With three weeks until the next IAMC Professional Forum in Milwaukee, IAMC Chair Charles Waltz offers tips on how to make IAMC work for you, and John Salustri asks whether corporate real estate and facilities management should be siloed functions.
In a relaunch of the full white paper edition, leading voices from around the state of Michigan weigh in on the connections among regional culture, higher education and talent attraction.
Magna recently opened a new electronics manufacturing facility in Grand Blanc Township, Michigan. The 230,000-sq.-ft. facility combines three nearby locations, allowing Magna to accelerate large-scale deployment of future technologies. The company invested $50 million in the facility and pledges to continue its leadership in vision-based driver assistance systems.
Cavendish Farms Corporation has invested $4.5 million to build a potato research site near its processing facility in New Annan, Prince Edward Island, Canada. The company hopes to breed new potato varieties that can withstand the changing climate of Prince Edward Island. The new facility will have a greenhouse capable of growing potatos year-round, creating four full-time and 12 seasonal jobs.
Captain Piccard has descended on the G7 Summit in Biarritz. No, not that Picard. Bertrand Piccard (pictured), known for his successful round-the-world solar-powered flight piloting the Solar Impulse aircraft, is the co-lead of the carbon neutrality workstream of One Planet Lab, a role he shares with Laurence Tubiana of the European Climate Foundation. Piccard has been leading a working group on green mobility since the start of the year that aims to reduce emissions related to transport in general — which account for 23% of global CO2 emissions related to energy.
His remarks to heads of state today will emphasize the need for reducing the environmental impact of the maritime sector, which accounts for 90% of world trade and 3% of greenhouse gas emissions, and where the majority of ships are powered through low-quality, highly polluting bunker fuel. “Needless to say, decarbonizing an industry which emits as much CO2 as a country like Germany will take time,” he said last week prior to the event. “We need to combine ambitious short-term measures — a ban on bunker fuel, speed limits, shore power for docked boats — with long-term policies and investments to make the sector cleaner and more efficient.”
Photo courtesy of Solar Impulse Foundation
PHOTO OF THE DAY
Conway President and Site Selection Publisher Adam Jones-Kelley recently made this photo of a sandbar off Zanzibar, the semi-autonomous archipelago 23 miles from mainland Tanzania. According to Roads & Kingdoms, “In Zanzibar, life moves pole pole — Swahili for slow.”
