Overview Of Physical Plant Department at
The University of Vermont
Provided By: Sal Chiarelli
Director of Physical Plant
Date: February 1, 2012
Statement of Zone Maintenance Initiative
The University of Vermont, like many other universities, had a maintenance response rooted pre
1960’s. Our maintenance structure was comprised mostly of stand-alone craft shops with
specialized master craftspeople. This model did not address customer service, coordination of
activities, quick response, ownership/stewardship, nor does it maintain the reliability of the
University mechanical infrastructure which can leads to significant deferred maintenance and
customer frustration.
As we approached our future maintenance and operations needs here at the University of
Vermont, we began to incorporate more of a "Zone Maintenance" concept. Our " Zone
Maintenance," approach is a strategy of using multi-disciplined crafts persons assigned to
specific buildings to achieve a more interactive maintenance and operation model. This will
enable our maintenance and operations staff to be closer to the buildings, customers and
equipment. The zone maintenance concept along with other initiatives in Physical Plant will
hopefully increase our operational effectiveness and decrease the number and size of service
vehicles on campus.
Providing maintenance service for a major university like ours is equivalent to providing city
services for a metropolitan area of much similar size. Every day over 15,000 people are at the
University with a variety of needs and expectations. Most Universities, as well as ours, are
constantly building, remodeling, and upgrading in order to achieve advanced and efficient
facilities that address the needs of the university community. Maintenance departments like ours
and their staff must become highly technical and explore different strategies in order to meet the
ever-increasing demands placed on them. The University of Vermont is no different than any
other major corporation in having to deal with this challenge. The challenge is to be cost
effective, efficient, provide for reliability and train and retain staff to fulfill these goals.
We have created 5 zones initially with hopes to expanding to at least 6 if resources become
available. The remaining outlying buildings and utilities as well as specialized services will be
handled by one of these zones with personnel located in a centrally dispatched shop as well as
localized where needed such as the Central Plant.
Some of the key areas that Zone Maintenance is focusing on are:





Customer service/response
Prioritization of work
Preventive Maintenance Program
Deferred maintenance coordination
Computerization/use of technology















Rightsizing of zone
Sharing resources (tools, talent etc)
Back up plans
Equipment maintenance priority
Customer Contacts
Critical system alarm paging
Coverage of zone
Communications within and external of zone
Training requirements
Scheduling of work
Contract work vs In house work
Setting up work and storage spaces
Safety equipment
Material delivery systems
Major problems in buildings
Asset Management and Planned Maintenance
Asset management can be classified in several ways. I will break them down as follows:
1. Fixed physical plant equipment assets that require some sort of maintenance, inspections
or checking.
We have tens of thousands of pieces of equipment that serve the campus in a variety of
ways some critical and some as convenience. Examples of each would be an emergency
generator for our plant and the latter would be a water fountain for drinking. Although
some people might think the water fountain is critical, the scale of priorities places this as
a non-critical item. We have identified and continue to identify each piece of equipment
and place it in our FAMIS database using the Uniformat coding system. Each asset is
then identified for its criticality or importance and preventive maintenance is scheduled
based on some frequency either predetermined or triggered off a previous completion
date. It is very difficult to keep up with all the PM schedules as there are thousands of
tasks to perform. Naturally priorities are placed on life safety systems, elevators, boilers,
chillers, generators, animal care facilities, central plant systems, utility infrastructure and
other items determined over the years to have significant importance for some reason.
Work orders are generated by each shop/zone to trigger a PM on assets in the respected
locations.
2. Building assets which are the brick, mortar, roofing and building components.
Each building has a unique 4 digit code as well as physical names, street addresses and aliases.
Each one of these is in the space management module of the FAMIS system. The hierarchy for
the system is Site, building, floor and room. Each of these levels can have equipment (equ
numbers) assigned within that level. Periodic inspections are made by the zone managers of
these facilities. Customers can place a service request in through our FAMIS self service system
which automatically sends the request via web to our SOS (Service Operation Support) unit. The
request is triaged and dispatched to the appropriate unit for action. Emergencies are usually
called in to SOS and the paging software is used to expedite the process. Frequent visits to
random buildings as well as more formalized meetings also result in projects that are of concern
from building occupants, stakeholders or our own personnel.
3. Land entity assets that are memorials, trees, benches, statues, class gifts, fountains.
These types of assets are handled mostly through our grounds unit. Working closely with the
development office now the foundation, we place special emphasis on the care of these usually
donated items. These assets are also identified in a database, and on maps that our staff utilize
to perform maintenance and to preserve them when construction projects come along and require
the removal of these items. Many times we have to relocate an tem and identify the donor to
make them aware of the change.
4. Land entity structures that do not have a building ID/911 designation or classification but
have substantial investment such as vaults, parking garages, athletic fields, bleachers,
parking lots, sidewalks, blue lights lighting etc.
There is a substantial investment in non-building assets. These require maintenance as well.
The most important of which are the assets in the vaults that house the valving, trap systems,
shut offs for our utility systems. Every year the Physical Plant Department performs
Preventative Maintenance in the form of a complete central plant shut down. This occurs right
after commencement and lasts usually 4-5 days. We are forever challenging ourselves to reduce
the timeframe as it does disrupt campus. Continued investment with redundancy, looping, single
point failure elimination and other work will assist us in reducing this duration which is down
from the 2 week duration of just 10 years ago. Athletic fields are fertilized and cared for, most
have irrigation systems, parking lots are crack filled, plowed, patched and repaved as necessary.
Major investment has been put into sidewalks and roads as a result of new buildings and failure
of old systems as a result in heavier traffic, and vehicles. Exterior lighting and blue lights are
very important and our inspected and repaired immediately.
5. Piping systems and underground utility infrastructure that travels across and around
campus either owned by UVM or outside utility or a combination of both.
We have replaced most of our steam lines and added chilled water lines underground as part of
our central chilled water plant installation. This has added great value in energy conservation,
system reliability and redundancy. These systems are inspected at the shut down similar to the
vaults listed above. Steam pressure reducing stations are also PM’d at the shut down which
reduce the steam to a pressure compatible with the building systems. We have invested in
identifying and modeling our underground utility systems. All of our systems are on cad
drawings as well as PDF’s on line and available for use in routine maintenance and long term
planning.
6. Fixed equipment over 5,000 that are managed by the controllers office such as lab
equipment.
These items are identified in the FAMIS equipment module but we do not managed these assets.
Project Selection
Over the course of a particular budget year/cycle a variety of projects come to the top burner as
a result of several factors. Some are:

Departmental requests

Integration within a larger capital project (opportunity of time and facility availability)

Equipment failure/End of useful life

Grant or special funding

Code/Insurance compliance

Hazardous material

Inspection reveals deficiency

Historical preservation issues

Special requests
These projects can be as small as replacing a VFD that prematurely failed or replacing a boiler
that has become troublesome and requires replacement and possible conversion to natural gas.
The project development can occur in a variety of ways. It may be a result of a
mechanic/technician going out to perform a routine PM and noticing a serious deficiency or it
can be an opportunity that comes about as an adjacent project such as a renovation to a space is
being planned and it would be wise to replace equipment while there is disruption in an area.
In all cases there will be a discussion either at our bi-monthly managers meeting or a special
meeting set up to discuss expenditure, priority and/or alternatives.
Since funding is always an issue we try to work as smart as we can and try not to spend money
on projects that will be dismantled or disrupted in a short period of time.
Emergency Repairs
Emergencies on campus do occur from time to time but have been less problematic with all of
our proactive measures on campus. There was a time not to long ago that when it rained over 25
building basements would be flooded/ roofs would leak resulting in havoc and major clean up
issues. Although not all issues have been resolved relating to water infiltration, we have
strategically invested in building envelope issues resulting in a tremendous reduction in water
infiltration which in turn reduces insurance claims, overtime, mold growth, relocation costs and
general moral issues.
Developing methodology for inspections of equipment and having people in mechanical and
electrical spaces more frequently has also reduced the surprise failure of a piece of equipment.
Our zone maintenance concept has taken this to a higher level.
During weekdays from 7AM – 5PM emergencies our dispatched through our Service Operations
and Support Unit (SOS). We operate with mostly a skeleton staff in the evenings, nights and
weekends. These service technician positions perform maintenance tasks but also respond to
emergency calls that are dispatched through our Central Heating and Cooling Plant. We have a
text paging software system called emergin as well as cell phones that are used for
communications. The service technicians are truly jacks of all trades. Some hold Master
Licenses of different trades as well as special licenses for particular functions required by the
State of Vermont and Burlington. They triage everything from plugged toilets to equipment
failure mostly assessing, fixing, resetting, patching things up until the day time forces come in to
perform a more permanent repair.
If there is a major issue, we have developed an Administrator On Call (AOC) list in our Physical
Plant Department that provides our off hour personnel to contact someone in a decision
making/support role to assist in notifications, resource deployment and general support. This on
call system is very successful and is rotated weekly on Wednesdays to the next person on a
yearly planned list.
Examples of issues that might arise to contacting the Administrator on call would be; a fire,
flood, power outage, boiler out causing building occupant issues etc. The Administrator On Call
would usually contact the Director if there was a major issue that would result in a prolonged
event that could impact UVM in a negative way.
We also have an on call program for our largest research zone, due to the complexity of the
buildings and the financial value of the research. This is staffed by a rotating group of volunteer
trades people from that zone
All work that is identified flows through the FAMIS work order system.
Formal and Informal Communications
Physical plant communicates in a variety of ways in all different levels. There is technical
communication that we use a variety of software systems and technology to assist. For example;
KRONOS is our time and attendance system, hourly employee’s swipe in and out using their
employee ID. This communication is accurate and eliminated the timesheets needed to keep
track of time. Record keeping and reporting is also more accurate and professional. FAMIS is
our facilities maintenance system, we us this to communicate work requests, work performed,
time spent on a work order, material selection and inventory, space management, space
inventory, equipment and asset listings, work order/PM generation etc. EMERGIN is used for
texting to groups or individuals. This system also has been linked to our Johnson Controls and
Honeywell Building Automation systems that enable the electronic communications of selected
deficiencies and parameters be forwarded to selected phones pagers etc. Corporate Calendar is
used by Physical Plant for scheduling meetings. We use it religiously and has become an
efficient way to communicate and streamline the operation. We only wish that other
departments would use it as efficiently as us.
MOZILLA THUNDERBIRD is our email system. We communicate with email constantly and
although overwhelming at times, it is an effective way to communicate on a daily basis to
multiple people to get information in and out.
Physical Plant has a managers meeting twice a month that enables us to communicate thoughts,
project updates, coordination of issues, strategic planning and other training needs that come
along. We try to bring in a guest speaker from the campus at least once every two months to
keep us in tune with what others are doing. An example of this would be that we brought in Erin
Fitzgerald 2 weeks ago to review the travel policy, we have had every President and Provost
attend as well as Deans, VP,s Directors, Department Heads etc.
Shop meetings are also performed at least monthly and some do more frequent than others.
Since the shop atmosphere is usually a little more informal there is always opportunity to have a
quick meeting as people tend to come back for lunch or swiping in and out. There are a variety
of standing group meetings on campus that we all share responsibilities in attending. One yearly
event that we have had since 2000 has been our yearly all hands meeting. This has turned into an
event that is mostly a chance for our line staff to make presentations on things that they do and
our proud of.
Zone Manager meetings are also held semi-monthly, allowing for confidential discussions
regarding sensitive employee issues and also providing communications between each zone and
a sharing of operational issues.
We believe in open communication and plenty of it. Most of us have cell phones and I
encourage their use as every call is a communication of some type that can , prevent something
from happening or move a project or work order one step closer to completion and most of all
help keep all the campus community safe.
Physical Plant has a web site that has lots of useful information for the department and outsiders.
We also participate in many venues to communicate our roles and provide information. SGA,
Faculty Senate Physical Planning meetings, construction impact meetings, strategic planning
meetings, facilities meetings, as well as many job fairs, recruiting opportunities and give
presentations at a variety of internal and external organizations.
PPD Role In Construction And Renovation Projects
Physical Plant performs many construction and renovation projects within PPD but also supports
projects performed by Facilities Design and Construction. Physical Plant has managed projects
that have dollar values above $4 Million. Our focus has been on life safety issues, building
envelope, energy savings, utility systems, and major mechanical, electrical systems.
Since 2000 we have managed close to $70 Million of physical plant initiated projects. We have
developed a Project Management and Engineering team that has taken UVM to the next level of
technical expertise. We incorporated a Job Order Contracting concept that has allowed us to
process multiple projects at the same time that I believe would have been impossible to perform
without this alternative technique the expedite the administrative processes.
When Facilities Design and Construction perform a project it is usually larger project and they
coordinate it through a Construction Manager or bid it out as standard contract. Most of the time
we have a selected Physical Plant representative attached to the project to look out for physical
plant needs that often get overlooked and value engineered out of the project.
These items are often added in at a later date with operating dollars anyway. Example of these
issues are building automation controls, system isolation valves, utility monitoring and metering,
equipment access, ladders, safe roof access, equipment lifting., convenience outlets and water
spigots, platforms, grating, OSHA compliant labeling, energy management items and other
operating/maintenance related issues that seem to get over looked quite often.
We also have developed a small project team that has been working on larger projects than have
been normally done. Recently we performed an in house renovation of the Patrick gym electrical
switch gear that saved over $30,000 on a $70,000 project. This along with the College of
Medicine Project team that works mostly on Grant Funding enables our staff to perform some
higher level work that is less routine which often is desired by trades people.
Process for Long Range Capital Planning
Long range capital planning outside of physical plant is handled through the provost and
managed through the Capital Project and Planning office. There is usually a ten year outlook
that puts place holders on projects that guide the feasibility studies and planning. We are
actively involved in the process and try as hard as possible not to over invest in areas slated to be
remodeled. Utility corridors have been established and are incorporated in the University of
Vermont Campus Master Plan.