The University of Nevada, Las Vegas School of Medicine has selected two architectural firms to design its medical education building — local firm Tate Snyder Kimsey (TSK) and Los Angeles-based CO Architects.
While TSK is the lead firm and will have responsibility for the project, both firms have extensive experience in large and complex institutional, academic, medical education and health care projects.
UNLV is still in negotiations with Clark County for nine acres in the Las Vegas Medical District for the school’s future home.
“We’re delighted to have two high-caliber firms working with us to inspire the design of our region’s first public medical school,” UNLV School of Medicine planning dean Dr. Barbara Atkinson said in a statement. “This is an important milestone in the school’s development and puts us another step closer to our goal of creating a world-class center for medical education.”
Henderson-based TSK is an international planning and design firm with a 55-year history of creating progressive architectural solutions for its clients. The firm, which also has offices in Reno, Los Angeles, and Shanghai, China, has a diverse project portfolio of education design services.
“The new UNLV School of Medicine will be a transformative project for our community, bringing economic diversification and enhanced medical services and professionals to our region,” TSK president Windom Kimsey said in a statement. “Throughout our firm’s history we’ve helped shape the skyline of the Las Vegas Valley through the design of award-winning, iconic public buildings. We look forward to working on this game-changing facility.”
CO Architects are specialists in medical education and health sciences facilities. They have planned and designed seven start-up schools of medicine across the country in the last decade.
According to Dr. Atkinson, TSK and CO Architects were selected for their innovative design ideas, knowledge of the region, and capability to manage large projects.
In addition to the new medical school building, TSK will renovate space at UNLV’s Shadow Lane Campus for the medical school’s inaugural class in 2017. Students will receive part of their training at this site until the new building is completed. Once contracts are finalized, TSK and CO Architects will assess programmatic needs and develop a conceptual design for the medical building.
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Caesars taps Ecova
Ecova, the total energy and sustainability management company, has been selected by Caesars Entertainment to help the company reach its CodeGreen goal of reducing waste generation by 50 percent by 2020.
Caesars will be reporting its greenhouse gas emissions to the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) with the help of Ecova, a CDP accredited provider, and leveraging the Ecova Energy and Sustainability Management Platform to gather additional insight to optimize its energy management strategy at the company’s affiliated locations in the U.S.
Waste ranks as the third biggest area of opportunity for savings and improvement, according to findings from Ecova’s 2015 Energy and Sustainability Predictions survey.
Prior to deploying the Ecova platform, Caesars had made considerable strides in reducing landfilled waste, including increasing annual waste diversion by 10 percent in both 2013 and 2014. However, the results of a recent audit of waste and waste practices at a Las Vegas area resort revealed opportunity for improvement, the company said.
Caesars’ efforts to divert waste away from landfills yielded positive results as, overall, the total waste diversion in 2014 was 44 percent. In order to reach the enterprise goal of 50 percent of waste diversion by 2020, Caesars reached out to Ecova to understand the waste streams, optimize the waste strategy, and ultimately support a zero waste initiative.
Ecova will provide Caesars with a total waste solution, which includes, waste bill processing and analysis, waste service management, waste procurement, waste optimization and zero waste.
To complement the services, Caesars will utilize the waste manager module on the Ecova platform to inform sourcing and optimization strategy and support zero waste initiatives with comprehensive cost, service detail and contract insights. Through the Ecova platform, Caesars will have an all-in-one solution that removes the need to have separate applications or databases for energy, water, and waste data â improving data quality and ease of management.
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Raster does fantasy sports
BlitzPick, the latest creation from Las Vegas and Chicago-based strategic mobile innovation firm, Raster, is now available for download in the App Store and Google Play.
BlitzPick is a lineup optimization tool for the daily fantasy sports player. It’s the first daily fantasy sports lineup optimizer for FanDuel and DraftKings.
The App allows roto enthusiasts to create worry-free lineups and if there are any changes in a player’s status BlitzPick not only alerts you, but generates the strongest replacement. Additionally, users can follow daily fantasy sports news, get contest specific lineups all for free, and all within one app.
BlitzPick’s proprietary algorithm is based on Vegas sports betting professionals’ successful betting models and hundreds of hours of research and development. The app is so fast players can create an outstanding FanDuel or DraftKings team in under a minute.
BlitzPick is available in the App Store.
