Category: Building Operations

Energy efficiency and green improvements to existing buildings have often received less public attention and political play than “sexier” green initiatives such as renewable energy generation with solar panels and windmills or LEED-cert…

With the economy struggling and thousands of unemployed Americans looking high and low for work, you might wonder why anyone should care about something like dryer lint. Fair enough—but here’s why: According to the U.S. Fire A…

Concrete is the most prevalent building material in existence today, though most people probably don’t notice how widely used the material is until it begins to break up in front of their homes, or falls off of their buildings, roads an…

Time was, when you had a big construction or renovation job, you hired a general contractor, and if the job was big enough, that contractor hired subcontractors. But in recent decades, a new player has entered into the process…

Walking on the sidewalks of New York can be tough; you need to maneuver through streams of pedestrians chatting away on their cell phones, many walking right at you from the opposite direction, and you need to be focused on what’s in fr…

 There was a time when the buildings being built in New York City were largely  constructed of earthy materials—limestone, brownstone, brick, terra cotta—and glass really only figured into their design in the form of windows and  skylights…

On almost any given block in New York City, it’s easy to see how things have changed in architecture and construction over the decades. Historic buildings like the New York Public Library or Grand Central Station are noted for their ext…

 Doing a major window replacement or repair project in a building that’s home to hundreds of people isn’t easy. There are any number of scheduling and access considerations, and time  is obviously of the essence, as it’s impractical and un…

 I often go up to Washington Heights, an area where I lived many years ago, just  to walk around. On one recent trip, I decided to take a look into the lobby of  my old apartment building on Cabrini Boulevard to see if there had been any  …

 Few things can be as upsetting as discovering that the funds that fuel a co-op  or condo have been mishandled—or worse yet, stolen. For residents, fraud undermines their sense of trust in  the men and women who oversee and manage the plac…