Rives Taylor: You Can’t Sustain if You Don’t Maintain

Rives Taylor, an autumn Buildings & Grounds guest blogger, designs higher-education facilities at Gensler and leads the firm’s sustainability task force. He was previously the university architect at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, and he continues to teach sustainable-design methodology at the University of Houston and Rice University.

Rives Taylor

Everyone agrees that sustainability is an important goal on college campuses, right? But the role of maintenance and operations in meeting that goal too often takes a back seat. 

Fortunately a growing number of staff members who manage university facilities understand that the life of a building can be prolonged by good maintenance. A common pitfall, though, is to focus just on preventive maintenance, which is short-term and narrow. You fix the broken window or leaking roof to keep weather out of a building. 

Predictive maintenance, on the other hand, is analytical and scientific. It incorporates life-cycle thinking, such as anticipating that a 25-year-old roof will need replacement in five years, so it’s time now to start budgeting for that.

This is precisely why it’s time to elevate the status of the maintenance staff. Many staff members are not simply wrench turners, but sophisticated technicians. They are the primary source of operational support for all the vital activities that take place on a college campus.

Particularly in the case of research labs or hospitals, predictive maintenance should be high on the scale of priorities. Consider the aftermath of a full power outage—one brought about either through outright failure or through an unexpected shutdown that avoids a calamity. The interruption of critical operations could easily lead to catastrophic losses. Mention the loss of power to a researcher whose years of work rely on operating freezers and you’ll quickly get a sense of how vital uninterrupted electricity can be.

One institution that gets it is the University of Texas at Houston. During my tenure as university architect there I saw the positive effects of integrating maintenance and operations staff members into every new facility and renovation project. In the late 1990s, for example, the university reported millions of dollars of savings in renovations and more than $10-million in cost avoidance in continuing operating costs as a direct result of employing an integrated and pro-maintenance approach.  

The ultimate winners in this scenario are the students, faculty members, and staff members, whose work and learning environments are safe and comfortable, supplied with proper levels of oxygen and light, and maintained with appropriate cleaning and pest control. The goal is to have buildings that are energy efficient, adaptable, healthy, environmentally responsible, and enticing for the university community. This can be accomplished, in part, by giving maintenance-staff members proper status in a comprehensive operations strategy. —Rives Taylor

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