Facilities Maintenance

Introduction

The Facilities Maintenance Department exists to support the training of individuals who are engaging in Christian ministry by constructing, operating and maintaining campus facilities, housing, and utility infrastructure, as well as providing clean, safe and welcoming surroundings conducive to working, living, and learning.

Facilities Maintenance is responsible for the maintenance and operation of the seminary campus. Our small “city” includes over 800 student housing units and approximately 900,000 square feet of space used for offices, classrooms, conferences, recreation and other functions.

The Facilities Maintenance department is housed in the Leitch Physical Plant Facility, named for James R. Leitch, who directed maintenance activities on the campus from 1954 to 1987. The address is 2101 Yates Street.

Departments

Facilities Maintenance is composed of uniquely gifted men and women united behind a desire to create and maintain facilities which foster an environment for equipping students for service in God’s kingdom.  What we do can be summed up in three major areas:

Building Maintenance

We maintain nearly one million square feet of building space, which support a wide range of activities at Southwestern.  This naturally includes offices and classrooms, but also includes such diverse offerings as dormitory living space, hotel and conference space, two full-service kitchens, a large swimming pool, and three auditoriums with stage facilities.   We maintain all the utilities serving these buildings as well.

In addition to our campus buildings, our department maintains over 800 housing units for students.  We work very hard at creating a welcoming first impression for new students, and strive to provide quality maintenance for all our tenants while they call the seminary their home.

We are also responsible for maintenance of a large fleet of vehicles, including service trucks, staff cars, golf carts, landscaping equipment, and other specialized equipment. 

Landscaping and Grounds

We work to provide an urban oasis for faculty, staff, students, and visitors.  Our main campus features a park-like setting with over 900 trees of varying species, flowering shrubs, and pockets of seasonal color.  Our intention is to provide green spaces that can be “discovered” along the way to your destination.  We maintain several water features and have four donor-provided garden areas designed to foster interaction with others and a sense of meditation and contemplation.   Our housing areas feature playgrounds for children and a walking trail.

Custodial Services

We clean approximately 850,000 square feet of space on a daily basis. Additionally, we have a specialized floor crew that maintains the cleanliness and appearance of all our terrazzo, carpet, and various other flooring types. Our in-house custodial crew utilizes a holistic approach for presenting a clean, healthy, and appealing campus for faculty, staff, students, and visitors. 

Services

Maintenance Requests

We have someone available to answer calls for maintenance 24 hours a day.   We are dedicated to correcting problems reported to us and in the process, hopefully extend the useful life of our property.   A call to 817-923-1921, ext 2290, will give us the opportunity to get all the details and provide a proper maintenance response.

Recurring/Preventative Maintenance

We devote a significant portion of our resources to planned inspection and maintenance efforts.  This includes filter changes, light bulb replacement, testing emergency lighting, verifying proper operation of fire protection systems, elevator inspections, roof inspections, and many other items.   In housing, this includes many of these same types of maintenance items as a part of our make-ready process for new tenants, in addition to periodic playground inspections.

Campus Improvements

A campus like ours is constantly undergoing changes.  These may be big and visual, such as construction of a new building, or more subtle like changing carpet or other finishes.  Quite often a project will become more complex than what initially might be envisioned.  We understand the importance of thinking globally, which means taking all criteria into consideration, such as building code, fire code, ergonomics, teaching technologies, and how the space may be experienced by those with disabilities. We welcome the opportunity to collaborate with multiple stakeholders on projects to help ensure a well-thought-out end product that works well today and into the foreseeable future.

Sustainability/Efficiency Efforts

The Facilities Maintenance Department has had a longstanding desire to be good stewards of all our resources.  We reduce landfill waste by offering single-stream recycling on the main campus and in housing complexes.  We have improved our energy efficiency by retrofitting nearly 100% of our existing campus lighting in the last decade, and as new technologies come along, we look for ways to implement them.  For example, LED lighting is appearing in many of our latest projects.  We are in the early stages of launching a new building automation system (BAS) for the campus, and utility conservation will be a key component of the new system’s architecture.