Campus housing facilities management normally has a yearly rhythm to it, tied to the ebbs and flows of student occupancy and a host of other factors. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit campuses, though, that rhythm went dramatically off beat. Custodial and maintenance staff, like most everyone on campus, were asked to take on new responsibilities, modify their practices, and work in a world that was unlike almost anything they had experienced.
At the same time that students were being asked to begin leaving their campuses, the ACUHO-I online community, virtual roundtables, and Housing Facilities Management Community group calls began to fill up with a host of questions and potential solutions being shared. Just a sample of the topics included establishing new COVID cleaning protocols, re-configuring furniture in common spaces, establishing traffic patterns in shared bathrooms, temporarily storing student belongings that were left behind, preparing residence halls to potentially serve as overflow stock for area hospitals or to provide rooms to quarantining healthcare professionals, and so much more. And all of this was on top of the normal facilities maintenance concerns a campus faces.
Anthony Harvey, the associate director of facilities maintenance at Clemson University in South Carolina, was just one manager who had to navigate the situation. As he recalls, “Conversations at that time centered around what challenges we would have with our facilities sitting idle and what do we need to do in advance of students hopefully returning. We all felt that we needed to continue a presence within facilities, even though we decided it best not to enter student rooms since student belongings were still stored there. We asked our staff to walk residential buildings daily and apartments bi-weekly to prevent any condensation pan back-ups or other floods from becoming large. Each unit that had condensation pans we paid special attention to. We were very successful in this venture as we did not have any floods during these initial stages.” On many campuses, crews juggled schedules and projects around the fact that halls were virtually empty of students, but many rooms still contained student belongings. For Clemson, Harvey said, that meant having 30 fewer days to complete the normal summer painting and drywall repair. It also meant walking the halls of the facilities to inspect for leaks and run taps to mitigate the risk of waterborne pathogens.
Soon, with an eye on students returning, maintenance and custodial teams turned their attention toward projects to protect students and staff. Harvey explains how the Clemson dining and carpentry shops constructed plexiglass guards for the dining facilities and residence hall front desks. “This was a monumental task, as our carpentry shop was already tasked with getting our facilities ready for move-in, while then having to wait for plexiglass material to arrive and then build and install each shield.” Finally, the group replaced all the faucets and flush valves in the dining areas with touchless varieties.
Staff management was highly important during this time, according to managers and directors at a virtual roundtable discussion at the ACUHO-I/APPA Housing Facilities Conference in October. At some campuses, staff worked in smaller teams to reduce exposure if there was a positive case. When rooms reserved for isolation of positive cases needed to be cleaned, staff who volunteered for the job were trained in the use of additional personal protection equipment. Non-emergency maintenance tasks were being rescheduled. On at least one campus, the “case workers” who were performing checks on the students in isolation were asked to also check on the rooms.
Finally, as the conversation neared its close, the topic turned to maintaining staff morale. Many noted the pressures that their staff already were under with their work as well as concerns about job security in the face of tight budgets. Some noted incentives such as travel reimbursements or free meals. The most important thing managers can do, though, is to be there for the staff. For some that was to advocate for the team. Others touted the benefits of “one-on-one conversations” that gave them “an outlet for fear and frustration” and allowed them the freedom to speak their minds, without pushback. As Dustin Abrego of Central Michigan University in Mount Pleasant noted, it’s important to ask about the “why” of the way things are done. “There are no sacred cows to support the team in this time of a pandemic.”
