, and according to a recent Wall Street Journal article, analysts believe that further advanced indoor mapping and tracking could be used to “direct users to their gate at the airport, provide audio tours in museums or push offers to consumers based on where they are standing inside a store”.  Also, Opus Research analyst Greg Sterling “believes that data about consumers’ indoor whereabouts could be extraordinarily valuable for retailers studying foot traffic and making merchandising decisions”.

Another extremely large market that could benefit from an indoor GPS application would be the medical field; especially medical centers that have massive offices or campuses.  Time is sometimes of an essence when it comes to hospitals and people would probably rather not spend that time trying to find where their loved one’s room is located or even what building their appointment is in.  An indoor GPS would allow people to quickly find their destination and probably reduce stress levels dramatically.  This could also apply to college campuses, where students are notoriously late on their first day because they can’t find their classroom.

One possible drawback to an indoor GPS would be privacy; however, it is highly unlikely a company would market a service unless there are definitive guarantees that your data is safe and your location won’t fall into undesirable hands.  There also wouldn’t be such a large number of companies interested in the indoor GPS market if they thought it would have serious privacy risks.  Overall, despite the privacy concerns, the indoor GPS will probably be highly beneficial for consumers in the near future, but more so, very profitable for the retail, hospitality, entertainment and medical industries.

 

CREW’s 7th Annual Casino Night Supports Scholarships

crewcasino

It’s that time of year again!  The time for April showers, spring cleaning and CREW’s 7th Annual Casino Night!  This year, the Commercial Real Estate Women’s event is being held on April 25th at The Big Chill located in uptown Charlotte.  According to A&K’s Whitney Bauman, the co-chair of the event, there is an expected record turn-out with over 300 attendees, so this event is a great real estate networking opportunity.  It’s also an excellent way to support the future of the commercial real estate industry, because all the proceeds from the event support scholarship programs for students in fields of commercial real estate through the CREW Foundation and the Belk College of Business and UNC Charlotte.  Plus, it should be a lot of fun!  There will be a silent auction, casino games with funny money, and there will even be a photo booth.  Of course, there will also be hors d’oeuvres and drinks, and valet parking will be included in the ticket.  So all-in-all, if you want to have some fun, network with other real estate professionals, and support a good cause, this is the perfect event for you!

For more information or to register to attend, please visit the CREW Charlotte website.

Greatest Value of BIM: Facility Maintenance

BIM Diagram

Building information modeling, or BIM, provides complete plans for every component and area of a facility and it is a three dimensional shared resource for information.  It also contains complete information on a facility’s HVAC components, plumbing fixtures, doors and windows.

Since BIM is such a comprehensive tool, it is an excellent tool for facility maintenance.  Even though it seems that the highest cost for any building’s life-cycle-cost is design and construction, it actually comes from operating and maintaining the building for 20 plus years.  This is where BIM comes in; BIM can help to streamline the process of maintaining a facility, by showing a clearer picture of what needs to be periodically checked, upgraded or replaced.  BIM can not only be useful for repair, but also for prevention, by allowing issues to be resolved before they become a problem.  Since BIM does streamline the process of maintaining a facility, it will result in lower operating costs for the facility. Overall, building information modeling is an extremely valuable tool for facility maintenance.

Central Piedmont Community College Works to Expand and Meet Demands

Central Piedmont Community College

The surging enrollment at Central Piedmont Community College in Charlotte has created expansion needs. CPCC has had a 35 percent growth in full-time students from 2005 to 2012.  According to an article about CPCC’s growth needs on the Charlotte Observer’s website, North Carolina community colleges are required to provide 100 square feet of instructional space for every full-time student and CPCC averages just 58 square feet per student over its six campuses.

The Observer article quoted CPCC President Tony Zeiss saying “We’ve grown so rapidly and have fallen so far behind in space that, in many instances, we’ve had to turn people away,” he said. “This community faces the same skills gap that the rest of America faces. We have the ability to train people, but we need the labs and space to do it.

To meet requirements and to plan for the future, the school has identified 20 projects that will add space with a total cost of $430 million. CPCC is likely to request Mecklenburg County commissioners to grant a bond referendum that will fund a three year plan for CPCC’s top 10 projects.  Lland acquisitions at five CPCC campuses and five construction projects will provide the classroom and lab space to train students for mostly health sciences, energy and information technology jobs.  “The college needs new and renovated classrooms, labs and support space to meet Mecklenburg’s educational and training needs and prepare workers for jobs,” the article quoted Zeiss.

We’re proud to be a part of the growth in Mecklenburg County and the Carolinas.
Similarly, due to growth, A&K Painting Company had a demand for expanded training and operations space.  To better serve our customers, last year we made the decision to invest in our training and operations capacity and created the OTS, our Operations Training Showroom.  The state-of-the-art training facility combined with a new showroom and operations facility establishes A&K as the leading commercial painting contractor.