You can make a salary making furniture. Or you can make a difference. Or you can work at Herman Miller and make both. Speak up, solve problems, lead others, and be an owner. All while giving back to the community and caring for a better world. Join us and make your mark.
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General Purpose: Under general direction, delivers knowledge-based expertise and consulting that add value to the customer, deepen relationships, contribute to sales of both products and services, and differentiate Herman Miller as a knowledge leader and solution provider.
Essential Functions:
Provides services: Learns, maintains, and delivers service offerings. Leverages intellectual capital to position Herman Miller as the thought leader regarding the workplace.
Markets capabilities to external and internal audiences. Actively promotes the HMI brand and workplace knowledge and consulting to customers, outside organizations and the community. Serves as internal resource to marketing, sales, facilities and other areas of the company.
Engages with customers to identify needs. Cultivates strong relationships, identifies or develops new customer solutions and delivers customized versions to meet specific engagement requirements.
May manage consulting portion of all engagements: accountable for building and a sound business proposal, including income and costs estimates, writing contracts and achieving margins.
Manages vendor relationships and performance. Identifies, develops relationships, obtains vended services and ensures timely completion and quality.
Shares knowledge: Responsible for knowledge transfer to internal and external audiences via case studies, white papers, published articles and presentations, and may serve as keynote speaker in area(s) of expertise. May write comprehensive customer reports.
Achieves and maintains technical proficiency. Contributes to projects, initiatives and service line development. Consistently and regularly applies new knowledge in customer engagements. Monitors market trends / conditions and ensures Herman Miller is the industry leader on relevant leading edge best practices.
Serves as an internal knowledge / consulting resource.
Performs additional duties as assigned.
Combines expertise in organizational development, real estate/facilities, and design for the benefit of customers and Herman Miller.
Provides full range of expertise and deep-dive consulting to customers ? in the areas of organizational development/human systems, employee engagement, real estate and facilities, design/work environment solutions, and analytical expertise based on quantitative studies of the work environment.
Leads full range of performance environments services for customers to include visioning, space utilization services and analysis and pre/post-occupancy workplace evaluation, place mapping, financial modeling, survey data, report creation, synthesize complex data, develops comprehensive recommendations for customers, and change management.
Connects and translates customer needs and consulting engagements to work environment solutions to include applications, floor plate solutions, conceptual designs. Connects customer needs, space utilization data and trends to real estate strategy, financial modeling, and decision making.
Interprets customer workplace strategy into work environment and performance environments solutions.
Aligns and leads dealer, sales, HMS and performance environment cross functional, cross disciplinary teams project-by-project.
Minimum Requirements:
Bachelor degree or equivalent experience typically acquired through a minimum of 5 years working in a directly related area (e.g. management consulting, facilities, office furniture, design, communications, HR or corporate real estate). Master's degree or Ph.D. are excellent credentials, but not required.
2-7 years successful exempt-level experience in management consulting relationships.
Outstanding interpersonal and relationship building skills-with both internal partners and external customers and vendors.
High task / high relationship orientation necessary, including ability to manage client relationships to conduct strategic planning, link engagement goals to client's business objectives and create buy-in for deliverables. High level of responsiveness and flexibility required.
Proven presentation / facilitation and negotiation skills at all levels within a client organization.
Requires time management / prioritization skills and the ability to handle stress in a proactive manner.
Organizational, planning and project management skills with demonstrated follow-through and results. Ability to ensure phenomenal quality in deliverables, e.g. meeting timetables, etc.
Thorough knowledge of the HMI organization, products and services.
Excellent written and verbal communication skills. Technical writing skills helpful.
Demonstrated ability to effectively use office automation/communication software and tools currently being used in the HMI office environment.
Ability to travel up to 50% of the time.
Must be able to perform all essential functions of the position with or without accommodations.
Bachelor degree in Organization Development, Interior/Architecture, or related field of study. Equivalent level of experience will be considered
5-10 years successful exempt-level experience in management consulting relationships.
Thorough knowledge of culture and ability to apply knowledge of issues/application of work environment solutions.
Thorough knowledge of organizational development, human systems, and employee engagement practices.
Herman Miller is committed to diversity and inclusion. We are an equal opportunity employer.
When I saw Autodesk's 123D Creature, an iPad app that lets you build three-dimensional monsters, I filed it away in the back of my mind as an app to try out on a lazy Sunday afternoon. I finally tried it, and I wish I would have done so sooner. Not because I'm awesome at creating creatures: I wish I would have tried it sooner because 123D Creature has revitalized my faith in humanity.
New WPI report shows how earthquake damage can impact building fire safety performancePublic release date: 11-Mar-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Michael Dorsey mwdorsey@wpi.edu 508-831-5609 Worcester Polytechnic Institute
A groundbreaking 2012 study of the earthquake and fire performance of a full-scale building showed that damage from a major earthquake can play a critical role in the spread of smoke and fire, restrict evacuations, and hamper emergency response operations
Worcester, Mass. Damage to building structural elements, elevators, stairs, and fire protection systems caused by the shaking from a major earthquake can play a critical role in the spread of fire, hamper the ability of occupants to evacuate, and impede fire departments in their emergency response operations. These are among the conclusions of a groundbreaking study of post-earthquake building fire performance conducted in 2012 by researchers in the Department of Fire Protection Engineering at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI).
"When the ground stops shaking after a major earthquake, the damage may have just begun," said Brian Meacham, associate professor of fire protection engineering at WPI and principal investigator for the post-earthquake fire study. "Historically, post-earthquake fires have been as devastating if not more devastating, than the seismic events that preceded them. In fact, the largest peacetime urban conflagrations (in San Francisco in 1906 and in Tokyo in 1923) were post-earthquake fires. More recently, fire caused significant damage following the 1995 Kobe, Japan, earthquake."
While the danger of widespread quake-related fires is well-known, much less is known about how earthquakes affect the ability of individual buildings to withstand fire or how building fires evolve and spread in the minutes and hours after a quake strikes, Meacham said. "Although considerable research has been undertaken with respect to the performance of structural systems in quakes, research aimed at understanding and quantifying the performance of nonstructural systems and post-earthquake fire performance of buildings has been severely lacking."
To help close that knowledge gap, WPI spent last year participating in an unprecedented study of the effects of earthquakes and post-earthquake fires on a full-scale building. Sponsored by the National Science Foundation and a host of industrial partners, and led by researchers at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), the study centered on a five-story building constructed atop the world's first large outdoor, high-performance shake table, located at the Englekirk Structural Engineering Center at UCSD. A principal focus of the study was the performance of critical facilities, including hospitals and data centers.
The building was outfitted with a working elevator, a full-size interior staircase, heating, ventilating and air conditioning system components, electrical equipment, fire protection systems, and a mock medical suite, intensive care unit, medical storage room, server room, and residential space. The third floor was configured for fire testing, including complete partition walls and ceiling systems, firestop materials at joints and through partitions, a fire door, a fire sprinkler system, and a smoke detection system.
The researchers subjected the building to a series of simulated earthquakes, ranging from 6.7 on the Richter scale (the magnitude of the 1994 quake in Northridge, Calif.) to 7.9 (representing the 2002 earthquake in Denali, Alaska), while a team of engineers from UC San Diego monitored the building's performance through more than 500 channels of data from a wide range of sensors.
After each simulated earthquake, Meacham and his student researchers entered the building to document the state of the active and passive fire systems and to conduct pressure tests to determine if the shaking compromised the integrity of the third-floor rooms, possibly creating openings that could allow smoke and flames to move between compartments.
After the seismic testing was complete, the WPI team conducted a series of six live fire tests in four spaces on the third floor. They ignited pans of heptane, a liquid fuel that burns hot enough to simulate a fully engaged compartment fire. Using temperature probes and video cameras, the researchers assessed how damage from the simulated earthquakes affected the ability of the active and passive fire protection systems to contain fires and prevent the spread of smoke.
Here are some of the impacts on fire and life safety systems that Meacham and his team documented following the largest earthquake motion and post-earthquake fire tests:
Structural damage on the second and third levels was significant; while the building didn't collapse, it had to be shored up to support gravity loading prior to the fire testing.
Damage to the building's interior and exterior wall and ceiling systems created openings through which smoke and flames could spread; debris from the walls and ceilings became obstacles that would have hampered the evacuation of occupants or the movements of firefighters.
A number of doors were unable to be opened or closed (open doors allow fire to spread; stuck doors can cut off escape routes or hinder the movements of first responders).
Access to the upper floors was cut off when the staircase became detached from the landing and distortion of the elevator doors and frame on some levels made the elevator unusable. During the fire tests, smoke and hot gasses entered the elevator shaft through the open doors, spreading smoke to other floors and raising temperatures to dangerous levels.
Most of the active and passive fire protection systems, including the sprinkler system, the heat-activated fire door, fire dampers, and fire stop materials, performed well.
"We are pleased with what we were able to learn in this initial full-scale test of post-earthquake fires," Meacham said. "Through this research, we have begun to build a base of knowledge that will allow us to design more resilient buildings and building systems, and provide better protection to people, property, and mission. But there is much more to do and a lot more we can learn in subsequent studies."
Meacham said he would like to conduct additional laboratory and large-scale studies that will broaden the base of knowledge, encompassing, for example, different construction techniques and different glazing systems; that will gather additional types of information, including heat flux, flow velocity, and visual records of smoke movement and fire growth; and that will compare fire performance before and after earthquake damage.
###
To read the complete report on the post-earthquake fire tests and learn more about this research project, visit http://www.wpi.edu/academics/fpe/policy-risk-engineering-framework.html.
About Worcester Polytechnic Institute
Founded in 1865 in Worcester, Mass., WPI was one of the nation's first engineering and technology universities. Its 14 academic departments offer more than 50 undergraduate and graduate degree programs in science, engineering, technology, business, the social sciences, and the humanities and arts, leading to bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees. WPI's talented faculty work with students on interdisciplinary research that seeks solutions to important and socially relevant problems in fields as diverse as the life sciences and bioengineering, energy, information security, materials processing, and robotics. Students also have the opportunity to make a difference to communities and organizations around the world through the university's innovative Global Perspective Program. There are more than 30 WPI project centers throughout North America and Central America, Africa, Australia, Asia, and Europe.
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?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
New WPI report shows how earthquake damage can impact building fire safety performancePublic release date: 11-Mar-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Michael Dorsey mwdorsey@wpi.edu 508-831-5609 Worcester Polytechnic Institute
A groundbreaking 2012 study of the earthquake and fire performance of a full-scale building showed that damage from a major earthquake can play a critical role in the spread of smoke and fire, restrict evacuations, and hamper emergency response operations
Worcester, Mass. Damage to building structural elements, elevators, stairs, and fire protection systems caused by the shaking from a major earthquake can play a critical role in the spread of fire, hamper the ability of occupants to evacuate, and impede fire departments in their emergency response operations. These are among the conclusions of a groundbreaking study of post-earthquake building fire performance conducted in 2012 by researchers in the Department of Fire Protection Engineering at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI).
"When the ground stops shaking after a major earthquake, the damage may have just begun," said Brian Meacham, associate professor of fire protection engineering at WPI and principal investigator for the post-earthquake fire study. "Historically, post-earthquake fires have been as devastating if not more devastating, than the seismic events that preceded them. In fact, the largest peacetime urban conflagrations (in San Francisco in 1906 and in Tokyo in 1923) were post-earthquake fires. More recently, fire caused significant damage following the 1995 Kobe, Japan, earthquake."
While the danger of widespread quake-related fires is well-known, much less is known about how earthquakes affect the ability of individual buildings to withstand fire or how building fires evolve and spread in the minutes and hours after a quake strikes, Meacham said. "Although considerable research has been undertaken with respect to the performance of structural systems in quakes, research aimed at understanding and quantifying the performance of nonstructural systems and post-earthquake fire performance of buildings has been severely lacking."
To help close that knowledge gap, WPI spent last year participating in an unprecedented study of the effects of earthquakes and post-earthquake fires on a full-scale building. Sponsored by the National Science Foundation and a host of industrial partners, and led by researchers at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), the study centered on a five-story building constructed atop the world's first large outdoor, high-performance shake table, located at the Englekirk Structural Engineering Center at UCSD. A principal focus of the study was the performance of critical facilities, including hospitals and data centers.
The building was outfitted with a working elevator, a full-size interior staircase, heating, ventilating and air conditioning system components, electrical equipment, fire protection systems, and a mock medical suite, intensive care unit, medical storage room, server room, and residential space. The third floor was configured for fire testing, including complete partition walls and ceiling systems, firestop materials at joints and through partitions, a fire door, a fire sprinkler system, and a smoke detection system.
The researchers subjected the building to a series of simulated earthquakes, ranging from 6.7 on the Richter scale (the magnitude of the 1994 quake in Northridge, Calif.) to 7.9 (representing the 2002 earthquake in Denali, Alaska), while a team of engineers from UC San Diego monitored the building's performance through more than 500 channels of data from a wide range of sensors.
After each simulated earthquake, Meacham and his student researchers entered the building to document the state of the active and passive fire systems and to conduct pressure tests to determine if the shaking compromised the integrity of the third-floor rooms, possibly creating openings that could allow smoke and flames to move between compartments.
After the seismic testing was complete, the WPI team conducted a series of six live fire tests in four spaces on the third floor. They ignited pans of heptane, a liquid fuel that burns hot enough to simulate a fully engaged compartment fire. Using temperature probes and video cameras, the researchers assessed how damage from the simulated earthquakes affected the ability of the active and passive fire protection systems to contain fires and prevent the spread of smoke.
Here are some of the impacts on fire and life safety systems that Meacham and his team documented following the largest earthquake motion and post-earthquake fire tests:
Structural damage on the second and third levels was significant; while the building didn't collapse, it had to be shored up to support gravity loading prior to the fire testing.
Damage to the building's interior and exterior wall and ceiling systems created openings through which smoke and flames could spread; debris from the walls and ceilings became obstacles that would have hampered the evacuation of occupants or the movements of firefighters.
A number of doors were unable to be opened or closed (open doors allow fire to spread; stuck doors can cut off escape routes or hinder the movements of first responders).
Access to the upper floors was cut off when the staircase became detached from the landing and distortion of the elevator doors and frame on some levels made the elevator unusable. During the fire tests, smoke and hot gasses entered the elevator shaft through the open doors, spreading smoke to other floors and raising temperatures to dangerous levels.
Most of the active and passive fire protection systems, including the sprinkler system, the heat-activated fire door, fire dampers, and fire stop materials, performed well.
"We are pleased with what we were able to learn in this initial full-scale test of post-earthquake fires," Meacham said. "Through this research, we have begun to build a base of knowledge that will allow us to design more resilient buildings and building systems, and provide better protection to people, property, and mission. But there is much more to do and a lot more we can learn in subsequent studies."
Meacham said he would like to conduct additional laboratory and large-scale studies that will broaden the base of knowledge, encompassing, for example, different construction techniques and different glazing systems; that will gather additional types of information, including heat flux, flow velocity, and visual records of smoke movement and fire growth; and that will compare fire performance before and after earthquake damage.
###
To read the complete report on the post-earthquake fire tests and learn more about this research project, visit http://www.wpi.edu/academics/fpe/policy-risk-engineering-framework.html.
About Worcester Polytechnic Institute
Founded in 1865 in Worcester, Mass., WPI was one of the nation's first engineering and technology universities. Its 14 academic departments offer more than 50 undergraduate and graduate degree programs in science, engineering, technology, business, the social sciences, and the humanities and arts, leading to bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees. WPI's talented faculty work with students on interdisciplinary research that seeks solutions to important and socially relevant problems in fields as diverse as the life sciences and bioengineering, energy, information security, materials processing, and robotics. Students also have the opportunity to make a difference to communities and organizations around the world through the university's innovative Global Perspective Program. There are more than 30 WPI project centers throughout North America and Central America, Africa, Australia, Asia, and Europe.
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Surrounded by family and supporters, New York City Council speaker and mayoral hopeful Christine Quinn, center, speaks to the media as she announces her mayoral run in New York on? March 10.
By Andrew Rafferty, Staff Writer, NBC News
New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn announced on Sunday that she hopes to make history by officially declaring her candidacy for mayor of the nation?s largest city.
If successful, Quinn would be both the first female and first openly gay mayor to ever lead America's largest city.
The announcement, which was made on Twitter, came as no surprise, since polls show the New York City veteran as the early frontrunner. Quinn also released an autobiographical video describing her blue-collar upbringing, her father?s history as a union leader and the lessons learned from her mother?s death when she was 16.
It?s those lessons, Quinn says, that shaped her politics. ?My mother?s life and death left me with the belief that our obligation is to use every moment we have on this earth to make it a better place,? she says in the video.
But the five minute introduction also showcases what may be one of the difficulties of Quinn?s candidacy. Nowhere in the video does she mention that she is gay ? only that she headed the New York City Gay and Lesbian Anti-Violence Project. Quinn also does not mention her wife, whom she married in New York last year in what was one of the most high profile same-sex weddings of any politician.
New York State legalized gay marriage in 2011 and last November elected its first openly gay member of Congress, Sean Patrick Maloney.
Shortly after Quinn released the video, she walked and tweeted her way through all five of the city?s boroughs in a ?Walk and Talk? campaign event.?
?It?s a great way to hear directly from New Yorkers, what?s going on in your homes, what?s going on in their lives, so I can make sure when I?m mayor, my focus is their focus,? she said in the video.
For years Quinn has been believed to be eying a mayoral bid and enjoys the support of political ally and outgoing Mayor Michael Bloomberg. A Quinnipiac University poll in late February showed her with 37 percent support, a commanding lead over her Democratic challengers ahead of the primary expected in September.
But Quinn, who has been on City Council since 1999, has a long record in politics that give her opponents plenty to bring to light over the course of a hard fought campaign. She has already been criticized for her proximity to Bloomberg, calling her another political insider that has forgotten about the middle class. ??
?I?m about keeping New York city a place for the middle class, to live and grow. And a place that?s going to help all of those hardworking people get into the middle class,? she says in her campaign announcement, in which she is seated at a diner.
Though the video is simple, is has all the polish of a well-produced national political ad. The ad was created by SKD Knickerbocker, the New York Times reports, a firm that has also done political ads for Bloomberg.
In the Democratic primary, Quinn will likely face off against former city councilman Sal Albanese, Public Advocate Bill de Blasio; Comptroller John Liu; and former Comptroller Bill Thompson.
From the beginning, Everpix has made it very clear that it is not just another photo-sharing app. The San Francisco startup, which first emerged on the scene as a Disrupt finalist in September 2011 and launched to the public later that year, has built a full-service platform that encompasses nearly all of your disconnected photo-sharing and storing apps and puts your snapshots in one sleekly-designed place stored in the cloud for easy sorting and viewing. And now with version 1.5 of its iOS app, Everpix has added a very nice new feature called "Explore" which lets you resurface and revisit photos from your archives that may be relevant and complementary to the photos you're looking at now.
NEW YORK (AP) ? Doctors are optimistic that New York Rangers defenseman Marc Staal will recover fully after being struck in the eye by a deflected puck.
Staal was injured Tuesday night in the third period of New York's 4-2 victory over the Philadelphia Flyers. The 26-year-old defenseman will be sidelined indefinitely, but was already showing improvement on Wednesday, the Rangers said in a statement.
Staal's specific injury hasn't been disclosed.
"Marc Staal was examined today in New York by Dr. Mark Fromer, ophthalmologist, and Dr. Mendel Markowitz, maxillofacial surgeon," the statement said. "The injury has improved significantly and both doctors are optimistic that Marc will make a full recovery."
Staal went down 5:45 into the third period when a shot by Philadelphia defenseman Kimmo Timonen from the blue line clipped the stick of Flyers forward Jake Voracek and caromed up into Staal's eye, causing a cut. Staal, who wasn't wearing a visor, writhed on the ice and kicked his legs. He held his face while he was down and when he skated off the ice, assisted by a Rangers trainer, toward the dressing room.
Staal has two goals and nine assists this season while playing in all 21 games. He had one goal and seven assists in the 13 games before Tuesday, and logged a game-high 27 minutes, 14 seconds of ice time in New York's shootout win over Buffalo on Sunday.
He was on the ice for more than 18 minutes on Tuesday before he was injured.
The Rangers added veteran depth to their defense corps on Wednesday when Roman Hamrlik was claimed off waivers from the Washington Capitals.
The 38-year-old Hamrlik, the active leader with 1,383 NHL games played, was waived by the Capitals on Tuesday after playing in only four games this season. He is in the final season of a two-year, $7 million contract.
Hamrlik played in Washington's first three games this season before being scratched for seven straight games. He returned to the lineup Feb. 7 at Pittsburgh, then sat out nine more games before being waived.
After being chosen No. 1 overall in the 1992 NHL draft, Hamrlik has 155 goals and 483 assists with Tampa Bay, Edmonton, the New York Islanders, Calgary, Montreal and Washington. He has one assist this season.
The Rangers return to action Thursday night at the New York Islanders and then will host the Ottawa Senators on Friday before heading out on a four-game road trip.
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Public release date: 11-Mar-2013
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From the beginning,