CHUCK CLAUSER TALKS ABOUT THE KEY DETAILS OF VERTIPORTS IN LATEST PODCAST
PS&S’ Chuck Clauser, Senior Director of Architecture at PS&S Architecture and Engineering and a registered architect with 47 years’ experience, was a guest on this weeks episode on the eVTOL Insights podcast.
Chuck discusses the history of this Task Force as well as an insight into what PS&S can offer the industry as the ecosystem begins to mature. With all of his experience in architecture, Chuck listed key details a vertiport needs to be successful.
You can listen to the episode on Spotify and Apple Podcasts or online at the link below:
To learn more about Chuck Clauser please click here.
EDITOR
Jason Pritchard is the Editor of eVTOL Insights. He holds a BA from De Montfort University and has worked in Journalism and Public Relations for a decade. Outside of work, Jason enjoys playing and watching football and has a keen interest in Ancient Egypt.
December 2020 Newsletter
DECEMBER 2020
FROM THE CORNER OFFICE
John Sartor, PE
President and CEO
As we wind down the last few weeks of 2020, we look back at some significant milestones achieved at PS&S during the pandemic.
We were excited (and remain excited) about moving into our new 44,000 square-foot headquarters this year. But the pandemic quickly forced us to adapt to new design demands and rethink our own office configuration. We took into consideration what the ‘office of the future’ demanded and incorporated new designs and features with COVID-related planning in mind. That includes more spacing for employees, adding partitions between works spaces and re-thinking our kitchen/food areas. We focused on personal hygiene by increasing sanitizing stations and reconfiguring our conference rooms. We welcomed employees on November 9th to our new location at 3 Mountainview Road in Warren, NJ. The new space was covered by Real Estate NJ, ROI-NJ, NJBiz, Civil + Structural Engineer and Echoes Sentinel.
While certain protocols may have changed, our work on major projects continued. Even in the face of a challenging year for many industries, PS&S was still able to expand with the opening of a new office in Houston, TX. Our primary goal with the expansion of regional offices was to place our teams closer to our clients. PS&S currently has eight offices that remain open on a staggered staff schedule.
This year obviously brought many challenges to our daily work routines. I can’t stress enough how proud we are of the PS&S team, who I feel didn’t miss a beat as we adapted to a new way of servicing our clients.
What’s ahead in 2021
It was one year ago that we announced our merger with DW Smith Associates. We continue to integrate staff from both entities into various projects and look forward to more formal integration of both companies, and a formal re-branding in 2021. The DW Smith Team has been a phenomenal partner as we build our new company and much of our ongoing growth will happen in the disciplines DW Smith is known for. One thing is certain: there will be more challenges as we get through this pandemic, but we will adapt, as we did this year, and find new innovative solutions to serve the needs of our clients. Thank you for being our partner during a challenging but rewarding year.
John Sartor
EMPLOYEE SPOTLIGHT
Kris McCool has seen every aspect of consulting in her 27 years in the business…design, development, mentoring, client management and regional office support. Her leadership qualities have enabled her to accept new challenges, most recently by developing a strong project team focused on responsible engineering practices and renewable energy. She has demonstrated her support of regional growth by managing employees in several locations as well as embracing the integration of DW Smith into the PS&S family. Through the efforts of her talented team, PS&S has a new initiative, Asset Management/Data Analysis. This work has resulted in expanding our lines of business to further meet our clients’ changing needs, and has prompted us to launch our newest internship program - online Data Analytics. Over the past few months we have learned to conduct business in a new way and her team has completely embraced virtual technology to ensure projects were executed within budgetary and schedule requirements. Kris serves as Vice President of Energy Services at PS&S and has been with the company since 1997. She has a degree in Civil Engineering from the University of Rhode Island, and is a Licensed Professional Engineer in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Massachusetts. Thank you, Kris, for your dedicated service to PS&S!
A special recognition also goes out to Kevin Murphy of DW Smith Associates. COVID-19 presented challenges for customers as well as at our own company. We want to recognize Kevin, who has played an active role, specifically from a health and safety perspective overseeing compliance amongst the field survey staff located across New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York and the various states of the Southeast where survey crews have continued to work. Kevin joined DW Smith in 2006 and has spent the last 14 years working in the Surveying, Utility and Land Development groups. Kevin is a Licensed PE and LS in New Jersey and has his LS license in Pennsylvania and New York with plans to become licensed in Texas in the spring of 2021 and Maryland in the fall of 2021. Thank you, Kevin, for your dedicated service to PS&S!
Anthony Sartor featured among South Jersey BIZ's Executives of the Year
Anthony Sartor was featured in South Jersey Biz Magazine’s Executives of the Year for 2020.
PS&S Moves Headquarters and is featured in RE-NJ
Photo by Aaron Houston.
PS&S details new Warren headquarters, COVID safety strategy – Real Estate NJ
By Joshua Burd
Professional services firm PS&S has unveiled its new headquarters in Warren, where it has created a safe, socially distant setting with the flexibility to respond to the evolving health crisis.
The architecture, engineering and environmental consulting practice, which had spent more than four decades at a prior location in the township, has moved to 3 Mountainview Road as part of a 44,000-square-foot lease announced last fall. The new space provides the firm with an open, modern design with a more efficient footprint for as many as 180 employees, even if most of its team continues to work remotely during the pandemic.
PS&S has taken several steps to balance the short-term reality of COVID-19 with what will be the long-term benefits of an upgraded work environment. For instance, the firm has held off on bringing traditional furniture into its large conference rooms, instead opting for flexible seating that can be properly spaced.
Photo by Aaron Houston.
“This way we can actually keep our safe distance and utilize the space,” said John Sartor, CEO and president of PS&S. “And, quite honestly, it’s actually going to benefit us for the next six to eight months because we have larger spaces like this and we have the ability to still bring in six or eight people.”
The 58-year-old firm has relocated from its longtime home at 67B Mountain Blvd. Extension, about six miles away, under a lease with Kushner Real Estate Group. Its team will occupy parts of two floors within the three-story, 105,000-square-foot property just south of Interstate 78, which boasts a newly renovated lobby and other upgrades by the landlord.
PS&S designed the space in-house, while Gilbane Building Co. managed the interior construction.
As Sartor noted, the firm had completed its original design and was on schedule to begin moving in by August. When COVID-19 began to spread across New Jersey in March, the team scrambled to reconfigure the seating plan, minimize high-touch surfaces and create a new strategy as its employees shifted to remote work.
Photo by Aaron Houston.
That included rethinking common spaces, such as pivoting from many of its larger and medium-sized meeting rooms to smaller rooms suited for videoconferencing, he said. He added that the firm has minimized the use of fabrics in its workstations and switched to easy-to-clean materials and surfaces, a trend he expects to see become more permanent.
PS&S has also kept much of the furniture from its prior office as a temporary solution and a means of staying flexible as needs change.
“At some point you’ll hit stability again,” Sartor said. “But for the next couple of years I think it’s going to be all about flexibility. And I think you’re going to see the furniture manufacturers respond to that in terms of the environments and types of things we see.”
KRE helped to address health and safety at the building level by upgrading the HVAC and filtration systems at 3 Mountainview. The property also has a cleaning crew that comes in three times a day to wipe down high-touch surfaces such as elevators and door handles.
Photo by Aaron Houston.
Putting COVID aside, Sartor said there is still much to be done in order to complete the transition. That includes design elements that will pay tribute to the company’s history and co-founders Bill Paulus, Wally Sokolowski and Anthony Sartor, John’s father.
In the meantime, Sartor credited his team with remaining productive and keeping projects on track, despite working remotely or on staggered schedules. Technology has played a key role.
“The ability to collaborate virtually has really changed the service business in terms of our ability to continue servicing clients,” he said. “Absent that, I’m not sure what would have happened. It’s just amazing.”
PS&S Virtual Lifestyle Newsletter Issue #16
PS&S Virtual Lifestyle Newsletter Issue #16
PS&S Virtual Lifestyle Newsletter Issue #15
PS&S Virtual Lifestyle Newsletter Issue #15
PS&S Attended Gordon H. Mansfield Veterans Village Groundbreaking Ceremony
PS&S attended Gordon H. Mansfield Veterans Village Groundbreaking Ceremony on September 12, 2020 in Liberty Park, Tinton Falls, NJ. The Gordon H. Mansfield Veterans Village will deliver 70 one-bedroom units of permanent supportive housing including units for homeless and formerly homeless veterans.
The community is named after the late Gordon H. Mansfield, a highly decorated Vietnam War veteran and Pittsfield native who served as Deputy Secretary of Veteran Affairs and as Assistant Secretary for Fair Housing and Equality Opportunity at the Department of Housing & Urban Development.
GlobeSt.com Cites Ted Osborne's NAIOP Piece
A Guide to Cleaner Interior Air
Ultraviolet light can be an important tool in the fight against pathogens.
By Les Shaver | September 16, 2020
We know COVID-19 is spread through the air. As designers and engineers think about future buildings, there is little doubt that this pandemic will change how they will consider how to reduce the spread of this and other airborne pathogens.
PS&S Senior Direct Charles Clauser Takes Part in Varon Think Tank #3
Think Tank #3
Friday September 11, 2020 12:00 noon - 1:00pm EDT 11:00am - 12:00pm (Colombia)
Vertiports in Latin America Lack of Urban Space / Ground Level Construction. Placement Selection / Integration to City Intermodality. Integration: TNC's, Parking, Micromobility. Passenger Demand Management. Modular vs. Landmark Designs.
PS&S Senior Director Ted Osborne Shares Insight in NAIOP
At times like these, everyone involved in design, engineering and construction must wonder if it is time to change our thinking – or maybe hit the reset button. We have reason to do this after natural disasters of all kinds: the Louisiana floods in 2016, Hurricane Maria in 2017, the California wildfires in 2018, to name just a few.
An infectious disease outbreak on the scale of COVID-19 is its own kind of disaster. From a design and construction point of view, planning for something that has happened only once in 100 years in the United States has not been a front-burner issue, but maybe it should be now. As an industry, we need to explore ways to reduce infectious disease spread in buildings, decide how that effort takes shape and, of course, determine how owners and operators are incentivized to make changes.
COVID-19 is airborne, spread through coughs and sneezes and travelling easily across tight quarters. For all these reasons, many office workers feel anxious about returning to a physical space.
As architects and engineers, some firms, including ours, are beginning to re-think how to build commercial space to eliminate or reduce the spread of pathogens in the air and on surfaces. Indeed, we are moving our entire office headquarters’ staff into a new 44,000-square-foot space in New Jersey next month, and we have been looking at what can be done to make the space safer.
Here are some of the things we are exploring:
Increasing space between people to allow for social distancing.
Increasing outdoor air flow – Doing so “dilutes” the air, meaning more fresh air and less potentially contaminated air per person. This can be done by disabling demand-controlled ventilation and increasing minimum outdoor air damper positions.
Air filtration – Using the higher-rated filters as ranked by the Minimum Efficiency Rating Value (MERV) system, which rates air filter efficiency. MERV 13 and above are commonly used in hospitals and other healthcare facilities. The filters will also be sealed to the filter rack for great efficiency in trapping particles and limiting bypass.
Running systems more often or for longer hours – Circulating and filtering air more frequently helps increase the effectiveness of increased outdoor air rates and improved filtration; 24/7 would be optimal.
Indoor air cleaners – Deploying portable room air cleaners with high-efficiency particulate air (HEPA) filters. As the name suggests, these devices filter 99.97% of particles over a certain size.
Installing CASPR devices – Used in hospitals, Continuous Air and Surface Pathogen Reduction systems spray trace amounts of hydrogen peroxide into indoor air, killing 99.9% of pathogens in the air and on surfaces. Eight of these speaker-sized units were installed at Long Island MacArthur Airport in May.
More easily cleaned surfaces – Using less fabric in design.
Reducing touch points – We are fortunate to already have many ways to reduce the likelihood of a virus spreading, including automatic door operation, touchless faucets and flush valves, and sensor controls for lights.
Using short-wave ultraviolet (UV) light – UV light has long been well known for either killing or deactivating bacteria, viruses, mold and other pathogens. In fact, in 1903, the Nobel Prize was awarded for the treatment of tuberculosis of the skin using UV light.
In buildings today, short-wave, more intense UV light is used for Ultraviolet Germicidal Irradiation (UVGI) in high-room (9-feet or higher) lighting applications in mechanical units and heating ducts to kill pathogens without damage to person’s skin or eyes. An eight-year study of 14 homeless shelters published by the National Center for Biotechnology Information concluded that UVGI is safe and effective for buildings.
Utilizing lower-wave UV light – Not hazardous to eyes and skin, lower-wave UV light can also be effective and is available in many forms:
Gates and portals – Much like the X-ray booths at airport security, manufacturers are offering gates and portals that use UV light to deactivate a high percentage (over 90%) of pathogens on people and clothing.
Troffers – Troffers are the rectangular fixtures in dropped ceilings that hold fluorescent lights, as well as, more recently, LED lights. A unit that uses both UV light and HEPA filters to trap and inactivate pathogens including viruses can be newly installed or retrofitted into troffers to help stop the spread of disease.
To borrow from the saying, “change tends to be evolutionary, not revolutionary,” we are suggesting that the spread-resistant building is an aspiration – just like fire safety, net zero and hurricane proofing. Short-term, simple fixes in office air quality, lighting and touch points could help prevent another wave. Longer-term, we believe that the goal of spread-resistance should move closer to the front of the line in our initial design and construction consideration set.
DW Smith Associates and PS&S Sponsor CAI Regional Event
![NJ Council Alternate Dispute Resolution for NJ Community Associations - Education Programs - Events C[...].png](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/528531f4e4b0a6c35d3f7cbf/1599862576993-8JUWS7R6DK47VHCF0H5P/NJ+Council+Alternate+Dispute+Resolution+for+NJ+Community+Associations+-+Education+Programs+-+Events+C%5B...%5D.png)
DW Smith Associates Recognized Among CAI-NJ's 2020 Ultimate Partners
Marilyn Lennon as part of NAIOP NJ virtual conference in New Jersey Business Magazine
Officials, Industry Experts Discuss New Processes and Policies Affecting Real Estate Development
Government officials and industry experts addressed the COVID-19 pandemic’s impact on how the state’s regulatory agencies are operating, what the Legislature is prioritizing and the effect it is having on the real estate development process during NAIOP New Jersey’s annual Regulatory, Legislative & Legal Update. The agenda for the virtual event, part of the commercial real estate development association’s Building a Better NJ series, ranged from the latest on reopening efforts to compliance with new green infrastructure stormwater rules.
Read the entire story here: https://njbmagazine.com/njb-news-now/officials-industry-experts-discuss-new-processes-and-policies/
PS&S Virtual Lifestyle Newsletter Issue #14
PS&S Virtual Lifestyle Newsletter Issue #14
NJ Brownfields Assistance Center Highlights Good Neighbor Awardee
Carrol Oliva Featured in Real Estate New Jersey
Engineering group honors PS&S water treatment expert, a 60-year industry veteran
A veteran engineer and architect with PS&S has earned a top honor from the American Society of Civil Engineers’ New Jersey section.
The Warren-based firm announced that the association has recognized Carroll Oliva as its 2020 Civil Engineer of the Year. The award comes after more than 60 years of experience in sanitary engineering and architecture, during which he has been involved in planning, design and construction for hundreds of projects at large-scale treatment plants.
