Building Owners Responsible for Safety of Window Cleaners

, ,

We’ve all seen them hanging from the side of a building and thought to ourselves, “Man, I would never do that. Those guys must be crazy.”

Well, to be honest, some of them are, but most are not. The fact is, the profession of washing windows on high rise buildings is actually very safe when all of the standards and regulations are followed properly. Of course, it still takes a tremendous amount of courage to climb over the side of a building and into a boatswain’s chair or to power that stage down when there is nothing separating you from the ground other than a thin aluminum floor.

So how do these folks do it? What makes them secure enough to make a cognitive decision to walk off of a perfectly good rooftop and into thin air, where, for the next hour or so, they will be suspended from lines as thin as your thumb, all the while cleaning the glass of your office or condo building?

The answer is, or should be, safety. Safety is the most important factor when any suspended maintenance work is being performed. Who is responsible for this safety, and what does working safely really mean?

The first question is being asked all across the United States every day with respect to window cleaning, particularly window cleaning done from a boatswain’s chair. Up until now, there was no clear definitive rule with respect to boatswain’s chair work under Federal OSHA. Federal OSHA does address cleaning windows using a powered platform. While some of those rules can be applied to chair work, there are so many areas of uncertainty that Federal OSHA has made proposed changes to Sub Part D – Walking Working Surfaces where they include some rules with respect to this common form of window cleaning.

The new document and the existing ANSI Standards clarify that it is the responsibility of the building owner to provide anchorages for these window cleaning professionals to attach their suspension and safety lines. This is important when the workers are utilizing boatswain’s chairs because more often than not, they are rigging directly to the rooftop anchors for both the suspension and safety lines. The rules and regulations both state that the suspension (the line supporting the worker) and safety lines (used in the event the suspension line fails) should be attached to separate and independent anchorages.

The standard form of anchorage is a rooftop anchor attached to the building’s structure that has been ideally installed during construction. We do know, however, that most building’s do not have these permanent rooftop anchors. Thus, the window washing professionals are required to make do with what structure is available on the rooftop.

We cannot expect a window washing contractor to obtain permission to drill through the roofing and down into the structure and attach a rooftop anchor as, quite simply, they are not qualified to perform this type of work. Therefore, it is incumbent upon the owner of the building to ensure rooftop anchors are available for workers to attach to prior to commencing their work.

The next burning question, assuming we have rooftop anchors or some other form of structure, is how are these workers to attach safely?

Many buildings, maybe even yours, have some form of window washing system installed. Unfortunately, more often than not, they are not in compliance with today’s rigid standards and proposed regulations. We often see derelict davit bases at an unprotected roof edge. These davit bases were originally designed to be used for suspended stages. However, as you know, most window cleaning operations are performed using a boatswain’s chair. So, how do the window washers work safely if there are no independent rooftop anchors available? The workers do what they must to ensure they can complete the work as safely as possible. This does not mean they complete the work in compliance with all the codes and standards. It means they do what they must, which, at times, really is crazy.

They will attach to vent stacks, stair railings or cinder blocks piled on the roof, none of which are designed to take the applied loads of a fall. Further, if these davit bases are existing at the roof edge, often the window washers will attach a tag line between the davit bases and attach both the suspension and safety lines to this line. The problem is the tag line has not been engineered, and in the event of failure of this line, both suspension and safety lines are attached to the same “anchorage.” The failure of one line leads to a catastrophic failure of this unengineered system, resulting in serious injury or death of the worker.

Now, realizing this is a lot of information to take in, I expect you have a lot of questions about the codes and standards. What is required? How do I know? Etc. The test is simple. Take a walk out onto your rooftop and ask yourself, “If I had to,would I attach my entire life to that anchorage?” If there is any doubt in your mind at all, contact a rooftop anchor design professional and have your building assessed for compliance and safety. Once you have the building assessed and certified and when someone asks you if those window cleaners are crazy, you can confidently answer, “Not as crazy as you think.”

 

Source: Facilities Magazine

/by

Miami’s First Mixed-Income Multifamily Tower Rising

It’s the newest residential development to go vertical in Downtown Miami—and it tackles two of the biggest challenges in the city’s recovering housing market.

Brickell View Terrace addresses the lack of market-rate rental apartments and the shortage of affordable housing options within the urban core. The multifamily tower is a joint venture between Pinnacle Housing Group and East Little Havana Community Development Corporation. Located at 940 Southwest 1st Avenue, the 23-story apartment building will combine 76 traditional multifamily units and 100 affordable housing units within a single building.

The project marks the first mixed-income multifamily building to be developed in Miami. Miami, ranked as the nation’s least affordable major city according to the Center for Housing Policy, becomes the latest US market to adopt the mixed-income model, which has proven effective in cities from New York to San Francisco.

“Just as Miami’s luxury condo market garners headlines around the world, there’s a growing need for safe, affordable, well-located places to live,” says Mitchell Friedman, partner with Pinnacle. “Brickell View Terrace will offer residents all the conveniences of urban living within close proximity of public transportation links and Miami’s major employment hubs.”

Set for completion in late 2015, the construction of Brickell View Terrace is getting under way just as an amendment to the City’s Miami 21 zoning code passes. The amendment aims to encourage residential development combining market-rate and affordable units.

“The strongest urban cores in the nation are home to a healthy mix of housing types catering to residents from all points of the economic spectrum,” says Pinnacle partner David O. Deutch. “With funding for traditional affordable housing development in Florida becoming increasingly scarce, mixed-income projects are a viable method for meeting demand and getting worthy projects built.”

Brickell View Terrace will offer community rooms, a cyber cafe, two fitness centers, and a picnic area with outdoor game tables, car care area, electric car charging stations, and a park with gazebo. The multifamily project is next to Miami’s Brickell Metro Rail Station, just west of Mary Brickell Village on Southwest 1st Avenue between Southwest 9th street and Southwest 10th Street. Brickell View Terrace will offer one-, two- and three-bedroom apartments.

 

Source: GlobeSt

/by

Miami-Dade County Water & Sewer Rate Hikes Start

, , ,

Miami-Dade County has started a series of water and sewer rate hikes to pay for $12.6 billion in proposed improvements to its water and wastewater systems, including a $3 billion project to drastically reduce the amount of treated sewage the county discharges into the Atlantic Ocean by 2025.

The county’s Water and Sewer Department raised rates 8% for the fiscal year that started last October. Annual increases of 6%, 5%, and 5% are planned for the next three fiscal years, department Deputy Director Douglas Yoder told Miami Today.

And there should be more increases in the future – wiping out Miami-Dade’s longtime reputation for low water and sewer rates to raise money to fix an underfunded system that has been rife with unlawful discharges from weak and leaky pipes and system overflows, described by critics as an environmental nightmare. “Rates will continue to be impacted as we get into the actual construction, which is where you spend money quicker,” Mr. Yoder said.

Miami-Dade’s water and sewer rates have been among the nation’s lowest for many years, according to the department. Even with the 8% increase that’s already in effect, a customer using 6,750 gallons a month pays a monthly average of $45.39 – up $3.36 from the previous average. That’s still the lowest among the nine major municipal systems in Florida, the department said.

Under federal and state pressure for years to improve its wastewater system, a centerpiece of the department’s capital improvements plan for the next 15 to 20 years is the $3 billion “ocean outfall” project. The outfall project, Mr. Yoder said, is in response to a state law approved in 2008 that will ban Florida municipalities from flushing treated sewage into the ocean and will require them to reuse 60% of their wastewater by 2025. The law was eased last year, allowing municipalities to discharge up to 5% of their annual treated sewage flow into the ocean, but only due to “peak flow events” such as storms. It also gave municipalities more ways to meet the 60% reuse threshold.

Most of the cost of Miami-Dade’s outfall project – about $2 billion – will involve building a fourth wastewater treatment plant inland, somewhere near the west end of the county. It will also involve improvements to the county’s existing plants closer to the coast, including adding another layer of filtration and other cleansing steps, Mr. Yoder said. He said he expects construction for the outfall improvements to start in three to five years. Currently, he said, the county typically discharges 180 million gallons a day of treated sewage into the ocean – and sometimes 250 million gallons a day or more during peak flows – through two outfall pipes.

One pipe goes out from the Central District Wastewater Treatment Plant on Virginia Key in Biscayne Bay near downtown Miami and empties about three miles offshore, and the other pipe goes out from the North District Wastewater Treatment Plant and empties about two miles offshore, Mr. Yoder said. The central district plant was built in the 1950s and its outfall pipe was extended to its current length in the 1970s. The north district plant at Northeast 156th Street was built in the late 1970s, he said.

Before being discharged into the ocean, he said, the sewage entering the plants goes through a “biological treatment system” that removes about 90% of solids. The sewage also is disinfected with chlorine. The outfall pipes discharge into water about 190 feet deep offshore, where the outflow is swept up in the swift northern Gulf Stream current. “It’s a high volume of water that’s continuously moving,” he said. “It’s like the equivalent of eight Lake Eries going by the coast every day.”

There’s also the South District Wastewater Treatment Plant south of Cutler Bay, but treated sewage from that plant is not discharged offshore. Instead, he added, it’s discharged about 3,000 feet underground into “the boulder zone” amid the Florida saltwater aquifer. That doesn’t have affect drinking water, according to Mr. Yoder, because any saltwater from the aquifer that’s used for public consumption requires a high enough level of treatment anyway that other contaminants also are removed.

Meanwhile, the outfall plan calls for greatly increasing the amount of treated sewage that is reclaimed for reuse. A lot of the reuse, he said, will come from an agreement to send treated sewage to Florida Power & Light Co.’s enlarged and renovated Turkey Point nuclear plant for cooling its reactors.

 

Source: Miami Today

 

/by

FPL Proposes New Solar Pilot Program

,

Florida Power & Light Co. last Wednesday proposed a pilot program that would build community solar energy projects — some with panels spanning the size of half a football field — in select cities including Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach.

The projects would be financed by customers who choose to give FPL $9 per month, because the company would not seek state approval to be compensated for the cost of construction. Customers who contribute would still  pay the same for their electricity, since energy produced from the projects would be fed into the broader grid, not directed specifically to funders, FPL said.

The new “voluntary” program would differ from an earlier FPL solar rebate program, where the company gave rebates to select customers to install solar on their rooftops but all FPL customers paid for those installations through their electric bills, said FPL President Eric Silagy.

“No one has to pay for this if they don’t want to,” Silagy said.

But some in the solar business questioned the financing model that seems to have FPL coming out as the winner.

“Basically, what they’re saying is ‘A lot of people want solar. So you give us $9 a month and we’ll build it, and you get nothing out of it but a feel-good,’ ” said Wayne Wallace, president of the Florida Solar Energy Industries Association.

Wallace rejected FPL’s claims that rooftop solar is less cost-effective than larger community solar projects.

“Investor-owned utilities don’t want to see a lot of people putting solar on their roofs, because it cuts into their revenues,” said Wallace. For consumers, rooftop solar can be very cost effective by slashing the price of their electric bills, he said.

FPL is the largest solar energy producer in Florida, but it produces only about 110 megawatts of electricity from the sun yearly  — or about one-tenth of 1 percent of all its power, said Silagy.

The company faces huge hurdles to ramp up further, he said, because state regulators are required to approve utility projects with the lowest cost of generation. Solar now is more expensive than natural gas-fired plants or nuclear plants.

That’s why FPL came up with this pilot program, seeking creative ways to add solar capacity, he said. The pilot projects proposed would build up to 2.4 megawatts of solar generation over three years.

“If it’s successful and we have a lot of customers interested, we can go bigger,” Silagy said.

FPL aims to start the first community solar projects in early 2015 and is looking to build in Fort Lauderdale, West Palm Beach and Sarasota.

“The City of Fort Lauderdale is excited about the possibility of partnering with FPL to bring renewable energy generation to our neighbors,” said City Manager Lee Feldman in a news release.

But other smaller-scale solar options also are open to consumers, with other financing terms.

“What they are doing is great for the environment. We all should move toward solar,” said Joe Spector, vice president of operations for Ygrene Florida, a company negotiating with Broward County to develop a Property Assessed Clean Energy or PACE program.

PACE lets property owners finance solar on their rooftops without paying any upfront cost and then, repay the financing over years with their property taxes.

“In the PACE program, the person who pays is the one that gets the direct financial benefit” by using their own solar to replace energy from the grid and slashing their electric bills, said Spector.

FPL said their new program will help measure the true interest of customers in solar energy. Many customers now say they want solar but may not be willing to pay extra for it, said Silagy.

Yet some see the pilot program as a “flawed referendum” on solar.

“If they don’t get people willing to donate $9 a month, it doesn’t necessarily mean that there’s no huge interest in solar,” said Michael Wallander, a principal in EcoCity Partners, which also is negotiating with Broward for PACE programs. “People want solar. But many want to generate their own.”

FPL said it would make no profit on the three-year pilot program. It plans to donate $200,000 each year from program funds to nonprofits in Florida. The nonprofits would be selected by customers who choose to contribute to the program.

Regulators at the Public Service Commission must give the go-ahead for the pilot program. Hearings are expected later this year, and if approved, FPL hopes to start in January.

FPL’s parent company, Juno Beach-based NextEra Energy is the largest producer of sun and wind energy in North America.

 

Source:  SunSentinel

/by

Businessman To Move Entire Company From NY Following $6.5M Condo Purchase

,

Fed up with burdensome taxes, a New York businessman is set to relocate to Miami after buying a St. Regis Bal Harbour condo for $6.5 million.

Keller Williams Coral Gables real estate agent Michael Light announced the all-cash transaction in a written statement released Thursday. Light did not disclose the buyer’s identity. The buyer is expected to move his entire company from New York City to downtown Miami.

The three-bedroom, three-and-a-half-bathroom condo totals 3,884 square feet.

“Over the last five years, 90 percent of the real estate clients I have worked with are relocating to Miami,” Light said. “These individuals understand not only the value of properties in South Florida, but also the value of Florida’s tax laws.”

 

Source:  The Real Deal

/by