On June 30, a remarkable man retired from the University of California at Los Angeles after 40 years of service, the last 25 dedicated to the College of Letters and Sciences as the go-to guy for space and facilities planning. This is both a paean to that man, Don Simpson, and a tribute to all those who do this herculean but rarely celebrated job.

Don came to UCLA in 1968, fresh from a Korea assignment with the Peace Corps, and he started at the university as a research assistant in the muscle-physiology laboratory. His organizational talents led him from overseeing a lab bench to overseeing a laboratory and eventually an entire research facility—he was made laboratories manager of the Jerry Lewis Center for Neuromuscular Research.

In 1983 he became the space manager for the entire College of Letters and Science, completing an astonishing career metamorphosis from biochemist to space and facilities planner. He was in charge of 12 multistory buildings encompassing approximately 1,415,000 assignable square feet and 75 academic departments. The buildings in his care housed sacred Indian bones, economics libraries, electron microscopes, and plague virus. Some were furnished with linoleum-topped Art Deco desks, others with ADA-compliant modular cubicles .

I urge those who are unfamiliar with a facilities planner’s role to take a few minutes to contemplate the complexity of a large, public research university. Thousands of students go in and out of hundreds of classrooms and auditoriums, taught by hundreds of professors going in and out of hundreds of offices, laboratories, and research facilities—and all of this in old and new buildings filled from floor to ceiling with stuff.

That stuff is far beyond cataloging, beyond counting. It’s caught up in a Jovian cyclone of acquisition, preservation, degradation, repair, storage, use, upgrading, replacement, positioning, and repositioning. This never-ending torrent terrifies PhD’s and MBA’s alike. They go below, quaking, leaving the deck to Don and his ilk, who remain standing, lashed to the wheel, calling out directions—who, what, when, where, and how this is going to fit, get moved, get evicted, get repaired, or get built, and on time. The rewards for this bravery and cunning are accolades and bricks, sometimes both, and no good deed goes unpunished.

The recent flood that raged through the University of Iowa brought to mind another challenge these heroes confront: natural disaster. It was to Don that we looked in January 1994, when a 6.7 magnitude earthquake shook Los Angeles and UCLA. While the campus remained intact, we learned that UCLA had dodged a bullet by a hair’s breadth. The oldest brick buildings—the campus’s core, its signature architecture—had cracked and weakened. A larger temblor would have leveled them completely, possibly with thousands of people beneath them. UCLA was ordered to strip these buildings down to their frames and retrofit them for earthquake safety. Three of the largest and most magnificent buildings, including famous Royce Hall, belonged to the College of Letters and Sciences. And it was to Don that the college and the campus turned.

Over the next 14 years, Don oversaw the evacuation, staging, repair, remodeling, and, finally, resettlement of these historic buildings, one by one. The effort involved dealing with hundreds of displaced, dispossessed, disagreeable, and defenseless denizens. Having mastered computer-aided design, he parried fear and indignation with renderings of better days ahead, while at the same time dealing with architects, project managers, accountants, plumbers, painters, and the inevitable prevaricators and procrastinators. All on top of doing his pre-earthquake job.

Like Errol Flynn, Don swung from mast ropes and slid down mainsails, fighting with a sword in each hand, daring every so often to throw back the goblet without breaking stride, his confident smile never ceasing, beguiling everyone. In the end, it will be that smile we’ll miss the most, for Don is genuinely one of the nicest guys you’ll ever meet. If anyone deserves a great retirement, Don does. So, here’s to Don and his derring-do counterparts at universities and colleges around the world: Jobs well done. —Marc Mayerson

Marc Mayerson, assistant dean of social sciences at University of California at Los Angeles, is the Buildings & Grounds guest blogger for July. You can read his previous post here.