Transforming Campus Maintenance Operations with Strategic Initiatives

Despite the challenges of COVID and budgetary constraints, Stony Brook’s Facilities &Services (F&S) team has remained committed to keeping our campus community safe. The majority of the 529-person team that comprises Campus Operations & Maintenance, Environmental Health & Safety, and Campus Planning, Design & Construction has remained on campus throughout the last year, as part of the University’s cohort of essential service workers.

As we migrate towards normal operations this Fall, F&S leadership has renewed their divisional focus to deliver several new customer service-focused initiatives in an effort to more proactively engage with the Campus Community, while continuing to ensure a fully safe working environment

“My team and I recognize and understand the imperative for honest and transparent communication with our Campus Community.  We must understand our customers’ needs, and strive to get to ‘yes’ when we can,” stated Dean Tufts, Vice President for Facilities & Services at SBU. “We are here to support New York’s best education, research, and healthcare… it’s just that simple. So we’ve established innovative ways of updating the Campus Community, tracking experiences, and incentivizing feedback that will ultimately help guide our operations to create a consistent and engaging Stony Brook experience for every person on campus.”

Website Refresh
The F&S website has been overhauled to include an improved user-lead experience with easier navigation, real-time facilities alerts, and a new campus construction map that displays current and future campus improvement projects. The map was created in tandem with the Department of Institutional Research, Planning & Effectiveness and will soon include pertinent information impacting larger groups on campus such as power outages, road closures, or facilities repairs.

FIXIT Work Order Performance Metrics
In order to better track performance data on work orders completed through the University’s FIXIT system, F&S has created several Tableau dashboards that will provide leadership with real-time metrics to make informed decisions on resource allocation, enact process improvements, and quickly reorganize labor resources. These metrics will ultimately be integrated onto the F&S website to increase data visibility across all levels and departments at Stony Brook.

Innovative Partnership with the Faculty Student Association
“As Stony Brook University’s largest Administrative division, we recognize that the work our team performs impacts everyone on campus, and it is critically important that we listen to each of the individuals we serve in order to understand how we’re doing,” commented Terence Harrigan, Associate Vice President for Campus Operations and Maintenance. In order to gather a greater velocity of feedback from Stony Brook’s students, faculty and staff, F&S developed a brief customer feedback survey that will be sent via email once a Work Request submitted through the University’s FIXIT system is completed. In partnership with the Faculty Student Association, each month, one survey participant will be randomly selected to receive a $25 gift certificate to the Shop Red bookstore on Stony Brook’s main campus.

To learn more about Facilities & Services at Stony Brook University, please regularly visit https://www.stonybrook.edu/facilities/.