#4 – Non-Profit FM With James Meeks

4-Non-Profit-FM-with-James-Meeks

Introduction:

Welcome to another episode of the modern facilities management podcast brought to you by Stratum. I'm your host, Griffin Hamilton. This is the show where I interview industry experts who share their stories, strategies and insights into modern day facilities management, from hospitality, to commercial real estate, and everything in between. We'll learn what it really takes to succeed as a facilities manager. 

Speaker: Griffin Hamilton  

Good afternoon. Today I've got James Meeks with me, James, how are you doing?

Speaker: James Meeks  

Great, Griffin, how are you?

Speaker: Griffin Hamilton  

I'm doing well. Doing well. Getting ready for the holidays.

Speaker: James Meeks  

Absolutely. Same here.

Speaker: Griffin Hamilton  

Well, jumping into it. James, give me a little bit of information on who you are, both personally, professionally and what exactly you do.

Speaker: James Meeks  

Like you said earlier, my name is James Meeks. Currently, I am the operations and facilities manager for the Atlanta Legal Aid Society in Atlanta, Georgia, of course, Metro Atlanta. My facilities management career spans almost 18 years now starting back in 2003. I initially started with Interland Incorporated, which eventually became web.com, they’re still web.com. I did 15 years there as a coordinator. My first role as a manager was with the Georgia Institute of Technology, Georgia Tech, took a part time position over there as the facilities manager for the School of Mathematics. I was working at web.com and Georgia Tech at the same time for about nine months and the opportunity for the position at Atlanta Legal Aid presented itself and that allowed me to go from working two jobs to one jobs, great salary, great benefits, great company to work for, great people to work with. So that's why I'm doing that.

Speaker: Griffin Hamilton  

What exactly do you guys do over there?

Speaker: James Meeks  

Atlanta Legal Aid is a nonprofit. We're completing our 95th year in operation. They provide legal services, mainly of a civil nature to low income individuals and families. Whether it be divorce, child support, adoption, things of that nature, civil cases, no criminal cases and like I said, it has been great for me so far.

Speaker: Griffin Hamilton  

Interesting. How was the transition going from the private realm, patient and into the nonprofit space?

Speaker: James Meeks  

Big slap in the face and beyond and I try not to talk about it too much but I talk about it all the time. The difference between the two, basically coming from a 15 year stint with a tech company, going to a nonprofit community company, night and day, primarily speaking in terms of facilities management, the finances involved in the tech world private world. We identify a problem or project, we plan it accordingly. Come up with a budget for finance cuts to cheque and we proceed to get it done. In the nonprofit world that is not what we're doing. Do we really need to do this at this point? Can it wait? Let's see if we can find somebody to do it cheaper which I've come to find out that it's not the best route to go. It's like night and day but I pivoted pretty well, Griffin. I came in and saw how they work. I tried to do it my way found out I couldn't and I had to adjust. So I made the proper adjustments and now it's a good situation, great situation actually.

Speaker: Griffin Hamilton  

That's awesome and I imagine it takes a lot of be creative when you're limited on above, going from to your point, just finance writing the cheque and then you're pinching pennies left and right within the nonprofit.

Speaker: James Meeks  

Absolutely got to be creative, got to kind of think outside the box and just try to cover as many bases as possible. The only building that we own outright is our downtown building. The other four locations that I manage are leased properties so I work with the property managers, get things done. The leasing situation seems to be much easier to deal with simply because a lot of that stuff is already worked into our lease. The property managers are responsible for that but when you own a commercial building in downtown Atlanta, that's a 100 plus years old, you own that. So everything that comes along with it I’ve had major leaks in the building. Over the summer, I installed a brand new roof on the downtown building as well as I modernized the elevator in that building as well. A couple of big projects I've been trying to do for I've only been there two years but I realized early on that those are the bigger issues that we had and luckily for us we were able to come up with the funds to get those done. I was very happy about that.

Speaker: Griffin Hamilton  

That's great and to put you on the spot here, go back to being resourceful. What's been the most unique way or solution that you've had to come up with over the last couple of years work in the nonprofit room?

Speaker: James Meeks  

Nonprofit, the biggest thing that challenged me was the recent COVID crisis. Just locating PPE for five locations was a bit of a monster, I got to tell you but our typical source which is staples, they were good like back in February actually come to find out when I started looking at March after we shut down. There was no dealing with staples at all, they had some of our basic needs, like copy paper, things of that nature but trying to get disinfectants, whether it be liquid, so sprays, gloves, hand sanitizer, masks, they just didn't have it so you get creative pretty quickly. Luckily, with us being community oriented, we have a lot of connections throughout the city and a lot of them we didn't have to reach out to they reached out to us to see what we needed. So we started getting things that way but we also went with a vendor that is typically known for dealing with restaurants, which is Cisco and they had basically everything we needed so at that point I just ordered up, stocked up, had everything come to me downtown and I distributed accordingly to the location. That was really challenging. Just going back to the beginning of the pandemic, that was a real challenge but we turned a corner on it pretty quick and it worked out.

Speaker: Griffin Hamilton  

I mean it's great that people were able to rally around and help you guys out in the get go and you're able to quickly find another solution there in Cisco certainly got to think on your feet and when it's global pandemic no one's been through before, that's always a challenge there. Beyond that, what other challenges have you faced with COVID, specifically, around COVID.

Speaker: James Meeks  

Upgrading the janitorial services, of course in lease spaces, you may have a day Porter, you definitely got a night Porter for after-hours cleaning when everybody's out of the building and things like that. But we just upgraded across the board at all locations. Again, going back to the lease locations, the janitorial services are worked into the lease but when you want specialized cleaning for a pandemic, you have to deal with them directly. We dealt with all the janitorial services at the building. They gave us quotes and they seem reasonable and we jumped on it immediately so we haven't had any cases in the office. We have a protocol where you have to notify your supervisor if you come in contact or think you have come in contact or if you're just feeling bad in general, you need to let somebody know at that point, you can't come into the office at all. If it turns out that someone may have been in the office, I have to reach out to the janitorial team immediately and let them know that hey, we might have a potential case. Can y'all go a little extra harder tonight trying to pinpoint areas where they were in the office and things like that. We also upgraded our receptionist desk at each location. A lot of them had antiquated like sliding glass for people to walk in, and it was actually a security issue as well, in the legal realm, and when people are desperate and need help, they can get frustrated and agitated pretty quickly. I've heard stories of things being thrown at receptionists and stuff like that so we went from the sliding glass to solid sheets of glass with speaker holes to kind of get that barrier there and it's been great all around. It's just a much better situation.

Speaker: Griffin Hamilton  

Yeah, solution to those hopefully rare set of circumstances there but also the current COVID situation being able to both sides of that be productive. What's the capacity that you guys are at currently with employees?

Speaker: James Meeks  

Skeleton crew, we sent everybody home in March, got a great IT director that was able to make sure everybody had remote access to their work PCs, soft phones, to get phone calls and things of that nature. Our intake process went from in person to online, the majority of it was via phone, but now we were able to add the online aspect to it so we could just let the community know that, hey, we're closed, we're still here for you, everybody's working from home, feel free to call these numbers, or go to our website and go through the online intake process and someone will get to you, we haven't missed a beat. Which kind of makes me think that even after we do get past this COVID hurdle, I think is going to kind of be hard to get people to come back and just thinking about residual effects of the pandemic and not really knowing if it's safe to be back out. The fact that we haven't missed a step, we still been able to help our clients at 100% just kind of lets me know that hey, we might be in for a shift here and that got me to thinking about the lease properties that we have that we do go that route. The company can save a lot of money by coming out of those lease spaces or downsize and maybe we just make the downtown building, which we own outright the hub. We go into maybe a reservation process where somebody needs to come in and need to office. You can reserve office or cubicle or something like that and do it that way. There's a lot of things to think about. But just to be honest, I don't think I'm going to see a lot of people come back into the office.

Speaker: Griffin Hamilton  

I think that's going to be across the board. It's just been a really interesting few months for numerous reasons, but per the productivity of people and the ability for people to continue to work and the company stay afloat while working remotely, I think a lot of organizations that take that to account as they move forward. And to your point, looking at leases, think that they could save a little money or added perks of having employees work from home so it's certainly going to be an interesting few years after, hopefully sooner rather than later when vaccines are distributed, which is really good segue going back into Facilities Management here for a moment. What are your thoughts on the virtual facilities manager? What are the possibilities there and how do you see that shaping up here over the next couple of years?

Speaker: James Meeks  

I really think the possibilities are endless. Like I said, I go into the office, mainly to deal with, I guess some pretty menial things directly, oversight of the cleaning crew at the downtown office, some help desk support. We got security issues around the building that even during the daytime hours led that I'm the point of contact for that so I have to deal with those shipping and receiving things of that nature. But the actual management side of it, a virtual process is quite doable. Like I said, just going back and forth for property managers, maybe there's an off occasion where you got to be on site for some things, whether it be a build out or demolition or install of some equipment or things of that nature you're going to have to be there for that, you're not going to just give full access to somebody that you've never seen in your life to your office space, anything can happen. But those are off moments. I mean, they could become few and far between. I don't know it just like I said, when I initially saw that position posted, I guess it's been about three years ago now. I just was thinking like, could you actually do that? Could I check up on a 100,000 square feet and make sure it's good remotely. There might be some things that need to be in place there. Maybe you need a co-coordinator on site, office manager on site that can be your eyes and ears for the most part and just pass responsibilities, do these tasks of a management nature off to you. Just letting you know. Like I said, the possibilities are endless.

Speaker: Griffin Hamilton  

On that note in specific to your organization, do you have technicians that help you with day to day maintenance work around the facilities do you farm that out to vendors for the most part?

Speaker: James Meeks  

In the lease spaces, there are building engineers, and they get their own vendors. Also in each location, there is office manager that orders their office supplies for that location, distribution of mail, things of that nature, giving access to vendors or contractors that need to come into the space. We do have that in place but for me, with the downtime building, I had to bring all that and myself. I've got HVAC for preventive maintenance of 21 units that we have in the downtown building, plumbers, janitorial, roofers, we have a handyman that we'd like to use for really small things that comes in quite handy because it could get a bit frustrating having to go through the bid process for each and every little thing that you need done. He's licensed, insured and everything like that so we're covered on that front. But that's generally how we operate across the board with all five of our locations.

Speaker: Griffin Hamilton  

Switching gears here still sticking on the topic of the direction that facilities management's going, a lot of folks in the industry now just kind of fallen into facilities can either starting out as a technician and working your way up or there haven't in the past been too many degrees or formal tracks to get into the field. How do you see that changing moving forward?

Speaker: James Meeks  

That's a great question. I'm a mailroom guy. When I started with Interland, back in 2003 mailroom and I'd come from an insurance mailroom background, which was kind of high speed, high pace, a lot of volume in terms of mail and different types of mail, things like that. I was able to hit the ground running at Interland, and then mailroom which is much smaller, much easier to maintain. Luckily, I had a great director that saw how efficient I was and he allowed me to gain some more responsibility. Be My eyes and ears for this. Look out for this. Hey, we got a big conference coming up in the media room, let's set it up, auditorium style to seating and things like that. He gave me more responsibility as time went on because he could see that I can handle it. Kind of locked up and the guy that was the facilities coordinator decided to go into purchasing so that opened up a spot for me and I just fell right into it and it was just like it wasn't that big of a switch really. My normal day to day activities with a little more increased responsibility and from there, me and my director, we had a great working relationship for 15 years, we saw many iterations of the company name changes, downsizing, having to shut down locations, build out demolitions, you name it, I've seen it all and I think you can kind of continue with that. But again, not a lot of people even have a real interest in that you have to, I don't even know how you even spark an interest in facilities management. For me, it just ended up being something that didn't really seem like work to me and I think a lot of people don't realize the customer service aspects of it, which could be a game changer, if you approach it in that manner. Your customers being your coworkers, and I've gained a reputation over the years if you need anything done, any item, any task done, James is your guy. Again, that doesn't seem like work to me, it's just problem solving solutions, things of that nature I can do, I practically almost done this job in my sleep. I feel that confident with it and sometimes I've had to do it in my sleep or I've been woken up out of my sleep three o'clock in the morning, a burglar alarm going off or something crazy like that I'm on call 24/7, 365. It's been that way for almost 18 years now and I have no complaints with it. I don't know man as schooling could be that route but you don't really hit the money until you get into a Director status. I don't think even coming out of a top tier university with a degree in facilities management would bypass all the other stuff that you need to learn and get a better understanding that will take you to the Director spot immediately. I don't really see it being that way. But time will tell. We'll see. 

Speaker: Griffin Hamilton  

It is interesting that what you're alluding to being a majority of individuals currently in the facilities manager role are going to be retiring within the next five to seven years so there's going to be a drastic difference in the demographics here moving forward into the industry, which is exciting. Having a new generation grow, having grown up with the internet and living in technology.

Speaker: James Meeks  

They're going to be looking for the virtual positions.

Speaker: Griffin Hamilton  

Yep! Exactly and there's going to be tools out there that are going to allow for that to be the case. It's definitely going to be interesting to see what comes of it. It's going to be a fascinating turn over the next decade.

Speaker: James Meeks  

Big time. Looking forward to it, though. I got to tell you, because where I am right now, my age and this point in my career making a change at this point, I don't think we'll be too bright. But on the other hand, I don't even really see a need for it because it's been 18 years, and I still really enjoy it. I've been mentored by some pretty good people and they told me that my career path at this point is pretty much headed in two directions, Director of Facilities, or I could get into the property management side of things and go that route. I looked into that. Maybe we can touch on that somewhere down the road but right now I feel good about where I am and where I'm headed so I'm happy about it.

Speaker: Griffin Hamilton  

That's awesome and as far as takeaways, and based on your 18 year career, what would have been the biggest impact on you from a professional standpoint and what recommendation would you have on someone interested in getting into facilities management?

Speaker: James Meeks  

I'll start with the recommendations. There is a very profound patience aspect to this job. Of course, I mentioned earlier about the difference between private tech environment to nonprofit but even in the tech world, private world, you still got to practice some patience, and that's with just planning things out properly, making sure that you make the right decisions, not being so quick draw on a lot of things. A lot of these things still require some thought. So patience is a big key and not only with the job itself, but the people that you're going to be servicing as well. People are demanding. People want it right now, I don't want to wait, I need this immediately. Well, immediately is probably not going to happen but I'll get it to you. You want to kind of meet expectations as best as you can. There's a lot of that. Griffin, I'm sorry, first part what was the other part?

Speaker: Griffin Hamilton  

No worries. And so two pieces there. Yeah. No, but in real quick on that point, I see that just from myself, not running the facility. But if a light bulb is out or internet's down. If the world's burning, it needs to be fixed right now. It's impacting me. I'm certainly guilty and I'll apologize any facilities manager I've dealt with in the past or had to deal with me. But the other piece of that question was just the biggest impact on your career, what has made the biggest impact whether it be a person or technology or just anything in general.

Speaker: James Meeks  

I think the biggest impact on my career would come from my Director, and I'll go ahead and drop his name Brett Lewis. He's currently the Director of site support for web.com. He took me under his wing, he saw what he saw in me, and gave me a path to the point where there was a split within the company at one point, the Atlanta office was allowed to stay on but the corporate office was moving locations from Atlanta to Jacksonville, Florida, which they currently reside now still the corporate office and Brett didn't have a worry in the world. He's like, ma'am, be leaving, be gone. Because that's what my job entails, I got to go down there and set us up and things like that. He's like, you're going to be right here. I'm like Brett, I'm fine. I'm like, You're not turning your phone off and then like that, you're not losing emails and I was like, man, it's going to be the same way it's always been, I reach out to you, you reach out to me, we communicate and we kick this thing pushing and we, again, 15 years. Just giving me that opportunity. It was such a big impact on me, because I'm originally from Memphis, Tennessee, home of civil rights and things like that. [Crosstalk 28:11] I’m from Tennessee as well. Really? Yeah. Awesome. What part of town?

Speaker: Griffin Hamilton  

Oh, God. So I moved. This is terrible. I moved when I was four. So pardon me there. But I think it was our outside of…

Speaker: James Meeks  

Outside. Yeah, I'm not familiar with the area. But yeah, just with that being the home of civil rights, a major player in the civil rights movement. I grew up seeing things of, how my people were treated and things like that. Not a lot of opportunities given. For this older white guy older than me to look at me and say, Yeah, I feel confident that this guy can do the job that I need that speaks volumes to me, and it meant the world back in 2003 and I honestly keep in touch with Brett still to this day, we took the relationship outside of work, and we just became friends and we check in on each other. He asked me about my family, I check in on his. It just turned out to be a great person to have in my life. I'll always be grateful for that.

Speaker: Griffin Hamilton  

I love hearing that. Having a mentor, you can't speak enough about it because you do get those opportunities you wouldn't otherwise have gotten someone taking you under their wing and showing you here is how to be a professional, here's how to operate on a day to day basis and progress through your career, whether it helps me or not with us maintain company, finding that type of person industry aside it is important for anybody as they continue to move forward. 

Speaker: James Meeks  

Very much so. Like I said, I'm thankful for that and I was just talking to him not too long ago, they're actually going to be closing the Atlanta office, which was one of the offices I played a major role in building out and making sure everything was where it was supposed to be. All the T's were crossed and I's dotted. That was my baby, the Atlanta office, when we made that last move, and they're going to be closing it down, again to cut the costs of having a leased space that honestly, nobody's been in for the past nine months, at this point, we're working from home. We don't need it. We haven't missed a step. Everybody's based on technology we got two data centers in place. People can work remote remotely. Let's bring some cash back into the house. Maybe they'll upgrade some salaries now. We can only hope. 

Speaker: Griffin Hamilton  

James, definitely appreciate the time, insight into your career and your perspective on the industry. Like I said, definitely appreciate you taking time to sit down and chat.

Speaker: James Meeks  

No problem, Griffin. I appreciate the invitation.

Outro:

Thanks for listening to another episode of the modern facilities management podcast. Make sure to subscribe for future episodes.