Second-year Engineer-ing student Jon Morgan wakes up one morning to find a mysterious puddle under his bed. First-year College student Jamar Walker wakes up to more than a hot shower. Maintenance might not often be a word associated with mystery or excitement, but some incidents may be worth noting.
The Housing Management Work Order System is an online request system that countless students use every year to notify the Housing Operations staff of myriad varieties of problems -- such as surprise puddles.
Browsing the list of possible categories of maintenance troubles, one sees choices ranging from refrigerator and plumbing to the somewhat more ominous sounding options of wall repair and foundation.
According to Trish Romer, assistant director of facilities at the University, the total housing requests each year number "in the thousands." The majority of requests are made at the beginning and end of the school year as well as right around intersession.
Burt Joseph, the University's second assistant director of facilities, said that because of the high volume of work encountered by Housing Operations, no requests really stand out from the others. The students that make the requests, however, find some hard to forget.
Walker had a very shocking experience in the shower one morning that he'll remember for years to come.
"We had all been using one shower for two weeks because the other one was broken," he said. The lack of a shower head on the one shower was the initial problem.
One day, Walker entered the working shower, only to find that there was more than water falling upon his head that day.
"When I turned the water on, the pressure must have built up in the shower head, and it came off and hit me," said Walker, laughing at the recollection.
He and his roommate immediately submitted work orders, but Walker said he was still quite shocked.
"I was in disbelief that it actually happened," he said. "It was extremely random." Fortunately, it was not extremely painful.
After the incident, the shower still worked, "but it was like a constant stream of water -- like a hose," Walker said. "It was annoying that we didn't have a completely working shower."
Even so, he and his suitemates enjoyed the story.
"It's more of a funny thing than a serious one," he said. "It makes me question the durability of the equipment, but I just laugh it off as a funny story."
Jon Morgan has his own story of unwanted watery conditions. This August, he and his roommate had to put up with a minor flood after arriving to their new Lambeth apartment.
"I noticed this about a day after I moved in," Morgan explained. "The air conditioner was leaking something on the floor. It formed a puddle covering probably a quarter of the room, most of which was under my bed."
Morgan remembers waking up one morning wondering why his feet were so cold. "What the ...," Morgan said he thought to himself as he discovered that one corner of his bed sheet had been touching an unexpected puddle on the floor. Morgan said the sheet soaked up the liquid like a lamp's wick into his bed.
"I was happy about the air conditioning in the suite," he said. "I was looking forward to it because last year, while living in Alderman dorms, I didn't have that convenience."
Morgan and his roommate still used the air conditioner while they waited for it to be repaired. In order to deal with the summer heat and the puddle at the same time, they would simply shut off the unit periodically while the water evaporated.
"It was really more of an annoyance than an inconvenience," he said. "All I had to do was throw my sheets in the drier."
Both Walker and Morgan complained about the length of time it took for their problems to be fixed. But Joseph and Romer said 95 percent of all work orders are completed the day they are received.
"Most of what we do is basic residential issues," Romer said. These are the same kinds of things that any family would have to deal with. "We have more people in our family," Joseph added, which in turn leads to a lot more issues.
"Between reported work orders and preventative maintenance, the plates are full," Romer said. To deal with the sheer volume of maintenance requests, a highly automated system is in place.
Joseph said Housing Operations receives the requests online through the Web interface they provide. Designated officials look at the requests and approve or disapprove them. The work orders are then assigned to mechanics through a computer system. The mechanics pull up the orders on their own computers and report back to the system once the work has been done. The same group that approved the request closes the work order once everything is complete.
This electronic system means that housing can keep many records and create many kinds of reports based on them.
"We can isolate down to building, room or complex if need be," Romer said. Joseph and Romer added that they can even create reports based on individual residents and dates. "We can put in any query we want," Joseph said.
Joseph and Romer said they never have trouble keeping their job interesting. In addition to maintenance, Housing Operations also is in charge of housekeeping, security, fire systems, renovations and new construction, among other things.
"The housing division does just about everything -- there are very few trades that we don't do," Joseph said.
"The success of our division rests on our people," Joseph said. "We have a very dedicated staff."
Joseph and Romer agreed that housing is assisted by the great student population they work with.
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