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RECORD   AND   GUIDE





March 1, 1913





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BUILDING  MANAGEMENT





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Conducted   by   Raymond   P.  Roberts,   Building
Manager for the American Real Estate Company.





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The help in a building has a great deal
to do with the renting quality of the
building—more so, perhaps, than is
generally supposed. The attitude of em¬
ployees toward their work creates an
atmosphere that, however intangible it
may be, is felt, pleasantly or unpleas-
anty, by visitors as well as tenants. If
you meet in the elevator entrance an
employee who seems to like his job and
to be proud of it, and who answers your
inquiry courteously, you get an impres¬
sion which predisposes you to think
well of the entire service of the building.
A building which is visited daily by
many people is not altogether an im¬
personal thing. It has individuality and
character. The sentiments it elicits
are seldom neutral. You think of the
building as distinctive or commonplace,
efficient or inefficient, friendly or un¬
friendly, penurious or generous. The
building is unconsciously personified
and the attributes of this abstract per¬
son are for the most part a reflection of
the qualities of the employees. The
building thus acquires a reputation which
invariably reacts on its ability to attract
tenants.





matter of general treatment rather than
of high wages. It cannot be secured
without a fairly good knowledge of hu¬
man nature. But if a manager has
enough of this knowledge to get along
with tenants, he certainly ought to be
able to command the good will of his
subordinates, provided he realizes the
importance of having it. The trouble
frequently is that the manager acts on
the settled conviction that employees
will not do their best except under the
stimulus of fear. As a matter of fact,
an employee who responds only to
rough treatment is not worth having
around. Such treatment destroys ini¬
tiative, and the manager who is obliged
to direct every trivial operation in a
buildings will have no time for more
productive work. The manager who en¬
joys the confidence and friendship of
his subordinates will find his tenants
disposed to believe that he means to do
the right thing by them, too.





Now, the fundamental requisite for es¬
tablishing the right sort of a reputation
for a building is that the tenants and
their visitors shall be contented. They
will not be contented unless the service
in the building is good, and good service
cannot be expected of discontented em¬
ployees. It is not enough for the build¬
ing manager to exercise care in hiring
help; he must see that the help does its
work in a cheerful and willing spirit.
Tenants quickly perceive the feeling
which employees entertain toward the
manager and, consequently, toward the
tasks they are set to perform; and this
feeling is bound to influence the tenant in
his own relation to the management. Con¬
tentment on the part of employees is a





Of course, it is not necessary to
relax one's vigilance in supervision to
obtain the good will of subordi¬
nates. Indeed, employees must be
made to feel that the manager under¬
stands their work and that he is ac¬
curately informed by personal inspec¬
tion how the work is performed. He
does not need to pose as an expert in
the engine room, for example; but he
should be a frequent visitor there. If
he asks questions of the engineer with
a view to learning the various opera¬
tions of the heating, lighting and power
plant, the engineer will soon be on his
mettle to suggest economies and im¬
provements. The manager should know
enough about the technique of the work
of employees to impress them with the
idea that he understands whether or not
they are performing the duties in a
competent  manner.





STOPPING  GUESS-WORK  IN  COAL  BUYING





How a Building Manager Can Cut Down His Coal Bills—The
Importance of Systematic Tests  Explained By an Expert.





By G. B. GOULD

Secretary Fuel Engineering Company of New York.





THE increasing interest in scientific
coal buying during the past few
years has been accompanied by a re¬
markable confusion of B. T. U. contracts,
boiler tests, and suitability of coal to a
given plant, until the plant manager
who previously thought he knew some¬
thing about coal (blissful in his igno¬
rance), now finds himself in about the
mental condition of a real estate owner
who has just listened to a single tax
lecture. This confusion of allied, not
conflicting ideas, is partly due to the
assumption of authority by numerous
amateurs and partly to the deliberate at¬
tempt of some coal dealers to "side-step"
the inevitable arrival of coal buying on a
quality basis.

A boiler test is intended to determine
the efficiency of the mechanical appara¬
tus, and the results must be based on th?





heating quality of the coal used. When
a boiler test is run without knowledge of
the heat produced by the coal, and poor
results are obtained, what is there to
indicate whether these results are due
to poor coal or low boiler and furnace
efficiency? There are two quite separate
factors, and both are unknown.

The heat producing quality of the coal
used can only be determined by analysis,
and when known permits the engineer to
arrive at a reliable figure for the effi¬
ciency of the equipment. The boiler
test is also of value in determining the
kind of coal best suited to a given plant,
where bituminous or semi-bituminous
coals can be used. When the plant is
practically limited to anthracite coal, as
in ofifice buildings in the heart of a great
city, this use of the boiler test is absent.

To buy his coal intelligently and eco¬





nomically the building manager first
should find the most economical size of
anthracite to burn; that is, the smallest
size which he can use with his equip¬
ment, and keep up his steam. Some of
the factors which determine this are
draft, size of grate area, amount of heat¬
ing surface, and kind of grates. There
is a very considerable difference in the
price per ton for the smaller sizes of
anthracite, although these smaller sizes
average about the same in actual heat
value. A very large number of office
buildings, apartment houses and hotels
in New York are burning larger sizes
than are necessary.
Checking Up the Power Produced.
With the kind of coal settled upon, the
buyer then must consider the quality of
the coal actually delivered. Isn't the
quality of coal many times more import¬
ant than the quality of soap? And yet,
I dare say, there are many building man¬
agers who have given more time to the
consideration of the quality of soap they
buy, although their power cost is from
40 to 60 per cent, of the total operating
expense. Why is this so? Because the
losses in coal buying and burning are
elusive and intangible without accurate
data.

The majority of power plants in office
buildings have no means of checking up
the amount of power produced from
month to month, or year to year. With
such a state of affairs, when the coal
bill increases, how can you tell whether
the cause is greater power requirements,
poorer quality of coal, lower efficiency
of the plant or wasteful firing methods?
The writer knows of one case where
a large building adopted systematic tests
of the coal delivered and by acting on
the definite data obtained, succeeded in
getting coal fully 10 per cent, better than
the year before. At the end of the year
the coal bill was higher. The manager
at once said: "What is the use of test¬
ing my coal? The tests show that the
coal has been 10 per cent, better, and yet
the  bill  continues  to  increase."

Investigation showed that this build¬
ing had installed a large number of elec¬
tric lights during the year in a spare
previously unlighted, besides increasing
the power requirements along other
lines. It had not occurred to this man
that these things meant more tons of
real coal shoveled down into his bunk¬
ers, and that if he had not obtained bet¬
ter coal, his coal bill would have been
still higher. The variations in coal qual¬
ity are directly related to the amount oi
coal used under given conditions to pro¬
duce a given amount of power. This
fact has been proved an infinite number
of times in plants where accurate power
records are kept. The size of the coal
bill is no index of fuel economy unless
the amount of power used is known.
If the quality of your coal is improved,
and the coal bill keeps on rising, don't
say that the coal tests are no use, but
look for the reason in the plant.
Variations in Coal Quality.
Few plant managers realize the great
variations in coal quality, even in coal
shipped from the same mine. Anthracite
coal  is  really  a manufactured product.