Joseph McDonough
Anonymous
Forum Replies Created
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REMINDER AND LAST CHANCE!
Excellent response from MFAA colleagues so far – eighteen (18) organizations have provided responses to my survey. If you want in, email me and I’ll send you the template. If you don’t participate, you don’t get the consolidated results. Deadline is one week from today, December 13th.
Thanks,
Joe McDonough – Town of Wellesley
In reply to: Deferred Maintenance Study
Hi Karl,
Back in 2012 we used SMMA to conduct a comprehensive building conditions assessment and feasibility study on nine (9) schools totaling about 600,000 sf for $175,000, or about $0.30/sf. That’s probably a good starting point if you account for 8 years inflation. There are surely less expensive firms, but why cheap out? Sounds like you want an assessment of all of your building and their systems with recommendation for repair or replacement, that you can plug into your capital plan. You’ll want them to hire a professional cost estimator too. You’ll need to prepare an RFQ and hire the architect per MGL Chapter 7 process (if study fee over $30k and expected construction cost over $300k – which is likely). Good luck.
Joe
In reply to: Newly created Facilities Maintenance departments
Hi Tammy,
This topic is near and dear to me. The Facilities Management Department (FMD) in Wellesley was formed in 2012, by combining/consolidating the “School Buildings & Grounds” department with the municipal side custodial and maintenance operations. It has been a major success. Since that time, I’ve seen many communities do the same or attempt to do the same. There were a lot of questions on this topic at the Fall Conference in my session on “Advocating for Your Facility Needs”, so I think it’s of interest to many MFAA members. There are a huge number of considerations that need to be addressed when considering this change, many of which us facilities professional have little to no say in. The biggest hurdles seem to be a refusal to increase staff & budget to be successful and a lack of trust on the schools’ side to go along, as they feel like they are losing something (which is, in fact, the case if budgets and staff are not increased). There’s also a common misconception that consolidating facilities will result in immediate savings, when the opposite is actually true. It needs to be looked at as a longer term investment in building facilities, but unfortunately, city/town officials are often reluctant to take a leadership role in requesting the funds needed. It’s a lot easier to add $10-$15k to the posted salary for the new Facilities Director (like in Stoneham) and say “Great, now we’re consolidated”. This is recipe for failure. Wellesley used this approach the first time they tried consolidating facilities prior to me getting there and it failed miserably. I caution anyone that is applying for these positions to carefully consider what the city/town expectations are and what type of financial and staffing support you’ll be getting. BTW – we changed our name from Facilities Maintenance to Facilities Management a few years ago to better reflect the wider ranges of services we provide, such as design & construction.
Good luck!
Joe
In reply to: Uniform Program
In reply to: Employee Cell Phones
In reply to: Elusive Musty Odor
Hi Steve,
Consider calling the MDPH’s Indoor Air Quality Program, headed up by Mike Feeney. They’ve come out to several schools in Wellesley and investigated similar issues. He’s investigated hundereds of similar issues in public buildings. First think he will tell you is don’t waste money testing for mold, since there are no standards (like asbestos and radon). Instead he’ll say to use the money to correct the problem. EPA’s Tools for Schools also has some guidance on investigating IAQ issues. Other thoughts: confirm ventilation/exhaust working properly, check for open sewer/vent pipes above the ceiling or nearby, use a small pinhole type camera with light to check behind walls for possible mold growth. Last resort – hire an expert like a Simpson Gumpertz & Heger (best building envelope consultants around) to investigate.
Good luck.
Joe
In reply to: Accordion Walls
In reply to: DISTRICT PARKING LOT PAVING, ASPHALT & CONCRETE WORK
In reply to: Project Bid Spec Hosting
In reply to: Building Access
Glenn,
In Wellesley, the Facilities Management Department (FMD) oversees access to all schools and municipal buildings. We don’t have a formal written policy, but the union contract does address when work is being done in buildings after hours by outside contractors. For schools we limit 24/7 access to FMD managers, custodians and maintenance staff, as well as the school principal and athletic director. This requires that they have a 24/7 prox card and a password to arm/disarm the intrusion alarm. We also require that anyone entering a building after hours call our central dispatch and provide them with their unique password before they enter and also when they leave. We have similar procedures for municipal buildings, except for police/fire/DPW where there is already 24/7 coverage, and at Town Hall, where there are many different departments, we allow all of the department heads 24/7 access. When I worked in Norwood, we had a similar procedure for after-hours access and who was allowed.
Our reasoning for not allowing access beyond department heads and principals is related to safety and security. Surveillance cameras aside, once you start opening up after-hours access to a building that doesn’t have a person (custodian) keeping an eye of things (doors/windows left open, alarm not reset, valuables gone “missing”, water left running, unauthorized people enter, unaccounted for damages, etc.), you are creating risk that doesn’t need to be taken. When I first started working in Wellesley in 2011, many teachers had master keys and came and went 24/7. I was able to finally address the problem when a large number of laptops went missing and it was determined that better access control measures were needed.
You know the saying that “nothing good a happens after midnight”, well I think “nothing good happens when you allow people into public buildings after hours that don’t need to be there.”
Good Luck!
Joe McDonough – Town of Wellesley
In reply to: Cap planning
Hi Russell,
We’ve actually been very fortunate in Wellesley over the past 8 years w/r to “cash-capital” funding of projects, and have been averaging close to $2M per year in addition to our $8M +/- operational budget. Most of the funding went to address years of deferred maintenance the first few years, but since we have “caught up” on most of the issues. We are now focusing on “nice to have” projects like LEDS, and HVAC controls upgrades. I have a robust central office with architects and engineers to help execute the many projects that come out of our capital plan (15 to 25 per year ranging from $10k to $500k). I actually made a presentation on capital planning 2 years ago at the MFAA Fall Conference. I’ll email you a PDF of the presentation and copy Ken Wertz so that he can upload it to the website.
Good luck!
Joe McDonough
In reply to: New Gym Floors with humidity control
Hi George,
You bring up a really good issue that I have been wrestling with myself for many years, so I’m curious to see what our members’ experience has been with the newer gym floors. The impact of humidity on gym floors (particularly after installation) and maintenance (can you use an auto scrubber with low water control) are issues that I think many of us struggle with and for which their are many different opinions. For example, some floor gym manufacturers will tell you that you’ve voided their warranty of you use an auto scrubber to clean; whereas many facilities organizations (including Wellesley) have used the autoscrubbers successfully without damage.
I actually installed one of the “older” type gym floors in our Middle School back in 2011, which did not have the narrow expansion joints every few feet on-center (instead the perimeter has one large expansion joint) and it has performed well and is easy to maintain. That gym has a 1950s heating/ventilation system with no humidity controls. In 2015 we installed a “new” type gym floor that did have the expansion joints every few feet on center in one of our elementary schools, which also only had heating/ventilation with no humidity controls. We had some bulging of the floor shortly after installation (summer months) and then the finger pointing began (user error – autoscrubber, versus improper precautions for letting wood acclimate and moisture mitigation/ treatment of concrete slab-on-grade). Since that time we’ve had no issues, so I attribute this to a construction issue. Our High School (built 2012) gym has a newer floor and it has performed well with no issues (and regular use of auto scrubber). Note that we also use the auto scrubber to screen and recoat all of our gym floors annually.
Interested to hear what experience other MFAA members have had with wooden gym floors (old and new), humidity issues, new installation problems and do you use an aut0scrubber.
Thanks,
Joe McDonough – Town of Wellesley
In reply to: Roof Leaks Due to snow and Ice
Jon,
In Wellesley we had a half-dozen or so “roof leaks” that only happen once or twice a year under extraordinary wind conditions (rain blows sideways). I say “roof leaks” only because we can never seem to definitively locate the point of entry for these building leaks and they are probably from ventilation intakes, AHUs or boiler flues. Frustrating, but since they are so infrequent, we juts try to control the leakage with buckets and cleanup.
Joe
