Facility Maintenance

A&K Painting Company Wins Two National Awards

A&K Wins Two National Awards

A&K Painting Company has won both the Industrial Interior Painting award category and the Commercial Wallcovering award category, in the 2013 Picture it Painted Professionally awards program of PDCA, the Painting and Decorating Contractors of America, a national painting contractors trade association.  The PIPP Awards, the national awards to honor the very best of the painting Industry, pays tribute to the work of professional painting and decorating contractors from across the United States.

Andy Robbins, CEO of A&K Painting Company, after receiving the awards today at PDCA’s national convention in St. Louis, stated.  “We’re honored to receive these two national awards. I’m very proud of our team. These awards attest to our team of skilled, highly trained people, our systems and the excellence we provide our clients.”

The Industrial Interior Painting award showcased A&K’s completion of over one million square feet of surfaces at the new Caterpillar Heavy Mining Equipment manufacturing plant in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.  The complex project required enhanced safety management, extensive pre-project planning and reliance on field operations management of several crews and night work. View the project portfolio.

The Commercial Wallcovering award featured the Stone Theaters Sun Valley project, a 14 Screen Multiplex in Indian Trail, NC.  A&K’s expertise with vinyl and fabric wallcovering was utilized with installation of over a dozen different wallcoverings.  The project also included multiple paint and wood finishes. View the project portfolio.

Press Release

North Carolina’s Global Investors and the World

North Carolina’s Global Investors and the World

North Carolina is focused on having global investors and foreign companies bring their operations facilities to the state. Beside its business friendly atmosphere, according to D. Lawrence Bivins, in a North Carolina Economic Development Guide article, this is possible because its “climate, port access and convenient reach to millions of American consumers attract global investment. It’s geographic and demographic diversity allows foreign companies to operate in any corner of the state”.

North Carolina cares about culture and business, and tries to recruit foreign business leaders, by forging an alliance between private and public partners, which results in a much stronger effort. But international recruitment is only half of their two-pronged global economic strategy; North Carolina also focuses on giving its educational programs an international edge. North Carolina has highly competitive graduate school programs that bring the most talented people from across the globe to the state, and they hope to provide them with the tools to succeed in an international market. In doing so, they hope to retain these highly intelligent individuals and continue to attract more to the state in the future.

By attracting these global investors and retaining internationally educated graduates, “North Carolina collected more than $1 billion in foreign direct investment across 86 projects in 2010”, according to Site Selection magazine. North Carolina is already home to approximately 850 international companies and continues to recruit more. This is extremely good news for the construction industries and overall growth for the state’s economy. More direct investment from international companies means more business for construction companies, since they will need new facilities built. This influx of foreign investment also creates overall growth for the economy since more money will be invested directly into the state, and more people will be attracted to live here since there will be more opportunities for success.

Commercial RRP Expansion – Significant Changes Ahead – Comments Requested

A&K Painting Co. Commercial RRP Infographic

Significant changes are ahead for maintenance and up-fit/remodel work on pre-1978 Commercial and Public buildings.  The EPA is working to expand the existing Residential & Child Care – Lead Safe Renovation, Repair and Painting (RRP) Rule to include Commercial and Public Buildings.

Go to our Commercial RRP Infographic

The expansion of RRP Rules to Commercial and Public buildings will increase owner’s risk and liability, increase costs for maintenance and up-fit work in pre-1978 buildings.  There is no question that we all want to protect our children from the hazards or exposure to lead paint dust.  For Public Building and Commercial Buildings that are not child occupied, the EPA has yet to provide scientific proof that there is a hazard.  This expansion or RRP Rules would impact every building in the United States that was built prior to 1978.  State managed RRP programs, such as those in North Carolina eleven other States will be required to adopt these changes.

As reported in our January 5th blog post announcing the EPA’s comment period and request for comments from interested parties, we are interested in activating building owners and managers, facility managers and contractors to participate by adding their comments either directly or through engaging and participating with their industry association to submit comments.

Your comments are needed.  To help the EPA determine if there is a health hazard in none child occupied commercial buildings when renovation is completed, submit your comments before April 1st, 2013. Learn more and submit your comments to the EPA

Learn more about existing Residential – Child Care related RRP Rules and the expansion of RRP to Commercial & Public Buildings.

 

Sustainability in 2013 for CRE, Facilities and Construction

Green Building & Sustainability

The United States has become extremely interested in the sustainability of our future and public and private sectors are continuously progressing on policies that support these ecological goals.  “This is evident in the commercial sector.  More than 28 billion square feet- about 40 percent of the country’s inventory- now use ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager to monitor and report energy performance. [Also], LEED-certified properties in the U.S. and 130 other countries topped the 2 billion-square-foot mark…and the U.S. Green Building Council notes that another 2 million square feet is certified each day ”, according to Dan Probst in an GreenBiz.com article.

Along with increasing LEED-certified properties and using the ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager, there are five specific trends that will help CRE and construction companies, facility managers, and property owners take “energy and sustainability to the next level”.  The first trend is a renewed interest in resilience.  Companies are “re-examining their ability to bounce back after disaster”.  By adopting strategies that focus on minimizing environmental threats, companies will require less money and time spent on recovery contingencies.

Next is energy measurement and disclosure.  Many cities in the U.S. are requiring large buildings to use Portfolio Manager, “the EPA’s energy management tool, to measure and report energy performance.”  This requirement doesn’t cost building owners anything, and utilization of the tool has shown a reduction in energy by an average of 7 percent.  New York City made their energy performance data public and this may be a requirement for all cities in the future.  This type of transparency will make CRE and construction companies and property owners highly motivated to increase their scores.

Third is smart grid investment.  The United States’ electrical grid is severely outdated so the government has created the Smart Grid Investment Grant (SGIG) program.  This program’s purpose is to update our electrical grid, decrease frequency and duration of power outages and create more efficient power management.  A smart grid will benefit all property owners, by lowering costs associated with power outages.

Then there is smart building investment.  Companies are investing in cloud computing and “technology that can translate data from many different automated systems, allowing a facility manager team to remotely monitor entire portfolios”, according to Drummer.  These automated systems and smart buildings benefit property owners by decreasing energy costs by 15 to 20 percent and giving them the ability to find faulty equipment before it fails, resulting in no delay in operations.

And last is acceptance of renewable energy.  Solar, wind, and tidal power and biomass energy are all types of renewable energy that companies are beginning to convert to, but the adoption rate will depend on the availability of tax incentives and local support of resilience.

In the long run, following any of these trends will reduce costs for CRE and construction companies, facility managers and property owners and increase our country’s sustainability.  Bring A&K’s sustainability expertise to your project. A&K Painting is the leader in the “Green Painting” world, serving General Contractors, CRE Pros and National Accounts. We became fully involved with this major growth area of the construction world well before many companies started researching what it involved.  Learn more about our sustainability program now.

Office Space Landscape is Changing

Office Vacancy Rate

According to Randyl Drummer, in an article from the CoStar Group, “strong absortion and very limited construction, combined with a significant number of demolitions/removals of antiquated buildings helped to push the U.S. office vacancy rate down 50 basis points over the past year to 12.3% at the end of fourth-quarter 2012”.

Vacancy rates fell across the country, and according to Walter Page, director of research, “a lot of markets are now in that 11%-12% vacancy rate range.  That’s the long-term average vacancy rate, and when markets drop below that level, you are moving into the territory of rent growth”.  Also, the office sector is expected to experience more than a 1 percentage point improvement in average occupancy rates going forward.  These lower vacancy and higher occupancy rates will cause rent to rise, so not surprisingly, “rent growth rose 1.7% year over year in 2012 and is still moving upward…but most importantly rising rents will spread to more markets as limited supply is absorbed”, according to Drummer.

Since the primary markets are experiencing such rapid absorption, develops will move into “the nation’s long suffering secondary and tertiary markets”, so they will be able to reap the benefits as well. These absorption levels and vacancy rates are good signs for investors, particularly office investors, since they are causing rent to rise, which means higher values and returns going forward.