Hammers and screws weren't needed to repair Ohio University's zone maintenance operation, which recently adopted a new service model to improve its efficiency and performance.
Three area zone shops will now have 10 to 12 employees covering the buildings in each zone. The new model was in progress in November, said Dave Logan, union chapter president.
Zone maintenance workers handle emergency calls or general maintenance such as routine repairs and work requests for campus buildings, said John Kotowski, associate vice president for Facilities.
The original system, where an individual was assigned to either one building or a group of buildings, was about 10 to 15 years old, Kotowski said. He said it was first implemented when Facilities Management identified the buildings in most need of work and it continued to add more over time.
One of the problems that we had was a good number of people on the program
50 to 60 but we had many more buildings Kotowski said. We were not able to provide zone coverage for all of the buildings.
Kotowski said the way the operation was initially constructed assigned an individual to a particular building such as Ping Center or Alden Library, which were considered complex buildings, or a group of buildings that were less complicated ' such as a couple of houses or smaller residential areas.
Logan said the original zone program was working well and could have been improved without a drastic change, adding the change proved to be necessary because of the layoffs, but it did not cut any jobs.
I think it could have been tweaked or changed for the better as it was existing but after the layoffs came that was also kind of pushing the change to get the coverage with less people
Logan said. But I think with proper management the program as it was could have worked.
Kotowski said the new program is a more typical zone process in higher education consisting of three area zone shops: one located at Nelson Common, which covers the southeastern side of campus, the Convocation Center, which covers southern central, and the Central Classroom Building covering the western portion side of campus. He said each shop will have 10 to 12 zone maintenance individuals who will cover all of the buildings in that area.
For example
if a person is off ill for a period of time
there are people who could provide services
Kotowski said. If there is a special need in the Ping Center and an individual doesn't have the skill
another person who does could take care of the service.
In a peer review conducted in March by the Association of Higher Education Facilities Officers, it called the original zone maintenance operation a luxury that could not continue in light of tightening fiscal constraints. In addition, the report said that zone maintenance mechanics frequently performed tasks for occupants that Facilities never intended to include in their job functions.
Despite this, the report said the zone maintenance program illustrates that Facilities has a genuine understanding of the need for customer focus. Kotowski said Facilities had previously discussed ways to improve operations and the report confirmed their thinking.
Logan said the union is worried that the new model will adversely affect the craft shops such as plumbing and electrical. He said changing the zone program won't change the understaffed shops and it is too soon to tell if it will make a difference because they are still receiving feedback from the people who are laying out the territory and setting up shops. He said he didn't want to condemn or praise the new model until he sees how it works out.
One of things they said in the survey was that the customers rarely know why changes are made and that is the situation here
made without any input from customers
Logan said. It's basically just spreading a limited amount of employees even thinner.
Kotowski said Facilities Management plans to have open forums this winter for people to express concerns and ask questions as to how they will provide coverage. He said they feel this is going to provide better coverage and more timely coverage to the facilities.
The downside is that there will be less of a familiarity
Kotowski said. Using Ping Center as an example
