Transcript
Speaker: Welcome to the Swakuho podcast.
Speaker: As always, I'm your host, JC Stoner.
Speaker: When I pitched the idea of a podcast to Swakuho President Katie Pelton and past President Maggie Guzman, I told them I would put together four demo episodes with different formats as an experiment to gauge the feasibility of sustaining a Swakuho podcast.
Speaker: Well, this being the fourth episode, I guess this experiment has concluded.
Speaker: My only hope is you've found value in listening to the last four months.
Speaker: So far on the podcast, we hosted an interview with the Swakuho past president, facilitated a book club, and discussed research conducted by a Swakuho practitioner scholar.
Speaker: Today's episode is a feature topic, preventative maintenance.
Speaker: When a lot of people think about maintenance and campus housing, they think about work orders and fixing problems that get reported.
Speaker: It's a never-ending cycle of problem-identified, problem-prioritized, and problem-fixed.
Speaker: Rinse and repeat.
Speaker: Preventative maintenance, on the other hand, provides routine inspections and minor investments to infrastructure and systems along the way to alleviate major problems further down the line.
Speaker: The balancing act of reactive work versus proactive work is a challenge I'm sure many housing professionals can relate to, even those who don't work in facilities.
Speaker: Our guests today are going to provide a lot of insight into the world of housing maintenance and various systems used to keep facilities operating.
Speaker: This is sure to be an educational episode for professionals looking to get a more complete picture of housing maintenance programs.
Speaker: Plus, what you learned today you will be able to put into action in your personal life because guess what?
Speaker: You should absolutely have a preventative maintenance plan wherever you live.
Speaker: Our first guest is Drew Jarr, who serves as the Associate Managing Director for Facilities and University Student Housing at Texas Tech University, where he directs a team of 157 full-time staff representing maintenance, housekeeping, warehouse operations, and trades.
Speaker: His first job in campus housing was in high school working on the paint and maintenance crew, a job he loved.
Speaker: He spent 12 years in residence life before moving back to the facility side of the house at Texas Tech.
Speaker: When not building campus housing, Drew enjoys building Lego sets with his dad.
Speaker: His favorite Lego sets are the Star Wars Death Star, Ewok Village, and the Tower Bridge in London.
Speaker: Drew, welcome to the show.
Speaker: Hey, it's great to be here.
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: Our second guest is Katie Pelton, who serves as Assistant Director for Facilities and Risk Management in the Department of Residence Life at Sam Houston State University.
Speaker: Her housing experience spans 20 years across residence life, academic initiatives, classroom instruction, and facilities and risk management functional areas.
Speaker: Katie is passionate about process documentation, streamlining processes for increased effectiveness, staff training, and professional development.
Speaker: She also currently serves as the President of SWACUHO.
Speaker: Katie, welcome to the show.
Speaker: Thank you, JC.
Speaker: I'm so glad to be here.
Speaker: And our third guest, yes, we have a record number of three guests today, is Miles Aller, who serves as Assistant Director of Facilities for Housing at Texas Christian University.
Speaker: Miles has been involved in housing and student affairs since his first year of college and transitioned from the residence life side of the house to facilities about five years ago.
Speaker: Miles also manages campus dining and athletics, where he says preventative maintenance is huge.
Speaker: Using a true student affairs lens to approach facilities has been integral in his success working with maintenance and facilities.
Speaker: Miles was actually hired as a resident assistant his first semester of college to replace someone whose employment ended eight weeks into the semester.
Speaker: Miles, welcome to the show.
Speaker: Hey JC, excited to be here.
Speaker: Well, first things first, everyone.
Speaker: We all worked in residence life and now work in facilities, maintenance or operations.
Speaker: I get asked all the time, what's the difference between residence life and operations?
Speaker: Instead of focusing on difference in job duties, what's a major difference in how you manage your priority list and personnel resources and maintenance compared to your residence life days?
Speaker: I think for me, TCU, we're so incredibly relationship focused that I try to pull that piece from our residence life side of our office and push it over to our facility side of really creating a positive relationship with everyone who works in housing, whether it be housekeeping, facilities, maintenance.
Speaker: And then the same with physical plant, our central physical plant.
Speaker: I feel like we have created relationships and those relationships have positively impacted everything we do and how we approach those items.
Speaker: Instead of here's a task, fix it, rinse and repeat, really trying to create this team atmosphere of let's work together to create the best student experience possible and not just finding out whose resources are going to pay for this or whose fault is this.
Speaker: We've really, really focused on that relationship aspect of attacking facilities.
Speaker: So at St.
Speaker: Houston State University, we incorporate quite a bit of the residential education component of the relationship piece in the community building and working together.
Speaker: One of the things that we do know is different is how we are utilizing resources.
Speaker: So where we may have ResEd staff that are here
Speaker: 24 hours a day because typically they're living in or maybe their hours are a little bit different.
Speaker: Our operations and our facilities folks, those hours may be very constrained because of budgets.
Speaker: And so we have to be mindful of that and prioritizing work in emergencies.
Speaker: Also making allocation for understanding that we've got to expect the unexpected, that it is not
Speaker: routine.
Speaker: I don't think it's routine for anybody that works at a university when you're dealing with students and people and all the things that can happen day to day, but definitely making sure that we can't budget for every single minute of the day just because we've got to leave a little bit of room for things to pop up and for things to happen.
Speaker: Here at Texas Tech, we're very similar to Miles in the relationship building.
Speaker: And, you know, I spend a lot of my day talking to people and
Speaker: building those relationships.
Speaker: It's definitely much easier to do that when you're not in the middle of a crisis so that when you are in a crisis, you can rely on those relationships.
Speaker: And that was something that I learned in ResLife and I've carried that on into facilities.
Speaker: Another area, at least here, that I experienced is with recognition.
Speaker: That is heavy on the ResLife side.
Speaker: In my case, non-existent.
Speaker: on the facility side.
Speaker: And so bringing a lot of that charisma and not just certificates and that kind of stuff, because that's not really what they want.
Speaker: What they want is to be told, hey, we appreciate what you're doing.
Speaker: We notice what you're doing, you know, and sympathy when that exit sign that they've hung up three times that week happens a fourth.
Speaker: You know, those are some of the skills that I didn't, honestly, when I moved into facilities, I really didn't think I was going to use.
Speaker: And I ended up using them the most.
Speaker: Like I said, I get asked all the time and I always think about like when it was life, it was managing like roommate conflicts and the emotions of two people.
Speaker: And then on a facility side, it's like you have one less emotion because your refrigerator that's not working or the exit sign that's falling doesn't have an emotion.
Speaker: So it's a little bit different in that sense, but still there's that kind of customer service and balancing act of how do we still respond appropriately, like things like,
Speaker: And rightfully so, things matter and they're important, but identifying priorities is kind of something I guess we'll get into in a little bit.
Speaker: So the topic of today is preventative maintenance.
Speaker: So break it down for us.
Speaker: What is preventative maintenance?
Speaker: What is the difference between that and deferred maintenance, routine maintenance, all the jargon?
Speaker: I think for me, we treat preventative maintenance obviously as a simple, very general answer of trying to catch things from breaking before they break as a simple way to look at it.
Speaker: What we've done is we've really tried to find things in housing and dining.
Speaker: Preventative and maintenance to us is finding those things that when they do go down, it is a huge experiential loss for the students.
Speaker: How can we find those and add a monetary value to keeping things running?
Speaker: Because a lot of people don't see preventative maintenance or maintenance contracts or service contracts as a win because they think you're paying for something that you're not receiving in advance.
Speaker: But in reality, like say for dining, I'm paying X number of dollars to keep the dish machine or excuse me, the dish return circulating.
Speaker: But if that thing goes down, there's a huge monetary loss because of the poor experience of the dining students or ice and water machines in the hall, laundry machines, things like that.
Speaker: So we've really tried to turn the way we look at maintenance away from
Speaker: reactionary and attacking things as they break but instead how do we get ahead of it and we don't want to hear complaints about things breaking off and we'd rather hear about you know what the more i think about it these just don't break that often even though they're probably messing up the same amount of time we're just catching them and really keeping um we have a guy who keeps a lot of parts on purpose and his whole his whole approach is i want to be prepared for the 10 of parts that cause 90 of the problems
Speaker: That's how we really want to be prepared for PMing things on our end.
Speaker: I agree totally with that.
Speaker: I don't know that.
Speaker: I mean, you can certainly say that it's definitely critical.
Speaker: It's important.
Speaker: It's something that I think when you don't do it,
Speaker: you end up paying a lot more later for that neglect.
Speaker: But it's also one of the first things to go when everything else is hitting the fan.
Speaker: And so it's important, and I'm sure we'll get into this further, but it's important to come together and have a true understanding of the purpose of PMs and why they're important
Speaker: And the people who are actually doing them understand that.
Speaker: So it's all the way down from the high level to the technician on the ground, understanding the philosophy behind why we're spending the time, effort and energy in doing preventative maintenance.
Speaker: Because if they don't buy into that and they don't believe it, it's easy to let it go.
Speaker: Our motto is if you can stop, prevent or
Speaker: quickly correct the small things, the big things won't happen.
Speaker: And that's how we try to explain it to our staff when we're talking about why we've got to do preventative maintenance and
Speaker: like Miles said, paying for service contracts, because we know that if we can stop the little things and making sure that the big things aren't breaking, so your weekly inspections and all of the things I'm sure we'll get into that we do are stopping that HVAC system from going down.
Speaker: It'll make sure your generator is running during a freeze because you've taken care of those small things and the big blow up isn't happening.
Speaker: And I think it lets our customers, specifically for us, our students and our staff, know that we care about them because we're trying to make sure that their living environment is as comfortable as it can be.
Speaker: And so that's what we're looking at when we're thinking about preventative maintenance and how we define it and why we do it.
Speaker: I think about the upstream thinking involved, that you're solving problems upstream.
Speaker: And Drew, you talk about recognition and all that.
Speaker: It's so hard to recognize, well, you oiled that generator once a month for the last 12 months.
Speaker: And I'm sure it would have broke by now, but it hasn't.
Speaker: So way to go.
Speaker: Whereas there's often the heroes who come in and save the day when there's a crisis.
Speaker: But maybe the heroics is actually like making sure there wasn't a problem to begin with.
Speaker: Well, and I tell my boss all the time, you know, when we're doing projects, you know, we like to do the things that our customers can see because there's an intrinsic, you notice it.
Speaker: Well, when we're talking about our mechanical rooms, it's not that they see it, but they sure do feel it when the HVAC system fails and it's 100 degrees outside in August and they have no cooling.
Speaker: And so in terms of the recognition, when you explain that, and that's where working with Res Life and being on facilities really helps, is to be able to use that language with the facility side of how, because you did this, this student can focus on their academics, which is why they're here.
Speaker: They're not worried like the whole Maslow thing.
Speaker: You know, your basic needs are met.
Speaker: Well, if you didn't do what you did to help that HVAC equipment run, then our student, this particular student would not be successful.
Speaker: You help that student potentially graduate or stay in school because they had one less thing to have to worry about.
Speaker: And so those are the things where you have those kind of conversations one on one with a staff member.
Speaker: In my opinion, that's what really makes a difference to our staff.
Speaker: And that's where they feel valued and appreciated.
Speaker: Definitely.
Speaker: And if you can get a student to tell them that, it's even better.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Yeah, that's where the power really lies in getting that feedback.
Speaker: So what are some like just nuts and bolts, common examples of preventative maintenance that y'all do?
Speaker: I did take some time thinking about this and I do have some facility related examples, but also for those that don't have a facilities background, I wanted to kind of take a different spin on it.
Speaker: And so I was thinking about, I just went to the dentist recently for my annual cleaning or my six month cleaning.
Speaker: And so when you're thinking about preventative maintenance, when you brush your teeth daily and every six months you go to the dentist to get your teeth cleaned, you're doing that as a preventative nature to keep yourself from getting cavities.
Speaker: The routine or general maintenance of brushing your teeth is the dentist actually cleaning your teeth and tells you that you have a cavity.
Speaker: and you decide to go ahead and get that cavity filled.
Speaker: And then deferred maintenance is, you know what, I really like to get that cavity filled, but I just don't have the time to get it filled or I don't have the money to pay for it.
Speaker: So I am going to defer paying that and getting my cavity fixed.
Speaker: Another common way of thinking about deferred maintenance is your credit card.
Speaker: You know, when you're in the store and you're buying something and you put it on a card,
Speaker: you're deferring that payment until hopefully the end of the month so you don't get interest.
Speaker: Or you pay the interest and you pay it later so you're deferring that payment.
Speaker: So that's a non-technical way of looking at the difference between the three.
Speaker: But as far as an actual maintenance-related thing, I was thinking about our plumbing.
Speaker: When our buildings are empty, our maintenance staff will go through and they'll pour water
Speaker: in all of the drains to fill up the P traps so that you don't have that sewer gas smell.
Speaker: So that's the preventative maintenance aspect.
Speaker: The routine or general maintenance would be the P traps are rotten out.
Speaker: So the decision is made to change them, replace them, put new.
Speaker: And then deferred would be, you know, again, you just don't have the time or money or nowadays,
Speaker: You can't get the parts in, so you don't have a choice.
Speaker: You have to defer it and try to come up with an alternate plan.
Speaker: But those are a couple.
Speaker: There's many.
Speaker: So on our side, just some quick examples.
Speaker: We've actually started to assign buildings to our staff, so in addition to whatever costs,
Speaker: technical craft they're responsible for.
Speaker: They also are responsible for a weekly walkthrough.
Speaker: So that's our maintenance guys.
Speaker: And they're doing that in an effort to go ahead and get things reported or fixed on site if they're able to do that.
Speaker: So we're not having to depend on someone else to report it, but also so that our work order system isn't bogged down because the thing they hate the most is work orders coming in.
Speaker: I mean, they're glad because they have a job, right?
Speaker: But they would rather fix something right there than have a work order that they then have to sit down and update and go in and close out.
Speaker: And then we do things like monthly generator inspections that is on a contract.
Speaker: We do have a company come out and do that.
Speaker: Just making sure that mechanical rooms are cleaned out because our director of facilities is really big on cleanliness as well.
Speaker: So we also incorporate custodial into this preventative piece because if they take care of our buildings and they don't deteriorate, our carpet doesn't have to be replaced as quickly as
Speaker: Also making sure that we have a good inventory of equipment and so some of your basics, right?
Speaker: So couch cushions and nuts and bolts, screws, nails, all those things, filters.
Speaker: So we're not having to depend on a last minute purchase.
Speaker: And because we've done that, we...
Speaker: are able to right now at least have some parts that other people are not able to get a hold of, which has been good for us.
Speaker: And so just some of those things, just thinking four and five steps ahead so that we're not at crunch time trying to figure it out.
Speaker: Beyond what they've already mentioned, we do very similar things, general maintenance walks weekly, things like that, chilled water line inspections, boiler inspections, generator inspections.
Speaker: routine HVAC filter replacements, things that we catch a lot on our end, water filtration for the buildings, things like that hit us pretty hard, water filtration, P-traps.
Speaker: So nothing too out of the ordinary.
Speaker: We do get our laundry pretty hard twice a year, pulling pumps, washing things, doing a lot of drum cleaning, things like that, just to catch them before they get to that point of breaking.
Speaker: So, Miles, you mentioned air filters.
Speaker: What would happen if we never changed an air filter in a student's room?
Speaker: What would actually happen or what do they think would happen is probably a lot different.
Speaker: But obviously the air quality would go down, you'd get a lot of a musky air smell, a lot of fresh air, different things.
Speaker: We had an issue like that where some fresh air returns got blocked a few years ago.
Speaker: And there were some mechanical chases that the building was old enough that through time people didn't learn about things.
Speaker: And there would just be a feeling of staleness or the tempered air wouldn't be able to get to the space.
Speaker: I think a big one is getting the coils and stuff dirty.
Speaker: That's one we deal with if you're not filtering the air before it gets there and then you're blocking that.
Speaker: It just makes it a lot less comfortable.
Speaker: And then you can go to the extreme of poor air quality, allergies, different things like that.
Speaker: Well, like if the air coils are clogged over many years, wouldn't that eventually overuse or the works too hard and the compressor would eventually give out, right?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Obviously, your fan motors are going to start pulling harder and pushing harder.
Speaker: You've got bearings going out.
Speaker: Then it's just a waterfall effect.
Speaker: Your fan motors are overworking.
Speaker: Your bearings start going out.
Speaker: You start rattling and duct work.
Speaker: You've got...
Speaker: Wearing sounds coming down the study rooms.
Speaker: It's interesting the things that especially the people on this call that could walk down a hallway and hear a sound and be like, got to find that motor.
Speaker: That's a bearing.
Speaker: Like those kind of things you just you learn to know like this sound means that.
Speaker: I think one of the big things that's hit us a lot is less, this just popped in my head, it's not necessarily filter, but insulation, preventative maintenance on insulation around chilled water pipes, hot water pipes.
Speaker: We had some issues with that a few years ago.
Speaker: Some stuff didn't get insulated correctly and that creates leaks and then turns into ceiling tiles and then turns into mold, mildew, that kind of stuff.
Speaker: I think it's that domino effect of one small misstep of preventative maintenance unchecked over a long time can then grow into a building-wide problem pretty quickly.
Speaker: Yeah, you talk about the sounds of the hallway.
Speaker: I've got a drip above my kitchen sink right now that just came about like yesterday.
Speaker: And it's driving me crazy trying to figure out where or what.
Speaker: And I'm just like thinking of all the terrible things that are going on inside this office.
Speaker: And I just like can't get over it.
Speaker: Like, what could I have done sooner to fix this problem before it w as a problem?
Speaker: So you guys were talking about filters and something that we experienced here is
Speaker: that honestly I was not prepared for, it was definitely a lesson learned, is we made the decision with COVID a year ago that we were gonna change all of our filters in the halls from MERV 8s to MERV 13, which basically is a, the higher the number, the more particles the filter keeps out.
Speaker: in theory.
Speaker: Everybody, the industry was all pushing 13, like that's the best quality you can get.
Speaker: And so we made the decision to do that at $50,000 for one set of filters.
Speaker: And what we did not anticipate is two things.
Speaker: One, are your air handler units prepared to have a MERV 13 versus a MERV 8?
Speaker: And two, the amount of the PMs that would have to happen instead of changing them every four months, which is what we do with the MERV 8s, we were having to change them monthly.
Speaker: And in some cases, we're out in West Texas, we've got a lot of dust.
Speaker: We were doing it less than a month.
Speaker: And as a result, we were forced to go back to the MERV 8.
Speaker: One, we couldn't get the MERV 13s because of COVID, but also because our air handler units, I mean, if you're changing them at $50,000 per quarter and you now have to do it monthly, I mean, it adds up.
Speaker: And that's not an expense that we were prepared for.
Speaker: So the decision ultimately, and it was a hard decision because the industry was telling us
Speaker: You need to go with this.
Speaker: And of course, the PR component of it.
Speaker: But when we did it, nobody complained.
Speaker: The air quality didn't change.
Speaker: Nobody noticed a difference in the air quality.
Speaker: And so we quickly went back to the MERV 8s, which in comparison costs us about almost $20,000 per set per quarter.
Speaker: So you can see the difference in costs.
Speaker: And of course, COVID played a big part in that for people.
Speaker: All sorts of reasons, and I won't get on my soapbox with that, but it gets expensive.
Speaker: Well, I think you bring up an interesting point of how stuff scales in facilities, and this is kind of a little off topic, but if you think about the standard air filter that we put in a room where it's like two, three bucks a filter, not a big deal, takes...
Speaker: 10 minutes to replace whatever getting in a room.
Speaker: But when you scale that up times how many rooms do you have?
Speaker: We've got 5000 air filters across campus.
Speaker: All of a sudden now that's fifteen thousand dollars and whatever 15 minutes times 5000 is is I mean, that's a lot of time and person hours.
Speaker: And I just think it's kind of fun and interesting to geek out a little bit on how that stuff scales so quickly.
Speaker: And Drew, in your bio, we talked about you being on the paint crew.
Speaker: I also was on a housing paint crew when I was in college.
Speaker: And I think about the scale.
Speaker: Well, we painted one high rise, which had 400 double rooms.
Speaker: Each room had something like 350 square feet of walls, which makes a total of 140,000 square feet of walls, not counting common spaces corridors.
Speaker: And with one cone of paint, that's about 400 gallons.
Speaker: I mean, it just expands exponentially.
Speaker: And I think about like reading a resume as we try and like quantify our experiences.
Speaker: Like I love reading facilities resumes because they always talk about like square footage and, you know, those sorts of things compared to like
Speaker: people numbers and buildings, but it's just, it's just interesting.
Speaker: So I appreciate you bringing that up.
Speaker: So what does a PM plan look like then?
Speaker: For us, I work with facilities on our campus, just creating the PM plan as far as preventative maintenance across air handlers and filters and stuff like that.
Speaker: It's just a routine.
Speaker: How often does that have to happen?
Speaker: We also created probably a 15-fiscal year repair and replace cycle.
Speaker: And I think that talking about your piece of scaling is one of the most important things that we need to create that budget of.
Speaker: We need to start adding a lifespan to air handlers and all these components of how much is this going to cost?
Speaker: What is inflation going to hit us?
Speaker: Come to find out we are super wrong about that.
Speaker: But really creating a plan and not ignoring it.
Speaker: I think that's a big piece.
Speaker: A lot of schools are, I can speak to TCU specifically, where we have a lot of grandiose plans and create these wonderful proposals.
Speaker: buildings and facilities and really fill them up and make them with the most, the, some of the best residence halls there can be.
Speaker: But then we forget about, Hey, seven years from now, we've got to start replacing things.
Speaker: And 15 years after we build it, we got to start talking, see like all that kind of stuff.
Speaker: And,
Speaker: Really making sure that that's part of your plan.
Speaker: So not just what the physical thing is that you're PMing or replacing, but thinking about how much is this going to cost and what is inflation going to hit and how can I be prepared budgetarily so you can avoid that root canal that you can't afford.
Speaker: So for us, we kind of do a couple of things.
Speaker: A lot of what Miles has said about making sure that when we're doing install and project planning, capital improvement planning, that we're thinking about a new construction, we're thinking about the long term factors that go into it.
Speaker: Everything that Miles has just said.
Speaker: So I'm not going to.
Speaker: One of the things we've also asked that our technicians do is, you know, they're all certified.
Speaker: They all know what license they all know what they're doing.
Speaker: We asked them to really be involved in that decision making process and planning process as far as.
Speaker: when items are maintenance, when items are inspected with the, not just a cursory overview, but really getting into, into the equipment.
Speaker: That way they can then begin to document things because what we have found is that we lose a lot of knowledge when preventative maintenance is discussed.
Speaker: And so we want to make sure we document all of those things and
Speaker: And that just like Miles said, it's not ignored.
Speaker: And so if you tell us that next summer we've got to get XYZ, ABC done, that we pay attention to that and then factor that into our schedule or that over winter break or every week we need to be looking at a specific.
Speaker: a specific component that we're doing that.
Speaker: So we're not forgetting about that and trying to incorporate all of that into, I don't want to say a daily checklist of your job duties, but that it's at the forefront.
Speaker: So on top of responding to whatever work requests you're receiving, we're also incorporating preventative maintenance as a standard process that we do each day.
Speaker: So for me,
Speaker: I guess I was fortunate or maybe unfortunate, depending.
Speaker: When I took over this role, our PM plan was already in place.
Speaker: And so I inherited our plan or lack thereof, depending on how you look at it.
Speaker: We had all of these PMs that had been set up years ago in TMA, which is our work order system.
Speaker: And if it's a monthly thing, it will come out every month.
Speaker: that tells the technician, okay, here's what needs to be checked.
Speaker: And we treat that like any other work order.
Speaker: If it's an annual thing, it'll come out once a year.
Speaker: If it's a quarterly thing, it'll come up every quarter.
Speaker: Filters are quarterly.
Speaker: So they will get
Speaker: A work order that says, okay, it's filter time.
Speaker: Go ahead and get that going.
Speaker: So wait, does that kill them out?
Speaker: You've got 150 rooms that are generated in that quarter, like that week.
Speaker: Is it 150 work orders or is it a single work order with 150 rooms in it?
Speaker: It's a single work order, and it's by building.
Speaker: And so that building will get one work order that says it's filter time.
Speaker: And then, of course, we put all our material on that.
Speaker: So that one work order will have the material for, you know, if it has 400 rooms in it in that building, it'll have the material for 400 rooms.
Speaker: And then, of course, the labor, we keep track of that as well.
Speaker: And so we can tell how long it takes them to do it.
Speaker: I kind of alluded to earlier in one of the statements that I made about getting buy-in to your PM plan.
Speaker: I don't know that we have that right now, if I'm being completely candid and truthful.
Speaker: I think our technicians don't enjoy doing it.
Speaker: And so it's kind of similar on the ResLife side.
Speaker: You know, you want to see that instant gratification.
Speaker: And when you're dealing with a crisis,
Speaker: you get to see that when you're just looking at equipment, it's not the shiny stuff.
Speaker: So it's not as motivating, even though it's as critical.
Speaker: And so I have found that a lot of our technicians, if you don't stay on them, those are the ones that, Oh, I'll get to that after I do everything else.
Speaker: And unfortunately days, sometimes weeks go by before they get to it.
Speaker: Now, we keep track of it because I said it's all in our work order system.
Speaker: So we know if it hasn't been closed out or what action or inaction has been made on that particular work order.
Speaker: So we can see what's going on.
Speaker: And we do have staff that watch that so that we stay on it.
Speaker: But it truly is a team effort just to keep people motivated to do it.
Speaker: Does anyone have any staff that like get up in the morning?
Speaker: Like, yes, I love PM.
Speaker: No.
Speaker: I think where TCU is a little bit different now for some of the housing facilities, we, we do a bunch of the PMs in house, but a bunch of the other facilities we contract out.
Speaker: And I think that's where we've been able to really succeed in that buy-in is getting everyone involved, being on the same page of,
Speaker: Just say you're giving someone a $100,000 contract to PM X pieces of equipment every year.
Speaker: And then they realize, well, I feel like I'm cheating y'all.
Speaker: One, if they're a good quality, loyal, and honest company.
Speaker: I feel like I'm cheating y'all because this is only $80,000 or so worth of work that I'm doing.
Speaker: I just made $20,000 off of y'all.
Speaker: That's perfect.
Speaker: I love it.
Speaker: I want you to be so motivated to keep things from breaking that you make that extra money because those things aren't broken anymore.
Speaker: And that's where we circle back to us adding monetary value to the fact that things are functioning correctly.
Speaker: And that we switched to that model in all of our dining contracts.
Speaker: And it's just been a complete 180 of how we've managed things.
Speaker: And it couldn't have gone
Speaker: better how do you now translate that that people aren't going to make extra money for doing that kind of work it's still it's still something that we uh we're learning to learning to do trying to get that motivated pushing those relationships in there is proven successful so far but still when it's not the fun stuff um it is hard after some recent career organizations and we got some new leadership in our
Speaker: physical plant and finding some of those pms and things that were getting checked off the list but then we were finding that just weren't happening because they weren't those fun shiny things and people got to find new places of employment things like that that changed the the mindset around it that this isn't just a boring part of your job like if you do this correctly the other parts of your job become a lot easier you don't have to come out at midnight because
Speaker: just these coils raise up or you don't have to do that.
Speaker: That's another thing.
Speaker: We, we struggle with overtime.
Speaker: It is very difficult for us to get a person here beyond normal work hours.
Speaker: I know some people live for overtime and that extra money, but if it doesn't happen between eight and five, it is, it is difficult to get things rolling.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: The overtime that, that leads right into just like staffing resources and you know, how do you, how do you manage all that?
Speaker: And,
Speaker: I'm just curious, has anyone ever considered having like students help out with PMs in their apartment to save time, resources, like set up some sort of like, we're going to drop the air filter.
Speaker: I keep using air filter, the air filter off of your front door, install it.
Speaker: Here's how you do it.
Speaker: We do that during the summer, not to drop it off thing, but we have physical point and our teams hire a small army of student workers or have in the past, uh,
Speaker: Oh, so like you pay students, not like your residents, like, hey, we're going to empower you.
Speaker: No, that sounds awful.
Speaker: But it's life skill development here.
Speaker: I think there's an opportunity here.
Speaker: I've also seen students duct tape air filters to their ceiling because they double filter their air.
Speaker: No, no, no.
Speaker: That vent, that's the return.
Speaker: That's the vent of your dirty room dust up into there.
Speaker: You're filtering it before it gets to another filter.
Speaker: You're really confused how this is working, aren't you?
Speaker: Yep, good.
Speaker: You're gross.
Speaker: You need to clean your room.
Speaker: But Miles, that's just because they didn't have an educational moment with you teaching them how to properly do this.
Speaker: Like, there's a missed opportunity here.
Speaker: I just walked through the educational moment with you.
Speaker: Katie's shaking her head.
Speaker: Come on, Katie.
Speaker: I know you're all about this.
Speaker: No, I'm not, though.
Speaker: Built almost all of our spaces the last 15 years, except for a few other buildings.
Speaker: All of our spaces, we've went away from any type of mechanical access inside the suite itself.
Speaker: We've built access all beyond.
Speaker: So it should be I can hit these two four-bedroom units from one point.
Speaker: So we have built our mechanical rooms to make, you know, what is it, Frederick Taylor and really make that assembly line a lot quicker when they get in there and move through things.
Speaker: I think you should try that and let us know.
Speaker: Yeah, let us know.
Speaker: That's something that we could pilot at our schools.
Speaker: I just think, Drew, how many air filters do you have?
Speaker: Just ballpark, rough.
Speaker: Air filters?
Speaker: Oh, God.
Speaker: Probably one per room.
Speaker: But times how many rooms do you have on campus?
Speaker: Oh, gosh.
Speaker: We have probably about 4,500 rooms.
Speaker: 4,500 rooms times one air filter each.
Speaker: How long does it take to change an air filter coming in and out?
Speaker: To actually change it about a minute and a half to move all the crap out of the way to get to where you change it, probably about 10 minutes.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: The physical strain on the back from carrying the ladder.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So that's 750 hours you all spend changing air filters.
Speaker: You empower students to do this for you.
Speaker: I just found you 750 hours for your maintenance tech.
Speaker: So you can thank me later.
Speaker: You can give them all a couple days off on me.
Speaker: But then how many hours do you spend checking to make sure they do it right?
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: Miles, don't worry about that.
Speaker: You let me worry about that.
Speaker: I will say, though, talking about the student interaction and all, there are some cases, especially in our engineering building, where the students do ask our technicians a lot of questions when they come into the room.
Speaker: And so there are learning opportunities that are not scheduled, they're not planned.
Speaker: They just happen because our person is in the room and somebody asks a question.
Speaker: And to watch a technician just light up is when a student asks about what they're doing.
Speaker: And so there are some teachable moments that do take place that are seldom
Speaker: known by anybody other than that student and that technician.
Speaker: And filters is one.
Speaker: Lock changes is another.
Speaker: When we go in and change a lock, they have lots of questions about how that process works.
Speaker: And it takes our locksmith about five seconds to change a lock.
Speaker: It takes them about 45 minutes to get prepared for that two second change.
Speaker: And so to talk about that process with the student is is is a kind of what you're getting at as far as that teaching them something.
Speaker: I think it does happen.
Speaker: Yeah, this is my soapbox.
Speaker: I think that, you know, we prepare students for lifelong learning and all these skills and relationship building.
Speaker: And then all of a sudden they move off the safety net of campus housing and living in their own place and they never change their air filter and they don't know what to do.
Speaker: Like, are we really setting them up for success post-graduation if they don't have a clue that they need to inspect certain things?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I've taken some small victories of not necessarily with students, but we've been trying to do that with hall directors.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: We've really empowered the hall directors.
Speaker: If you see that maintenance technician...
Speaker: come in, ask him, what is he doing?
Speaker: Learn.
Speaker: I can relay the information to you, but there's no better place for you to be than be the biggest or the most best expert of your building more than anyone.
Speaker: You should be able to learn this place.
Speaker: Tell me what's going on, what's happening, learn the trends.
Speaker: I want to be able to ask you, hey, in two years, if you had to pick your two biggest projects for this space, I think I want it to be a very easy answer.
Speaker: I need to
Speaker: I need to replace all the shower panes because they're always leaking.
Speaker: And I want to do fresh air, stuff like that.
Speaker: And we're really pushing that.
Speaker: And I had this conversation the other day with someone about that lens of student affairs.
Speaker: And that's the whole reason I wrote it in my bio is that lens of student affairs, about how people actually use the buildings, how things are happening programmatically in residence halls, how students are programming, how students are living, how they're using study spaces.
Speaker: What are they doing?
Speaker: Like we just cut cable.
Speaker: We don't even have cable at TCU anymore because no one's using it.
Speaker: So why are we paying for cable jacks to be active when no one uses it?
Speaker: No one even knows what a coax cable is anymore.
Speaker: Like empowering the hall directors, like we talked about the bearings going out in a fan motor earlier, teaching that.
Speaker: hall director, residence director, whatever, what that sounds like, what that is, explaining what's happening, explaining why it takes a little bit longer than going in and tightening a screw.
Speaker: So when they facilitate that conversation with a parent or a student, they seem like the expert.
Speaker: And it is a trusted experience.
Speaker: It's a trusted story of this is what's occurring.
Speaker: It makes them seem more invested in the student experience.
Speaker: It makes them seem more believable.
Speaker: And it also makes it feel like they were heard.
Speaker: Like I went through the process of learning exactly what was happening.
Speaker: I can explain it.
Speaker: And this is, I know what I'm talking about.
Speaker: I didn't say, let me, let me check on that for you.
Speaker: And then not knowing.
Speaker: From a developmental aspect, I wonder, how do you have the conversation after something happened that we know the student could have prevented without it sounding like accusatory, you moron, if you had just said something 24 hours before,
Speaker: Because we had someone the other day that the person below reported that water was coming in above their kitchen.
Speaker: And we caught the guy running above, running out of his room.
Speaker: He's like, oh, yeah, I noticed my dishwasher was leaking two days ago.
Speaker: And I kept meaning to put in a work order.
Speaker: OK, well, if you had done it that day, we now wouldn't have five thousand dollars of damage or whatever.
Speaker: How do we how do you have that conversation with people without just being like you are so this is all your fault?
Speaker: Depends what role you're expected to play in the office.
Speaker: Because the first example you gave was more than likely my role, but maybe the more the res life side would be educational.
Speaker: Like, hey, here's why you take that seriously.
Speaker: And maybe when you have your house off campus someday, this could have been prevented.
Speaker: But that's a hard one.
Speaker: It is because you go in it with an emotional response of, you just created a lot of work for us because you didn't take 30 seconds out of your day to give us the information that would have helped you.
Speaker: the eight people below you as well.
Speaker: Or you just give them the bill.
Speaker: So I think for us, all of the things that Miles and Drew have said, because sometimes handing them that, that invoice or that damage charges, that's enough.
Speaker: But what we also, what we have done at same Houston is we talked to our hall staff about why it is so important and
Speaker: And then they will relate to students as they're teaching them how to do online maintenance requests, because fortunately our students can do that on their own.
Speaker: Why it is so important to report things that include water, smoke, burning smells, or exposed wires.
Speaker: Like those are the kind of the four things and locks not working.
Speaker: Those are kind of the things that we focus on.
Speaker: And so if you don't do anything else, just call someone and report it.
Speaker: And so we try to impart and we show pictures and give examples.
Speaker: But definitely it's hard.
Speaker: I think it's really hard not to do the you moron.
Speaker: What were you thinking?
Speaker: But I think that we also have to remember we know what the ramifications are because we've done it.
Speaker: We've seen it.
Speaker: We've repaired it.
Speaker: They don't get it.
Speaker: I don't know that people always realize how much damage water can cause or smoke can cause.
Speaker: They don't understand.
Speaker: We like to show a lot of videos down here in Huntsville.
Speaker: We like to show when things flood and fire.
Speaker: And that visual tends to also sit really well with people.
Speaker: That's more specifically our staff, but they're welcome to pass those videos on to anybody that they think might need that education as well.
Speaker: So as we talk about educating people on successfully interacting with facility staff and facilities issues, what's one piece of actionable advice for non-facilities housing employees to help out maintenance in their day-to-day work with students?
Speaker: To me, what comes to mind quickly is, you know, get out from behind your desk and walk your building with your maintenance person and talk to them as you're walking the building and
Speaker: and see what the maintenance person sees.
Speaker: And then the maintenance person sees what the staff member sees.
Speaker: It could be an hour of your day, but can really be eye opening to why things are the way they are, particularly this time of year when you're new to a building, you know, get, you know,
Speaker: That maintenance person has a lot more history of that building than you do in most cases.
Speaker: Talk to them.
Speaker: Start with, hey, how are you?
Speaker: I'm new here or I'm new to the building.
Speaker: What do you know about it?
Speaker: What are some of the common nuances of this building?
Speaker: And, you know, what have you seen work or not work?
Speaker: Some of those things are just that's the relationship building piece.
Speaker: that I think I have noticed ResLife, they like to talk to students.
Speaker: I think it's because they have that power dynamic, but they're afraid to talk to an adult.
Speaker: And so it's like, you know, almost like how do you have a conversation?
Speaker: Like just, you know, I mean, they put their pants on one leg at a time, just like you.
Speaker: Wait, that's how you do it?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I think a couple of things jump into my mind.
Speaker: Obviously, exactly everything we just said.
Speaker: I think there is a piece of someone's coming to fix something.
Speaker: People automatically think they're coming in defensive.
Speaker: Like, ah, someone broke something.
Speaker: I need to fix it.
Speaker: Nope.
Speaker: You're here to do a hall director dealing with conduct cases, dealing with roommate conflicts.
Speaker: Someone who's an HVAC technician in residence hall, guess what they're there to do?
Speaker: Fix HVAC items.
Speaker: It's a good job.
Speaker: And they're an expert in that.
Speaker: So talk to them about it.
Speaker: Get to know them.
Speaker: Beyond that, I think one of the things that jumps into my mind more than anything is go put eyes on things.
Speaker: Like if you're getting a duty call or your RAs are telling you this or you're putting in a work order because it came in after hours and
Speaker: It doesn't make sense.
Speaker: Don't just send it on the way for someone else to make sense of it.
Speaker: Figure it out.
Speaker: Like again, that's, that's your community.
Speaker: You're supposed to be the expert of that.
Speaker: So you see if you can figure out, Oh, there's a leak coming from the second floor of the first floor.
Speaker: And all they did was put in a leak.
Speaker: So instead of putting the leak, did you maybe go knock and look at the room above it to see if something's running or something's leaking.
Speaker: And the idea of a,
Speaker: being able to correctly explain, we all, we all use this in housing.
Speaker: Like don't call in and use the word flood.
Speaker: If it's, if it's not rolling down the stairwell, it's not a flood because someone opened the washing machine a little too early.
Speaker: And now we send six housekeepers and two plumbers to find that someone already cleaned it up with a towel.
Speaker: That's the kind of stuff that I, yeah, you see, you're all laughing because it happens.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: But that kind of thing is just put your eyes on it.
Speaker: Learn.
Speaker: Be the best resource for who's going to come fix it.
Speaker: So if they know exactly – if they give so much detail, they know exactly what they're coming to fix.
Speaker: So they can grab parts.
Speaker: They can grab tools.
Speaker: And the right trade shows up.
Speaker: If you say, hey, there's this big leak coming.
Speaker: But if you would have spent a few minutes realizing that it's a frozen coil, that's a completely different call out.
Speaker: I mean they sent a plumber when they really need to be sending an HVAC person.
Speaker: Those are the things that aren't difficult to learn, but I think we are dealing with professionals who facilities intimidate them because they don't want to get it wrong.
Speaker: And it's scary because people go through higher education and you think about your traditional res life person, me included.
Speaker: I mean, I grew up in a blue collar world, so I felt like I knew more about it.
Speaker: That's what my parents did and such, but...
Speaker: they're the blue collar piece intimidates them of like, this is a trade.
Speaker: This is a functional thing.
Speaker: I don't know if I'm, that's not my skillset.
Speaker: It's not difficult to identify it.
Speaker: Now I'm not going to trust you to fix it, but I think that's, that's, that's a connect that we could really put together with hall directors and RAs of, of being, being the experts of their community.
Speaker: So I would echo all of the things that drew and miles have said,
Speaker: definitely putting eyes on it.
Speaker: That's one of the things we talk to our staff about in training is you always need to put eyes on it and probably take a picture and a video.
Speaker: We've all got smartphones.
Speaker: So why not just go ahead and send that info over to the technician?
Speaker: So we definitely talk about that.
Speaker: One thing that I also, because like Miles, I grew up with blue collar parents and I always really impart with our staff that
Speaker: just like they want to be talked to and treated in a respectful way, that we do that with everybody.
Speaker: So I don't care if you're the housekeeper or the custodian, whatever you call it, your school, or you're the president, that everybody deserves the same amount of respect and to have conversations with them and get to know them.
Speaker: Because sometimes we have found that our staff are like, oh, it's a plumber, it's an HVAC.
Speaker: Let them cut your AC off and see what happens, honey.
Speaker: Like, right?
Speaker: Like they would never do that.
Speaker: But be respectful of the fact that air and water mean a lot to people.
Speaker: And we want to make sure.
Speaker: that those that are taking care of us are also taking care of in a respectful way and that you get to know them because you probably got a lot more in common than you may realize.
Speaker: And I think that relationship building and having an understanding that no one is better, we all just, we just have different jobs and no job is anyone better, any better than the other one.
Speaker: It's just different.
Speaker: And it takes all those pieces to make this work because if any one of us drop out,
Speaker: it's not going to work.
Speaker: No secret that, I mean, most trades people aren't working at a university to make great money.
Speaker: Correct.
Speaker: Private sector, especially in the current market and work way more.
Speaker: They love it.
Speaker: They love where they work.
Speaker: Usually the ones that are successful and create those relationships.
Speaker: They're there.
Speaker: A lot of, I can speak for TCU a lot of the times, or maybe that motivation, maybe I get to put a kid through school because of a benefit or something like that.
Speaker: I think, yeah.
Speaker: Those people keep the buildings going.
Speaker: See, there's an alarm going off.
Speaker: Someone's getting called out.
Speaker: Sorry.
Speaker: No, we had an emergency alert.
Speaker: Blood.
Speaker: Oh, my.
Speaker: It's like the longest one I've ever seen.
Speaker: I mean, and I've got three cell phones, so I'm so sorry.
Speaker: I was going to say, I think that that's a misconception because they're working on your toilet or they wear a shirt with their name on it.
Speaker: Like they're lesser.
Speaker: Nope.
Speaker: Those people keep it moving, man.
Speaker: I think that's someone's view.
Speaker: It's definitely wrong, especially in our industry.
Speaker: Well, I think the other thing that people in specifically ResLife, you know, they wouldn't want anyone criticizing their master's degree.
Speaker: that they've had.
Speaker: And unless they've ever been through a trade school, they have no concept of how difficult it is to get a license.
Speaker: maintain that license.
Speaker: You get your master's degree and you're done.
Speaker: But when you have a license, every year you have to continue to get continuing education units and to maintain it or you lose it.
Speaker: And so it's continuing education for a reason.
Speaker: They're educated too.
Speaker: It's just a different type.
Speaker: And a lot of staff don't realize that.
Speaker: I've been doing some home renovations and I have a PhD in trying to read an electrical code and make heads and tails out of that.
Speaker: Like I can't even begin to have the expertise to do that.
Speaker: And I think that's such a valuable point.
Speaker: I was told the story once, it was specifically about a maintenance person.
Speaker: Long story short is like people really don't care how much you know, but they know how much you care.
Speaker: And I think that's a perfect illustration of like acknowledging and recognizing and talk to the trades and the housekeepers by name and acknowledging like, I mean, it goes back to the whole point of like, people don't care how much I know, but they know how much I care.
Speaker: And that stuff like translates very easily.
Speaker: Miles, going back to your point about getting the right information, getting eyes on things.
Speaker: I think so often it's easy from like, and it's probably well-intentioned, like I'm doing my part.
Speaker: I'm passing on this emergency as fast as possible to the people who are the experts.
Speaker: And so I've done my part.
Speaker: I passed it on.
Speaker: Whereas like even just another minute of getting eyes is going to provide the additional context where when you pass it on two minutes later, three minutes later, it's a whole lot more helpful that you actually save 30 minutes an hour because, oh, like you said, that we sent the plumber when it should have been the AC person that I think it's well-intentioned, but, you know, getting a little bit more information sometimes saves your staffing resources.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I will say one of the things that we tell our it's our hall director staff, especially for after hours, because we do have somebody on call like they have to come out.
Speaker: I said, if you mess that up because you do kind of like what Miles said, right?
Speaker: It's a flood, but it's that much water.
Speaker: That technician has every right to rip you up one side and down the other because you didn't do your job.
Speaker: And the first time it happens and they realize how serious we are, they don't do it again.
Speaker: And I tell them it's not because people want to be ugly, but just like you don't want to be woken up at two in the morning for a flood that's.
Speaker: that big, that much water because I spilled this, right?
Speaker: I spilled this water bottle.
Speaker: They don't want to be woken up either.
Speaker: So we try to make light of it, make it fun and ha ha ha.
Speaker: But then some of them have some stories that they will relay after training and just to make sure everybody's just, you know, on their game and doing their part and following the processes.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Well, I think it's amazing what we all have within ourselves to actually solve problems.
Speaker: And life really is all just solving one problem after another.
Speaker: And when you put eyes on something, sometimes you can actually resolve it yourself.
Speaker: And you don't, I think it was Drew or Katie, someone mentioned like...
Speaker: If you don't need to call someone out, we don't.
Speaker: And I once served on our coordinator level, like operations on call.
Speaker: And I got a call from someone about security at a door.
Speaker: And I went down there, like an exterior door.
Speaker: It wasn't locking.
Speaker: It wasn't latching.
Speaker: I went down there, opened and shut the door.
Speaker: Like the strike plate was missing.
Speaker: And I was like, well, I could call someone out to do this, but I bet I can find a strike plate on an interior door somewhere that's not.
Speaker: And went and swapped it out real fast.
Speaker: I didn't, nobody gave me permission.
Speaker: I figured it was going to be okay.
Speaker: I could rationalize it, but I just saved a half hour drive for someone coming in.
Speaker: Plus,
Speaker: 15 minutes of 10 minute job and then a half hour driving back of like, well, that person got an extra hour sleep at midnight and whatever the overtime pay rate time and a half is.
Speaker: I also felt a sense of satisfaction of something I did that helped it out.
Speaker: Okay, so let's put this all into action and think about wherever people live, what kind of like base preventive maintenance plan can people put in their homes to like just build good habits and start putting in this knowledge into action?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I think the one that we've talked about a lot is air conditioning, plumbing, things like that.
Speaker: I've learned that quickly in my own home with like a secondary condensate line started dripping.
Speaker: I was like, it's a secondary line.
Speaker: So I had to learn about why is my second, like, why is my condensate backup line?
Speaker: Having water gusts for it, great.
Speaker: The first one's clogged.
Speaker: Keeping your condensate line clean.
Speaker: Had to learn in my house where to clear that line, those kind of things.
Speaker: But you pay someone $100 a year, they come out and do it all for you.
Speaker: Bleach your lines, check your coolant, wash your air conditioning.
Speaker: All those things that I wish... I think it was Katie that said this earlier.
Speaker: It seems expensive right then.
Speaker: You feel like you're paying someone a lot of money
Speaker: to not receive something because there's not that immediacy of response of what I receive.
Speaker: But that day your air conditioner goes out and it's 106 outside.
Speaker: I promise you the $100 or whatever it was seems like pennies compared to the experience that you're having.
Speaker: Those are the things that we do in our personal home.
Speaker: We run protection on our
Speaker: air conditioners.
Speaker: And I think automating everything, this may be the younger generation in me.
Speaker: Like I automatically have air filters shipped to my house every three months.
Speaker: They show up, I'm like, oh, I need to remember to do that.
Speaker: Cool.
Speaker: Put those in, things like that, that you can easily, easily forget if you don't just automate the important
Speaker: So I would say two things.
Speaker: Don't ignore whatever warning or reminders you get.
Speaker: So your ACE or not your AC, your fridge filter, you know, and that if you, depending on your fridge, you get that light filter needs to be changed.
Speaker: Don't ignore those.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Don't ignore those because I think a lot of times people do.
Speaker: And that's just gross.
Speaker: Sometimes it's just gross.
Speaker: Um, yeah.
Speaker: Well, it's not even just gross.
Speaker: Like you may not care.
Speaker: I don't care about filtered water, but eventually the filter is going to be so clogged that it's going to stop pushing water through.
Speaker: And if it's pushing water through, not there, it's going to be somewhere else.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Well, and I swear it tastes different and it's funky.
Speaker: Things are just funky.
Speaker: But the other thing that I would say, so I do a lot of work with our custodial contractor.
Speaker: And again, so we consider that part of our preventative maintenance plan because if they keep it clean, things don't wear out.
Speaker: We don't replace furniture and carpet as often.
Speaker: So please clean.
Speaker: And I don't and I'm not talking about what I consider clean versus you considering clean.
Speaker: I mean, just keeping things like around your AC unit clean, keeping if you're blocking, if you have window units, don't block those.
Speaker: Keep things cleared away.
Speaker: Keep things tidy, because I do think that that can also help in your own home.
Speaker: If you're vacuuming on a regular basis, things like that, you don't see that, you know, walking trail, moving your furniture, wiping down the walls, then you don't have the outline of the furniture because it's been sitting up against a wall for, you know, 20 years, which I know some people are like, but you once again here, you can pay a housekeeper or a cleaning company to come in if you don't like to do it.
Speaker: And so I think sometimes people forget how how much cleanliness and disinfectant can also help maintain.
Speaker: Couple of things that came to mind in listening to both Katie and Miles.
Speaker: If you have a fireplace in your house to make sure that you clean your fireplace and preferably by a professional who knows what they're doing, because the consequence of that is you may not have a house because your house could catch on fire if you don't clean it and then you try to light it.
Speaker: Clean your dishwasher because a dirty dishwasher
Speaker: will create dirty dishes.
Speaker: You know, lawn care, you don't want to be that house on the neighborhood that doesn't take care of your weeds.
Speaker: So simple things like that.
Speaker: Pray for bugs.
Speaker: If you don't want to do it, you can pay a company to come do it.
Speaker: But the bottom line is the more preventative maintenance that you do at your house, you will lower your utility costs.
Speaker: And in some cases,
Speaker: you know, you may end up breaking even.
Speaker: And so it's not just shelling out money for the sake of shelling money or that you're lazy.
Speaker: It's, you know, you can win in other ways in other areas of your finances if you take care of your stuff and your appliances will last longer.
Speaker: So, you know, that filter that you're talking about for your fridge, it's not just the water tastes nasty.
Speaker: It's your fridge will break down over time if you don't change the filter.
Speaker: Check for lint in your dryer.
Speaker: I do it after every use.
Speaker: Why?
Speaker: Because it's more economical.
Speaker: I'm more efficient, so less energy is used.
Speaker: So my energy electric bill is lower and I don't have the risk of a fire because lint burns.
Speaker: I think it's very important that you do it, that you take the time.
Speaker: If you appreciate your house, especially if you own your house, if you're renting, then the incentive for you is lowering your utility bills.
Speaker: And building good habits, lifelong habits.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Drew, you mentioned like PM for pests.
Speaker: And actually just last night we had our quarterly pest control come out and do the preventative maintenance spray all throughout.
Speaker: And it's, I mean, it's been just huge.
Speaker: And that automation piece is so great.
Speaker: I think about even if you're in an apartment, sometimes it's like, well, your apartment complex should be doing this.
Speaker: Just like, hopefully we're doing this for all of our people leasing and living with us.
Speaker: But, you know,
Speaker: Oh, you notice my air filters haven't been changed in a while.
Speaker: It's like, you know, once a month, I had a list of things I went down that included and some of it was like just trying to build a good habit because I knew I was going to be buying a house eventually.
Speaker: And it was like checking, replacing air filters.
Speaker: It was like cleaning the aerators on the sinks and the showers, the shower heads that build up calcium and
Speaker: Just a little laundry list of things.
Speaker: It was just like, okay, I'm going to have a little really productive day and do all these little five-minute jobs.
Speaker: The cleaning one jogged my memory.
Speaker: We had black grout in the shower, and my wife and I were having this big discussion.
Speaker: It was like nobody wanted to clean it.
Speaker: It wasn't disgusting, but it was like we had neglected it a little bit.
Speaker: And I was like, okay, we're going to get this done and let's just leave a scrubber in the shower.
Speaker: And every shower I take, I'm just going to scrub one area for like 45 seconds.
Speaker: The constant maintenance of the shower is going to eliminate this extra elbow grease needed.
Speaker: So I really think about them as like good habit forming.
Speaker: Oh, that reminds me.
Speaker: Something that is really key is if you have missing grout, fix it.
Speaker: If you, on the outside of your house, if you have brick,
Speaker: and you're missing mortar, fix that.
Speaker: Because if you don't, that can impact your foundation.
Speaker: It can impact, you know, you can end up with water inside of your house, which then creates mold.
Speaker: And you don't, I mean, you can really destroy a house if you neglect it.
Speaker: And it's those little things.
Speaker: It really is.
Speaker: I treat it all like insurance policies.
Speaker: We all pay a whole bunch of money for insurance, and it's just in case.
Speaker: And it's the same way with preventative maintenance on your home or whatever.
Speaker: You're putting funds towards something and protecting it, hoping to keep something worse from happening.
Speaker: That's all it is.
Speaker: And people attack it differently.
Speaker: They're just going to save money and fix whatever that huge problem is.
Speaker: That just sounds like a nightmare to me.
Speaker: Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker: And it's like a mastery of your domain.
Speaker: It's like, this is my space.
Speaker: It's a whole lot.
Speaker: You're a whole lot more interesting person if you know some of these nuts and bolts or like you feel like you've done a little bit more of like, yeah, this really is my domicile or this is my house.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: So any last minute closing thoughts about preventative maintenance?
Speaker: Not about preventative maintenance per se, but with the conversation I've had with a couple rising student affairs professionals is I think this trend of having student affairs professionals transition into facilities is something that's important that continues to occur of having that lens of
Speaker: what's actually occurring in our spaces.
Speaker: And I think it's been very beneficial for a lot of different campuses that I've especially seen in Swakugo.
Speaker: So I feel like if there's anyone in your world, in your departments, your divisions, that spark an interest, take them, get them interested.
Speaker: We created a facilities collateral for our hall directors this year.
Speaker: So I get to work with a hall director and he is just pumped.
Speaker: I'm really excited to get to work with him.
Speaker: And who knows, maybe it turns into he's the next assistant director of facilities at TCU or something like that.
Speaker: Who knows?
Speaker: I'm very excited to see that trend of mixing the blue-collar world and the student affairs world with people that understand both.
Speaker: That's great.
Speaker: So, Katie, before we close, maintenance positions have historically been disproportionately filled by males.
Speaker: What's been your experience serving in a leadership role as a female?
Speaker: So I've had a few that span across, I guess, a breadth of possibilities.
Speaker: So there are some environments where I am the little girl at the table with all the uncles and the dads, and there is absolutely no raised voices.
Speaker: There is no foul language.
Speaker: Everyone is very polite.
Speaker: And then as soon as I am out of earshot, the real conversation starts.
Speaker: And it goes from that all the way to coming into a group with folks like you, Andrew, and Miles, where I'm talked to as an equal.
Speaker: And it's very much appreciated and able to ask questions or give examples and not feel discounted.
Speaker: And so I think it's just really important that you know or recognize where you're at and what environment you're sitting in so that you can respond well.
Speaker: in whatever way is comfortable for you as a woman.
Speaker: And there's no right or wrong way of seeing different women also in facilities go ahead and just start locking horns with folks and maybe acting in the more male manner, which I have done, but I let people get to know me a little bit before.
Speaker: I'll say this, it's kind of to know your place, but I don't know that it's just about being a woman in facilities.
Speaker: That's just any time, right?
Speaker: So just knowing that when it's appropriate to speak up and making sure that you're confident in what you're saying and that you're able to articulate your thoughts and opinions and and just be.
Speaker: being comfortable being yourself without feeling like you've got to cater to others.
Speaker: But then again, I keep saying the same thing, recognizing your environment, because without acknowledging where you're at, you won't be able to respond appropriately.
Speaker: I will say at this point, because of the relationship building I have done that we continue to talk about, the little girl at the table doesn't seem to be the case very often.
Speaker: And if that starts to happen, those that know me
Speaker: make sure I am brought into the conversation.
Speaker: So to create allyship in that way has been fortunate because I've been here for a while.
Speaker: I don't know what that would look like if I were to go to another institution where they weren't familiar with me, but here it's been, it's been a little bit of a trip and a journey, but it's been a good one because I can also roll with the boys very, very well.
Speaker: Cause I grew up with all male cousins.
Speaker: So rough and tumble is fine.
Speaker: But I don't know that people always expect that because there are still very much those stereotypes, especially in Southeast Texas, of what a lady should be.
Speaker: And that's applied to all women, no matter how you present yourself.
Speaker: Take that and edit it as you see fit, JC.
Speaker: I don't know if I have the skills to edit very well, but no, I appreciate you sharing that.
Speaker: Like anything else, like consider somebody who is not male thinking about moving over to facilities.
Speaker: Like what would you, what's a piece of advice for you and like how they go about that?
Speaker: So my recommendation would be to, if you don't have any facilities background to study up a little bit, because sometimes that can be a hindrance if you're not
Speaker: Well, I don't want to say 100% if you don't have some basics.
Speaker: But I would start to just make connections with people because I don't know that you can change someone's perspective about yourself until you make that connection and just be okay understanding that not everyone will think it's a woman's place to be in facilities outside of a secretary role.
Speaker: And I'm going to say secretary because it's not an admin.
Speaker: It's a secretary typically.
Speaker: But that also you've got to just make sure you continue to maintain your composure and exhibit self-confidence, because if you don't do that, that that could just make it even more difficult.
Speaker: And to find other women in facilities that can help that you can network with and mentor.
Speaker: And I think it's hard because depending on where you're at, there may be a heavy population of women in facilities or operations.
Speaker: And but they're at our institution.
Speaker: There is not.
Speaker: There's like three of us.
Speaker: And so it's just finding those connections as well.
Speaker: Good.
Speaker: That's great.
Speaker: Well, thank you for sharing.
Speaker: One last question for everyone before we wrap up that I just thought of, just because I'm looking around my desk.
Speaker: As we think about facilities and maintenance staff, what is something random that is like on your desk that wouldn't be on anybody else's outside of facilities desk?
Speaker: Can it be on my bookshelf?
Speaker: That's fine.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Katie, this is a podcast, not a video cast.
Speaker: I don't know why you're...
Speaker: Hold on, I gotta find it though.
Speaker: Y'all are gonna have to see it.
Speaker: Sorry people on the podcast, they have video.
Speaker: It's a sprinkler head.
Speaker: It's a pipe and it says, can you read it?
Speaker: Sprinkler queen.
Speaker: I also have a plunger behind my desk.
Speaker: There we go.
Speaker: It has my name on it.
Speaker: Two things come to mind for me is infrared tip gun.
Speaker: kids complaining about how hot their room is in Texas and it's just because they're not used to Texas and I go in and say, nope, you're 56 degrees, sorry, we're not going to let you turn your 80 to 60 degrees.
Speaker: And one of our work bands, I realized that we have coil scrapers in every vehicle we have.
Speaker: We have tip-down in every vehicle and coil scrapers.
Speaker: I got the hard hat and the vest.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: Well, appreciate everyone.
Speaker: I want to thank Drew, Katie, and Miles for joining us today and spending some time exploring the wild world of housing maintenance.
Speaker: If anyone fully appreciates the value and scarcity of time, it's maintenance crews.
Speaker: So I can't thank our guests today enough for investing their time in this podcast.
Speaker: Be sure to reach out to our guests and thank them.
Speaker: As a personal challenge to listeners out there, and as was reiterated several times throughout, make it a point to recognize and acknowledge the unsung heroes in campus housing.
Speaker: Those would be your maintenance techs and housekeepers.
Speaker: These are physically and mentally demanding jobs, and they have been physically present on the front lines day in and day out throughout the entire pandemic.
Speaker: Remember the early days of the pandemic when the world shut down, most people were working remotely and everyone was scared?
Speaker: Your maintenance techs and housekeeping staff were still present in person learning to navigate the unknown.
Speaker: Be sure to acknowledge and appreciate them for their ongoing critical service.
Speaker: This was our first feature topic.
Speaker: Be on the lookout for more deep dives into topical areas related to campus housing and housing staff.
Speaker: If you have an idea for a feature topic, send me a quick message.
Speaker: Let me know your number one takeaway from this episode by replying on the Swakuho social media podcast posts.
Speaker: I welcome any feedback about the quality and content of the show via Swakuho podcast at gmail.com.
Speaker: Are you having a professional conundrum and don't know what to do?
Speaker: Do you need some professional advice navigating a situation in the workplace or the job search?
Speaker: The podcast now has a form in the show notes where you can anonymously ask for professional advice.
Speaker: Once we have a handful of questions, I'll pull together a panel to provide their take on your situation and give recommendations.
Speaker: Consider it like Ann Landers, but for housing professionals.
Speaker: Given that this is a monthly podcast, seeking advice about a job interview you have next week probably won't help you in a timely manner, but it may help others later on who encounter a similar situation.
Speaker: I hope you join us next time on the Swakuho podcast.
Speaker: With that, I say to you, good day.
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