The International Association of Plumbing and Mechanical Officials (IAPMO) recently published the monograph of proposed changes to the WE-Stand, which is short for Water Efficiency and Sanitation Standard. The document was previously identified as the Green Supplement.

There’s an old saying, repeated in the recent novel “Asymmetry” by Lisa Halliday, about how “the foreign journalist who travels to the Middle East and stays a week goes home to write a book in which he presents a pat solution to all of its problems.

Last month, I presented information about challenges companies face to retain and develop their employees.

Most of us have probably experienced the exercise known as “value engineering,” the process where everyone on the team looks at a design and tries to find ways to save some money.

Unfair compensation between company owners is a red flag signaling a potential business breakup.

There’s a one-panel strip of the absurdist newspaper comic “The Far Side” that I remember well from childhood. It shows human-sized insects sitting in a theater for a horror movie called “Return of the Killer Windshield.” It still makes me laugh when I think about it, but the joke probably works better visually than verbally.

The below-ground infrastructure that has served us for the last five decades is at risk of failure due to change in climate, challenges with our understanding of how it should have been designed, intensification of the urban landscape and the simple lack of focus in maintenance, funding and knowledge.

Last month, we began with a concept for an “ideal” thermal storage tank. This tank was then shown in both a classic four-pipe configuration, as well as a newer configuration called two-pipe.  This month, we’ll look at a morphing of these two piping methods to create a three-pipe configuration. We’ll also look at options for connecting multiple thermal storage tanks together.

Have you opened the latest edition of NFPA 13, Standard for the Installation of Sprinkler Systems, to check on a specific requirement and wondered if you opened the right book?

The one cry we hear from building owners is, “There are never enough shutoff valves where you need them.”