Health & Safety Tip of the Month: Eye Strain Prevention

Whether we’re reading email, reviewing drawings or preparing documents, our daily tasks are increasingly digital. These tasks can result in spending hours per day looking at monitors, which can lead to eye strain. Be alert to the symptoms of eye strain – blurry vision, dry eyes, and headaches.

Give your eyes a regular break! For better vision health, remember the 20-20-20 rule: every 20 minutes, spend 20 seconds looking at something at least 20 feet away. Focusing on an item in the distance allows our eye muscles to relax after being subjected to prolonged screen time.

Other helpful tips include remembering to blink often, increasing text size, and reducing glare on your screen from external sources. Take a moment to read more here (yes, we appreciate that it’s more screen time!) and remember: keep blinking!

Is your facility and its electrical infrastructure prepared?

As electric vehicles (EVs) become more prevalent, they present a challenge for institutional-type facilities that have significant on-site parking, in terms of how to address the charging requirements of EV owners. Toronto’s Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre (SHSC) is one such facility. With a three million ft2 campus and 4,535 parking spots, vehicular traffic exceeds 10,000 cars per day.

In 2018, SHSC was experiencing power outages in parking lots due to EV owners using adapters and extension cords to charge their vehicles from housekeeping receptacles. Recognizing the growing demand for on-site charging and wishing to promote green initiatives, SHSC investigated available incentive programs for an EV charging project.

HH Angus was engaged to assist SHSC in delivering this project. The first decision was to identify the type and number of charging stations that would best meet the needs within the established budget. One of the first decisions was which charging level to provide of the three levels available. Level 2 was selected, offering a full charge in four to six hours.

Key considerations for the supply of EV charging stations included physical construction and design features (for example, retractable charging cords were an important feature); service agreements; built-in wireless connectivity; and warranty coverage. It was also necessary to address the increased electrical load for the parking lots through power distribution upgrades and modifications to existing switchgear.

An important decision with direct impact on the installation design was the selection of dual-head EV charging stations, which allow two adjacent vehicles to be serviced by a single charging station. SHSC eventually installed 20 dedicated EV charging stations.

The entire project was successfully completed in approximately four months. By undertaking the necessary project planning, institutional facilities can help ensure their parking areas are ready to meet the requirements of EV owners and further support of green initiatives.

Philip Chow, P.Eng., P.E., was the lead engineer on the project and is a senior project manager at H.H. Angus & Associates Ltd. He specializes in electrical projects and construction in critical facilities and can be reached at philip.chow@hhangus.com.

Bavan Poologarajah,EIT., was the senior electrical designer on the project and worked on the project from initial concept design to final commissioning. Bavan has worked on a number of electrical projects in critical facilities and can be reached at Bavan.Poologarajah@hhangus.com.

With over 350 exhibitors from 38 countries, the recent Saudi Health conference in Riyadh was a key event for the healthcare sector in Saudi Arabia.

HH Angus was one of 19 private and public Canadian firms exhibiting at the event, as part of the Canadian delegation organized by the Canadian government international trade offices in Ontario and Saudi Arabia.

According to HH Angus’ Mohammad Abusaa (below right with Saudi guest), “Healthcare is an important sector for the Gulf Corporation Council. With the population expected to number 50 million in 2020, and with those 65+ years of age growing from 1.2 million in 2015 to 14.2 million in 2050, it is apparent that demand on healthcare services and facilities is on the rise.”