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AHI Director Dick Koral Talks About High Performance Maintenance at CUNY Graduate Center Conference on Regional Construction Industry’s Future
AHI Director Dick Koral
City Tech Apartment House Institute (AHI) Director Dick Koral was one of several guest presenters at a May 14 conference, “The Future of a Sustainable Construction Industry in the New York City Region: From Practice to Theory,” held at The Graduate Center, CUNY in Manhattan. The all-day event was sponsored by the CUNY Institute for Urban Systems in cooperation with Continuing Education & Public Programs, The Graduate Center, CUNY, the City College Architectural Center, the CUNY Urban Consortium, the Steven L. Newman Real Estate Institute of Baruch College, the New York Building Conference, and the New York City Department of Environmental Protection.
According to conference planners, a long-term
goal of sustainable construction is to build a climate within the
building industry that starts with deconstruction and continues
with LEED (Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design) standards,
green roofs and good long-term maintenance. This goal will require
collaboration of government agencies, teaching and research institutions,
builders and building occupiers such as school systems, corporations,
small businesses, individuals -- anybody seeking space. The goal
of the conference was to identify the role that higher education
and academic institutions can play in achieving this climate and
in contributing to its success.
The focus of Koral’s presentation was on “High Performance
Maintenance” which he suggested is “a sorely neglected
consideration in too much design, for designers are not paid to
take the time to think about it that much. They shy away from specifying
advanced maintenance systems, because they are not paid to do so
and for fear that contractors will not know how to install and workers
to maintain such systems.”
Another important consideration, Koral noted, “is that there is little or no feedback from those who operate and maintain the mechanical and electrical systems that keep buildings operating to provide details of what works well and what doesn’t. Hence, mistakes are repeated.”
Koral argued that academic institutions need to do more in “offering current operators and maintenance workers the opportunity to be brought up to current best practices through training courses and workshops. They also need to play a more aggressive role in bringing designers, builders and maintenance personnel together at regular intervals to achieve a mutual understanding of what high performance building design, construction and operation entail, as the CUNY Institute for Urban Systems is doing through this conference.” He suggested that local chapters of engineering societies such as the American Society of Heating, Refrigeration and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE), the Institute for Electric and Electronic Engineering (IEEE) and the Association of Energy Engineers (AEE), as well as representatives of architectural firms, the Superintendents Technical Association (STA) and other specialists like the Association for Energy Affordability (AEA) should be partners with the academic community in this endeavor.
Koral has served as director of AHI since its establishment in 1979 and also currently serves as secretary-treasurer of STA, a not-for-profit educational corporation organized in 1998 by AHI. It is the first technical society for multifamily building maintenance personnel in New York City and is modeled after the typical chapter of various engineering societies.
“Functionally, STA is an extension program,” Koral added, “tapping into the strong desire of most maintenance employees to enhance their skills and knowledge base in an increasingly sophisticated technical environment. They are often the first to notice the problems that contribute to more expensive operations and even greater maintenance costs. This cohort would be an enthusiastic and invaluable partner with other key players in building design and maintenance.”
06/09/04
Photo courtesy of Joshua Koral
