Overview
The University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) is one of the world’s leading health sciences universities, dating back to 1864. Buildings began to rise up in the late 1800s, consisting of affiliated colleges dealing with medicine and pharmacy. Then, after the great 1906 San Francisco earthquake destroyed much of San Francisco and the city’s medical facilities, more than 40,000 people took shelter and sought treatment. The affiliated colleges located on Parnassus Heights leaped into action to help those injured in the earthquake and the subsequent fire.
Over the next 50 years, leaders of the affiliated colleges and the University of California moved forward to expand research and clinical programs, thus building new additional facilities. About 15 years ago, we built the Mission Bay campus as the university sought to expand and grow as the city was flourishing and thriving . Even now, Mission Bay is expanding with five more buildings coming online and are expected to be operational within five years.
Since that era, we have acquired over 5 million square feet with aging infrastructure and the need of renewal and improvements. With UCSF’s scaling needs ranging from aging infrastructure to new buildings coming online yielding a total of 10 million square feet and a massive collective building portfolio, we had to figure out a way to cast a net and take care of the facilities so that the university’s mission and values could continue, supporting research, graduate-level education and excellence in patient care.
We implemented two highly functioning programs — the Facilities Managers Program, and the Deferred Maintenance and Renewal Program. The Facilities Manager Program consists of seven facilities managers and three project coordinators. Each one is responsible for a building portfolio of approximately 1 million square feet. Their front-line responsibility is to serve as building liaisons, providing occupants with a single point of contact for all of the building’s needs. The Facilities Managers also serve as strategic partners in support of UCSF research, overall customer needs, and breaking down service barriers.
There are five program elements, which include: (1) Facilities/Building Management, (2) Lifecycle Facilities Asset Management, (3) Maintenance Planning & Scheduling, (4) Compliance Management, and (5) Small Project Management. Historically, the escalation of building issues or needs would be sought out to high-level leaders. Now, occupants have advocates acting on their behalf. Our department mission is clear: “… to create an exceptional physical environment at UCSF, supporting its research, teaching, health care, and community service mission by providing the operational and maintenance needs of all UCSF campus facilities.”
The facilities managers meet frequently with departmental leaders, working on pathways to resolve concerns voiced by faculty and students. In a span of three years, this facilities manager program led an exterior window washing program across the Parnassus campus, which is now ongoing. We took on a first ever nationally recognized program coined the First Impressions Contest. This contest sought entries from the UCSF community focusing on areas needing revitalization at campus public spaces. Over 100 entries were received, and 10 were selected and awarded with a check worth $10,000 for each project. This contest, funded directly from the UCSF chancellor, helps the community improve its physical environment one idea at a time.
These improvements bring splashes of color, revitalized landscapes, and more. This very simplistic idea of creating a contest to win a check worth $10,000, awarding the submission on the basic criteria of (1) enhancing life at UCSF and (2) ease of delivery, and marrying it to one of our most difficult challenges of, “What does the customer want?” has proven very UCSF Facilities Services successful, and nationally recognized. We are partnering with the UCSF community in a fun way to improve our physical environment, all in support of the University’s mission and values.
In dealing with UCSF’s ever-aging infrastructure, we amped up our team to aid in the renewal of buildings and deferred maintenance. Not only have the facilities managers been focused on the day-to-day customer needs and issues, they now look strategically at all projects, including deferred maintenance and renewal. We pivoted and redeployed staff from the Facility Managers program in order to collaborate, innovate and create an even larger more effective team to aid in deferred maintenance and renewal projects. Renewal consists of 15-year and 25-year increments, in that when a building reaches 15 years old, we focus our energy on finishes and building controls, and at 25 years of age, we focus on mechanical, electrical and plumbing systems – the infrastructure and health of the building.
Our team is keenly focused on renewing buildings so they last another 100 years. In conjunction with renewal, the team is focused on deferred maintenance, in which the priority of projects are on those close to failure and active failure issues. These issues result in capital improvement, fire life safety, code compliance, reliability and emergency repairs. Our department operating budget pays for annual preventive and unscheduled maintenance but not for facilities renewal, deferred maintenance and capital improvements.
State funding for deferred maintenance stopped in the early 2000s. In October 2011, at the behest of the office of finance and administrative services, facilities services in collaboration with other campus departments such as capital programs, risk management, and the budget office created a comprehensive Facilities Investment Needs (FIN) list to quantify and prioritize deferred maintenance (DM) and capital improvements. The FIN program is intended to help fund the highest priority needs.
In the end, DM and renewal upgrades our key systems provides energy savings for the campus, fire and life safety upgrades, environmental regulatory requirement upgrades like underground tank replacements, emergency generator installations, ADA upgrades, accessible restrooms, seismic code compliance and more.
Internally, these two highly functioning programs have catapulted our department’s work ethic, making it a stronger workforce than ever before, working together as one. It created growth opportunities for many within the organization, fostered a more supportive work environment and renewed our collective spirit. Externally, our department is now on the map as not just a hidden unit in the belly of the buildings, but as a collaborative highly functional customer service unit striving to make life better here, supporting the university’s mission and values every day. Customers see us as true collaborators, making innovative strides and venturing out of our comfort zone, in order to deliver the best customer service ever. The rewards have been well worth it.
In-House Participants
Jon Giacomi, Cesar Sanchez, Adam Schnirel, Bernadette Jimenez, Christopher Gonzalez, Charles Conway, Janie Pena
