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A newly formed Alterations Department at Physical Plant has been created to substantially reduce the accumulation of small constructions projects on campus, according to Earl Smith, director of Physical Plant. The department is the result of the Campus Committee for Organizational Restructuring's Striving for Excellence initiative.
Smith said he hopes that separate departments for Maintenance and Alterations will allow staff who had formerly shuttled between routine maintenance and special projects to concentrate on one or the other.
"We had people going back and forth between our project work and our maintenance work," he said. "We [had to] put more and more focus on maintenance, and over time it frustrated people who wanted [us to do] project work. Now each area will have the ability to focus on the needs of that customer. When we can focus, we get the results we want."
Smith said the department will function largely like a private construction company but within Physical Plant and will spend its first year focusing on projects costing less than $10,000.
"We're trying to catch up on the backlog of small-project and alterations work that's been building over the years," said Kenneth L. Kern, assistant director for the Alterations Department. Kern was hired in mid-August to run the new department, which officially opened Oct. 8. "We're trying to create a self-supporting entity to deal with any new construction projects on campus. These are projects requested by various departments that are all related to the educational infrastructure.
"It differs from everyday maintenance, cleaning and heating. It's repairing the physical structures as they wear - anything more than routine maintenance. These are normally called 'funded projects,' projects requested [and paid for] by individual departments. Instead of going to an outside contractor, we would be the ones to do it.
"We will also do large projects for Physical Plant, anything that's not maintenance or an outside contract."
Kern said that while new buildings would likely be contracted out by Facilities Planning, rehabilitation work on existing buildings, even if extensive, will be the sort of project his office will tackle. He said Alterations would be a good candidate for that work because they can keep costs down and provide craftspeople that are accustomed to working to meet the codes for state and University buildings.
"It's a way to try to make more happen with the dollars that are allocated to the University," he said.
Smith said Physical Plant was already doing about $10 million of business in such projects annually and that he expects to see that increase as the department finds a rhythm over the next year. Flexibility and nimbleness will be keys to the department's ability to serve the campus, he said.
"We want to generate methodologies to grow and shrink with the work-load," he said.
Smith said that in order to meet surges in demand, Alterations may hire union tradesworkers on a temporary basis to avoid hiring a staff for which there isn't enough work all the time.
"We can't just hire and fire people at will," he said. "[The temporary staff] will still be union people; it's just a different union. Twenty-five [University] tradesmen will be our baseline crew. As we find we have the business out there, we will expand that crew." "We're also allowed to subcontract some jobs if we don't have the crafts-people on staff," Kern said. "We're really the only unit on campus thats goal is to respond to the requesting party.
"The client will go into the work system, contact the Help Desk. They will assign a customer service representative to go to the client, find out what they want and, if it's anything more than a small repair, develop a 'scope of work.' That develops the cost for doing whatever they want. In some cases, further design and engineering work is necessary. In that case, it would go to the designer or engineer first."
Kern comes to the University from more than five years of being head of construction for ShopRite Supermarkets, headquartered in Edison, N.J. In all, Kern has more than 25 years experience in construction of industrial, office and commercial buildings, including work on the Springdale Mall in Springfield. Originally from Vermont, he received his bachelor's degree in English from Harvard University, attended Boston University Law School and has an MBA from Rutgers University.
"Before I came, I had no idea of the staggering amount of work to be done," he said. "I love a challenge, and Lord knows I have one here."
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University of Massachusetts, Amherst. |
