While most departments across the campus saw cuts to their budgets this year, perhaps the most visible cuts around campus will be those made to the physical facilities budget. Mark Frost, director of Physical Plant, said he was given the same 10 percent cut estimation as everyone else, and while his staff will be working hard to offer the same level of service the campus is used to, there may be some impacts around the campus.
“We like being able to go out on campus and make everyone’s environment better,” Frost said. “This is going to be a challenging year, but I think we’ll be able to minimize—not eliminate, but minimize—the impacts.”
Frost said the department will deal with the cuts in two ways: fewer projects and reducing the scale of the projects being worked on. He said the number of cut projects will probably not be on the order of 10 percent, but there will certainly be projects that will be denied or deferred.
Frost pointed out that at present, Physical Plant receives approximately 20,000 work orders for the campus every year, and that these work orders will be reviewed when submitted. Projects such as simple office renovations or refurbishments will no longer be supported, and “system expansions” such as installing air conditioning units for new server rooms will be scaled back. There will also be a larger focus on “predictive maintenance” to keep older machinery running longer.
“We’ll be focusing on servicing what we have versus replacing systems,” he explained. “We will be trying to hold where we are, and may not be able to continue trying to raise the bar.”
In ranking the projects, however, priority will always be given to “life safety” projects, such as fire alarms, sprinklers, and security systems. After that, he said, the residence halls and the research labs are important. “We’re making every effort to make sure that students in the residence halls are unaffected.”
Beyond eliminating or scaling back projects, Frost said that they will be trying to increase efficiency in all their processes to minimize paying overtime for staff. There will still be staff available around the clock for emergency response, he explained, but normal work will be streamlined as much as possible. They will also be looking to handle more projects “in house” rather than pay the higher fees to hire outside contractors.
Lastly, Frost said his department is working on a policy to outline what projects will be funded by Physical Plant and which will be the responsibility of the requestor. While there will be procedures in place for requesting supplemental resources, he is hoping that the financial burden for some of the projects can be shifted more to the department that will be benefiting from the project.
Frost said his outlook for the year is much more positive than it had been after the performance planning part of the budgeting process. In an e-mail Frost sent to Vice President for Administration Claude Rounds, he outlined the impact a potential $500,000 cut to his department would have. The e-mail, Frost said, presented a “worst-case scenario” that was fixed in the budgeting process. Adjustments were made based on feedback, he explained, which helped the Physical Plant budget.
