Beyond Buildings: Exploring Facilities Management

Brian Gregory [00:00:01]:

Hi, everybody. This is your host, Brian, for the Beyond Buildings podcast, where we meet innovative and inspiring facilities leaders from across the country. In this episode, I chat with Darin Porter, a friend and teammate of mine who was the director of facilities for Wheelersburg School District here in Ohio. During this episode, we cover the importance of clear, effective communication for facilities leaders. We also dive a bit into our background and the love hate relationship that I've had with Darin over the years. Darin is a driven, caring facilities leader, and you will definitely want to hear from him. Let's dive in. Hey, Darin, welcome to our podcast.

Brian Gregory [00:00:35]:

Thank you so much for joining me today. Look forward to catching up and learning a little bit more about your background. So to get started, Darin, if you don't mind, just tell us a little bit about what you have done through your career and kind of what you're doing now.

Darin Porter [00:00:48]:

Thanks, Brian, for the invitation. So as you can tell right off the bat, with some of the gray that's starting to appear, I have quite a few miles on me, and some of those experiences started right out of high school. I did attend a couple years of college and also work construction at the same time and eventually got a job at Lowe's Home Improvement selling lumber and home packages. And I was there for a little while and then decided to go to trade school. So went through three years of apprenticeship also with the Iron Workers Union out of Ashland, Kentucky, and worked in the trades there for about eight years. And then, as luck would have it, an opportunity opened up there with the school district where I lived as a director of operations. They were looking to combine several positions into one supervisor's position that could oversee maintenance and facilities and things of that nature. So I actually spent about 20 years there at that school district, and along the way, of course, I know we'll talk how you and I met but worked at the school district there.

Darin Porter [00:01:57]:

I was also a transportation director for a couple of years, worked pretty deeply in construction projects, safety and security and so forth. In 2018, I actually made a career change at age 48, leaving a traditionally secure position at a school district and joining a startup software company sounded a little crazy to a lot of people, including my parents, but here I am. I've been with FMX now for five years and haven't looked back.

Brian Gregory [00:02:25]:

Okay, Darin, thanks for sharing that. If you don't mind, just elaborating a little bit further. It's quite the move to go from the iron workers industry to public education. What was that experience like and what surprises did you encounter as you moved into public education?

Darin Porter [00:02:39]:

Yeah, so the money was great in the Iron Workers Union. There was also some dangerous scenarios with working pretty high off the ground and working around blast furnaces and molten steel and things of that nature, but I enjoyed it. It was a family trade, my dad and my uncles and cousins. And at one time, actually, I think we had the largest number of family members in the trade from one family. But as things would go ended up getting married in 1991 and started a family. And travel became an issue with having a family. And as work would get slow locally, I would need to travel quite a bit. So I wasn't really looking, but the opportunity really just landed in my lap from a gentleman at church actually was saying, hey, there's this opportunity.

Darin Porter [00:03:32]:

Not sure if it'd be something you'd be interested in. So my wife overheard that conversation and said, absolutely, he's interested. We're tired of him being gone. So, yeah, it was quite the selection process from my understanding. I know I was interviewed four times and they made a selection and that must be where God wants me because that's where I landed.

Brian Gregory [00:03:52]:

Well, Darin, let's get into the story of how you and I met. You were at Wheelersburg as facilities director when I first met you and for those that I've shared the story with before, I describe it as a love hate relationship. Started off on the hate side of the equation. Without getting into too many details, I was an engineer at the time and my company designed Darin's school building and one of the things that we prided ourselves on was making really energy efficient buildings. And so at Darin's school, we specified a piece of equipment. It's called a heat recovery chiller. So you don't need to know too much about that, other than that it costs $100,000 more than a regular chiller. But it was supposed to save them 20,000 plus per year.

Brian Gregory [00:04:32]:

So if you do the math, chiller lasts more than 20 years, it's going to pay for itself in five and then it's just going to to have save the district money. Problem was the chiller wasn't saving them anything and Darin wanted to stand up for his district and so it got to the point where the district was going to sue our company, I think, and the contractor and we kept saying, hey, it's not our fault the contractor didn't set up right. Contractor said, stupid engineer specified the wrong piece of equipment. And it got to the point where we were also trying to do like another state project and the leader of that project said, hey guys, right or wrong, if you don't fix this, it's not going to be good for you. So with that, went down and met Darin and spent a weekend reprogramming his central plant. And during that time I came to respect Darin. One of the things that really impressed me at this point, the building was, I don't know, Darin, what was it, seven years old, something at that? It was, it was clean. I mean, you could eat off the floor in the boiler room.

Brian Gregory [00:05:31]:

The maintenance team that Darin had assembled were very respectful and very skilled and it was clear that he took great pride in his work and so that hate relationship turned more into respect. And here we are more than ten years later working together and it's been a really fun journey.

Darin Porter [00:05:46]:

Yeah. And just to add a little bit of more color to that, brian was a fresh face right out of Ohio State, I believe, as a mechanical engineer. And your coworker that kind of introduced me to you, introduced you as a wizard. So there were some things, as you mentioned, that did needed repaired on the chiller and so forth. But you were also able, while you were there, to identify some other areas and some other improvements that we needed and that we were able to implement in your time there. So much appreciated.

Brian Gregory [00:06:19]:

And one funny story just to kind of wrap up that piece, after we did the work to get the chiller operating properly, their gas bill had dropped by, I think over 90%. So this was during the summer. So believe it or not, a lot of schools have to run their boilers and their chillers in the summer to prevent overcooling interior spaces. And so by fixing this problem, they didn't have to run their boiler, but the gas dropped so much that the company sent somebody out to check the meter because they thought it was broken. So it's kind of a funny story.

Darin Porter [00:06:46]:

Yeah, exactly. We got several credits on the gas bill for quite a while too.

Brian Gregory [00:06:49]:

Yeah. One thing I wanted to kind of get into as well. Darin, in addition to being impressed with the cleanliness of your facility and the skill and impact of your team, you also struck me as a great communicator, and I just wanted to kind of go into, in the context of facilities and maintenance management, how would you define effective communication, and why is it important?

Darin Porter [00:07:11]:

Right, so communication is something that I've always thought as a vital part of any team, whether you're working in K Twelve or in manufacturing or even in the construction trades. So breakdowns of communication can lead to all kinds of unsavory things. But just within my team there at my school district, I found out pretty quickly that they had not always communicated well in the past. And that was something that I wanted to address and figure out a good way to move forward from there. So really just a couple of descriptions of good communication from my perspective would be accurate communication without potentially fear of conflict. Obviously we want to be professional, but we need to be honest at the same time with just communication, whether you're doing an employee evaluation and maybe there's some things that that person could improve upon and just being honest and open about those, but also respecting their position and being professional about that. So fear of conflict is one of those dysfunctions of administrative teams in general as well. So I knew that was something that my administrative team was working on just mitigating.

Darin Porter [00:08:26]:

So good communication within my department at the facilities level started to improve just by making sure they knew that my door was open for anything that they needed. There were issues, whether it be personal or on the professional side, we could definitely talk about those and they knew that I would keep those private if needed. So communication really started to improve within the facilities department, but then once we started to write that ship, then I started to go down the path of improving communication outside of my department. So communicating from facilities to technology or from facilities to transportation or from facilities to event scheduling and so forth, so we were able to be pretty successful and it did take some time right? And it probably took me a couple of years really to get a good expectation of what we could see from other departments and then what they could expect from facilities. And it really worked well from that perspective. But then also we were able to implement a system that had some automatic notifications whenever work was being requested or even being completed by the facilities team and that was a great improvement as well.

Brian Gregory [00:09:38]:

Great. Can you provide an example if you think about the experiences that you've had where poor communication had a significant negative impact on a project?

Darin Porter [00:09:47]:

So yeah one of the pitfalls of not communicating well. So we did as you know, we went through several building projects, one of which I met you on, and communication initially. We did want to encourage input from the community on what our new school building should look like and are there any other concerns. And we actually passed out cards that the community could jot down a list of things that they would like to see in a new facility. So that was one good way to communicate. But in that communication process, we found out pretty quickly that there was a lot of concern with drainage from the site, so stormwater drainage and so forth. And we didn't really pick up on that concern well enough early in the project and that resulted in some more official communications coming from like the EPA and some other folks. And it was like, oh know, we really need to pay attention to this and really communicate what the plan was for stormwater know, we were going to be building detention ponds to hold back that water so that we didn't drown our downstream neighbors.

Darin Porter [00:10:58]:

So we found out pretty quickly that we needed to communicate that better because we had a huge concern from the community.

Brian Gregory [00:11:04]:

That's a great example. It kind of ties back into your first point around conflict too. Like we have the saying here at FMX embrace productive conflict. Because ignoring a problem or not talking about it doesn't make it go away and in fact, sometimes it makes it bigger. Right, well, moving on, when we think about technology and the impact that it can have on our communication, how has technology influenced the way that you did your job at Wheelersburg?

Darin Porter [00:11:30]:

Right, so as somebody that graduated in the 1980s, I graduated without internet and without cell phones and iPads and some of those modern conveniences that we see today. And just throughout my careers, and especially after joining the school district, I was able to see technology really play an important part in the way that we communicate. Early on, we had a lot of pain with using paper. We had paper processes for submitting work orders, we had paper calendars on the wall and it was easy for somebody to come in and erase somebody else's event and jot down their own. But it was really our responsibility on the facilities team to keep track of all of those events. And so I really had to just travel from office to office, from building to building, looking at their paper calendars on the wall to determine what type of support we needed to be ready for. So yeah, early on, paper email, it really made us inefficient pretty quickly from that perspective and then introduced the cell phones and even really before cell phones, we implemented a walkie talkie system within the school district and so that did allow a little better communication. Instead of needing to wait to see somebody to communicate a message, we were able to page them or just contact them on the radio.

Darin Porter [00:12:53]:

So that was a pretty good step forward. And then the cell phones, we all know the capabilities there and starting out with like a little Nokia handheld and then eventually graduating up to the Razer flip phone. And then of course, today's smartphones really have a huge impact on communication. So whether you're juggling email or phone calls or texting Voxer, there's a lot of other apps out there that you can think of for communication that did tend to lend to better communication within the facilities team.

Brian Gregory [00:13:27]:

Did you do any sort of training for your team, Darin? I mean, certainly as a maintenance professional, there's the skills part of the job, then there's also the bedside manner that's also important. Did you do any sort of training on that front?

Darin Porter [00:13:40]:

Yes, we always wanted to have our best foot forward because we did see our customers as the students first and foremost. That was the reason we had a job to begin with. We were there to provide the best environment that we could clean, well lit, comfortable as far as temperature, and we wanted to provide that the best learning environment that we could because there's all kinds of studies out there. Even back when I started my career, there was a pretty good correlation between building conditions and the impact on student learning and we were aware of some of those. But beyond that, our other customers were the staff members. So teachers and principals and coaches and all of those folks, and really, on top of that, the community members. But really, day to day, we strive to improve our image physically. We implemented a uniform policy.

Darin Porter [00:14:36]:

So one of the first things the superintendent allowed me to do was to go out and purchase nice polo shirts with our school logo and the name of the person that was wearing that polo. And it just really projected an image of, hey, that's somebody that belongs here. That's somebody that knows what's going on. That's somebody that can help me if I need help. So that was a pretty good first step just in improving our image physically. But also at the same time, I tried to lead with, hey, always be respectful and always give somebody the benefit of the doubt until you have a good reason not to. So that really helped kind of turn the image of our department.

Brian Gregory [00:15:15]:

Yeah, that's great. And really great point on the image side of the equation. I not thought about that. Moving on, I've heard you use a term before called hallway hijacking. Why don't you kind of share with our audience here what you mean by that?

Darin Porter [00:15:29]:

Yeah, so hallway hijackings are not fun. I've heard other terms, the shoulder tap or the honeydew or whatever you want to call it. So my district, we would be walking up and down the hallways, maybe on our way to do a preventive maintenance task on a boiler or something or to go look at a roof leak. And it was pretty common early in my career to get stopped in the hallway by teachers or other staff members, because, let's face it, the first thing that they think about when they see us in our uniform is, hey, that's somebody that can help me. And, oh, I just remembered something that I need done. We were constantly getting stopped in the hallways just to be able to hear those requests. And as you can imagine, you might get stopped two or three, maybe four times on your way to do a job. And if you didn't take notes or have a really good memory, you were going to forget something.

Darin Porter [00:16:27]:

And that then put the burden on my team to have to remember all of those details, and if something didn't go down correctly, then it was our fault. So pretty quickly, we determined that the hallway hijackings, the paper, stuff like that, really was not the best way to communicate for our team.

Brian Gregory [00:16:46]:

Makes a lot of sense. The hallway piece kind of got me thinking around safety concerns and facilities and how communication impacts safety and security. Maybe you can touch on that.

Darin Porter [00:16:56]:

One thing I did within, I think, two years after I started there at the school district, we created a safety committee, and initially we met once per month just to address some of the existing conditions in our facilities. We were in some older buildings, never really had a good way to communicate safety concerns in the past, other than maybe until somebody showed up at a board meeting and said, hey, this is a big problem. So we wanted to head those off if we could and be a little more proactive. So we started this safety committee and we pulled in a couple of representatives from the teachers staff, my bus mechanic, the school nurse, just a good assortment of folks that could bring something to the table and something to that committee. And we really started quickly to identify some safety issues, physical, structural, even traffic flow on the school grounds with buses and vehicles on the property at the same time. And then we also opened a safety suggestion box, which early was paper, but then we eventually streamlined that over to an electronic form and we could receive those real time as well. So, yeah, any safety or security concern could be easily communicated to the committee and then from there we would address it accordingly.

Brian Gregory [00:18:14]:

That's great. Well, earlier I had you share kind of a time where poor communication led to a challenge, you're sharing the EPA concerns and that sort of thing. Like to ask you to kind of maybe share the inverse of maybe a time where you've had a success story, where strong communication had a positive impact on maybe an otherwise hard project.

Darin Porter [00:18:33]:

Yeah, and really, I could just piggyback on that same project. So I spoke to some of the early difficulty in the breakdown in communication with our community members around our school project. So if you kind of fast forward to we had already moved into the building and we had created some detention ponds to be able to mitigate stormwater. The way that our school property is kind of situated in the community, we're up on a hill and really anything that flows off of that hill is going to go down into some residential neighborhoods. So we worked really hard to just continue to communicate with the community. Our efforts to not only maintain those detention ponds and keep them well manicured and keep the grass mode in those, but also we could take elevation readings to make sure that silt and things weren't starting to build up in the bottom of those ponds and really diminish the capacity of the ponds. So we had had a few pretty catastrophic flash floods even before the school building was built up on top of that hill. And really, I mean, it damaged a lot of homes and so forth.

Darin Porter [00:19:45]:

But very quickly after creating those detention ponds and creating that stormwater mitigation plan, we noticed that, hey, the next big few rains that we received, that water was held on site at our school. And the way the water was released is kind of like a bathtub, right? So you fill your bathtub up, you pull the drain and just a little bit goes out at a time in a manageable flow. Kind of a similar case here where we could hold that water on site and then release it a lot slower and it didn't necessarily all rush downstream and flood any homes. So that was a big kind of an attaboy, I think, for our school district. And we heard a lot of really positive comments and thank yous in the immediate years after we moved into the building.

Brian Gregory [00:20:32]:

Yeah, that's great. It's going to turn that one around. Right. Back on the topic of communication, tell me a little bit about the way that you communicated with outside vendors and that sort of thing. So it's one thing to manage internal communication, but external can have its own challenges.

Darin Porter [00:20:47]:

Yeah. So small town, right? Our school district, we had probably a little less than 2000 students, so small community. And a lot of times the opportunity to have multiple vendors bid on a project was really not there for us because we were in a kind of a rural area. But we had really good relationships with our vendors, especially the ones that provided our cleaning supplies for the custodial team or maintenance parts. Of course, you always have the local hardware where everybody kind of hangs out and that was the case for us too, had good relationships with those local mom and pop hardware type stores and local suppliers. So those early relationships were really more telephone communication or hey, you get in the truck and you go down there and you talk to them. And we would have vendors help us with various projects, service contracts and so forth. And that communication early on was mostly just face to face or on paper.

Darin Porter [00:21:48]:

As we kind of progressed and we implemented a new work order system, we had the opportunity to then assign work to some of those same vendors. And we even took it a step further, and we were able to train. Let's say if you had ABC service company coming to your building and they're there at least once per week or once per month because they're there for a service contract on your chillers, let's say those folks we tried to take it an extra step and really show them our new system, how it could communicate with them and how they could also provide comments after they serviced a piece of our equipment.

Brian Gregory [00:22:27]:

That's great.

Darin Porter [00:22:28]:

That tended to really lead us down a little more efficient path.

Brian Gregory [00:22:32]:

Yeah, it's great. It's kind of integrating the vendors as almost an extension of your team, certainly for the ones that you use frequently, makes a lot of sense.

Darin Porter [00:22:39]:

Yeah, we were able to use some of those metrics after we had that data after a few years. It's funny because you have a gut feeling, right, so this vendor is or is not performing the way that we like, but we really didn't have any measurable data to show that. But after we started using the system and the vendors were using the system, we could easily provide a report on the projects that they have completed for us. Were they on time and did they stay within their contract and within budget?

Brian Gregory [00:23:11]:

That's great. Well, Darin, I know we are getting close on time here, but before we wrap up, wanted to see what advice would you give to somebody entering the facilities management space, especially with k twelve?

Darin Porter [00:23:23]:

Wow. So get some thick skin. I would say that I'm probably a people pleaser and that's certainly a good quality to have. But at the same time, you can drive yourself crazy with trying to please everybody. And I mentioned early on those hallway hijackings and getting stopped and trying to really just be all for everybody. One thing that really helped me kind of springboard into a different way of thinking was having a system at my disposal that I could use and then have that system kind of really as a go between, so to speak, so that it gave requesters and gave my staff a way to communicate with us what they needed. But at the same time, it didn't bog us down or pull us off of something more important at the time. So yeah, going into facility management is not for the faint of heart and there's all kinds of different metrics and all kinds of different areas of facility management.

Darin Porter [00:24:26]:

Everything from managing people, to communicating with stakeholders and taxpayers in the community, to communicating with your board members. I was required to attend board meetings every month and give an update on kind of what we're doing within the facilities department. Energy efficiency, designing new buildings, managing keys. There's all kinds of things you could think about, but just rely on the folks that potentially have already been there. If you can find a good local network of other people that have been facility managers, other local school districts, if you can get together a little network of folks that you can call and say, hey, what happens when you do this? Or hey, I've got this employee that's having this issue, how did you handle that at your district? So you're not necessarily a one man band, and I know you feel that way sometimes, but rely on those folks that have already been there.

Brian Gregory [00:25:22]:

Thanks Darin, that's really great advice. Thank you again for your time today. We'll see you down the road.