There was a recent news story regarding a well-known University where a nationally televised basketball game underwent a nineteen minute “rain delay.” Yes, you read that right; an indoor basketball game was delayed due to heavy rain. As you may have guessed, there was a significant roof leak right over the court causing facilities personnel to scramble to temporarily divert the leaking water and clean the mess on the court so the game could continue. Of course, this was an embarrassing situation for the University and drew some unwanted national attention on the status of this campus building.

All too often facility managers find themselves in what is commonly referred to as “fire drill mode.” In other words, on a large campus something always breaks, or fails in this case, requiring facilities staff to rush to fix it. Facility managers across the country encounter these same scenarios to varying degrees and/or situations impeding their ability to organize and plan their work. But all would agree that the backlog of deferred maintenance far outweighs the available funding for facilities renewal. This forces facility managers to make difficult choices about where to spend valuable Capital Renewal funds, often without adequate information. Many times, priority is given to student living spaces and instructional and research lab spaces over athletic facilities. However, large places of assembly such as theaters, lecture halls, and athletic facilities are where the campus invites the public to enjoy high profile events. Failures of building systems due to lack of maintenance in these cases magnifies the unwanted attention.

Taking a proactive approach to identifying maintenance issues with a small investment can minimize or in some cases eliminate embarrassing system failures before they occur.

EagleHawk offers a variety of services that provide value to facility managers to help them prioritize their work. EagleHawk staff can inspect campus roofs and underground steam heating systems to identify problem areas. The highly trained technical staff at EagleHawk will provide a meaningful and comprehensive interactive report to help facility managers identify problem areas and make those difficult choices.

This blog is part of a series in which I’ll provide my take about a variety of subjects regarding facility management, maintenance and repairs to help provide insight into common challenges that facilities managers face and how to hopefully best resolve them.