Georgetown University’s Newspaper of Record since 1920

The Hoya

Georgetown University’s Newspaper of Record since 1920

The Hoya

Georgetown University’s Newspaper of Record since 1920

The Hoya

New VP Plans Changes for Facilities

Vice President for Planning and Facilities Management Robin Morey, who assumed his position Jan. 7, aims in his new position to revamp his department and improve its reputation on campus.

“One of my goals is to effectively lead the staff … to a culture of continuous improvement,” Moreywrote in an email. “We must provide outstanding client service while doing the best job possible caring for the campus assets, in a sustainable way, with available resources. This requires collaboration with university and community stakeholders, effective prioritization and a laser-like focus on our core mission areas.”

Morey said his time working as superintendent of the Senate Office Buildings reinforced his belief that organizational management must delineate clear goals for its personnel to be effective.

“Organizational units must have a clear and singular mission focus,” Morey wrote. “While the Office of Planning and Facilities Management has numerous responsibilities, it is imperative we set clear expectations and priorities for each mission area and effectively communicate those expectations to our staff.”

Students often complain about facilities staff’s slow response time to work orders. Especially in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy last fall, students said facilities did not work quickly enough to address their problems.

“I’ve gotten emails before that tell me that my work order has been completed when nothing has actually gotten accomplished,” Katie Mangialardi (COL ’16) said. “Facilities definitely has some gaps in communication between its different divisions and that creates a lot of the inconsistency that we students see from our perspective.”

Morey said that addressing efficiency and response time to work orders are his primary goals. During his first two weeks on the job, Morey instructed his staff to work on the completion of a work-order management system.

“It will allow us leverage technology to better manage the execution of the thousands of work orders we receive each month and to set clear organization priorities,” Morey wrote.

Morey is on the way to achieving this goal, as facilities will begin to test Archibus, a work-order management system that will allow students and faculty members to track requests, this summer with the goal of campus-wide implementation by fall 2013.

The Georgetown University Student Association will collaborate with Morey in a working group on facilities, which, GUSA President Clara Gustafson (SFS ’13) said she hopes will provide a forum, fordialogue between students and facilities administrators.

“We are very excited to have the opportunity to get in on the ground floor, so that students can play a major role in facilities issues right away,” Gustafson said.

Morey added that facilities plans to develop a client satisfaction survey and hopes to use the results from this and other metrics to gauge how to improve the department’s relationship with the Georgetown community, especially as the university looks to to expand its footprint in Washington, D.C., with a new property of about 100 acres to house graduate programs.

“Moving forward, I envision two primary goals: delivering outstanding client services which exceed the expectations of our clients and implementing and supporting the development plans focused on a student-centric living and learning at main campus and strategic growth of the next 100 acres,” Morey wrote.

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