Good morning FM Team,
As operations slowly return to normal, I want to pause to share a sincere thank you for the extraordinary work that has been happening across FM since the start of last week’s weather event. I am so proud of the way our teams have shown up for the campus. This has truly been an all-hands effort across FM — too many heroes to recognize individually, but every contribution has been seen and appreciated.
In my many years at UMD — and through many storms — I’ve never seen conditions like this. The combination of snow, ice, and sustained extreme cold created challenges that went well beyond a typical weather event. I’m grateful for the support of FM’s senior leaders, who met daily to assess conditions and help guide our response.
Campus clean-up has required crews to chip away at solid ice, haul snow and ice off campus, and keep working in frigid temperatures — a heavy lift across the entire Building & Landscape Maintenance unit. Led by Karen Petroff and Bob Pils, these teams provided strong coordination and leadership throughout the response. Crews have already hauled away more than 300 truckloads of snow—and counting—creating a snow mound that’s on track to become a campus legend.
On top of snow and ice, we have been dealing with other cold-weather impacts, including multiple steam outages and water main breaks. When our boilers failed, campus looked to us to restore heat and hot water to residence halls and ultimately get campus open as quickly as possible. Under the leadership of Rob Hermstein, and with the deep technical expertise of Susan Corry and the Energy & Engineering team, staff across OM&U worked around the clock to stabilize systems and restore services. A special thank you to the IRU and all of our Incident Command leads for stepping in and running point as issues arose.
Behind the scenes, teams across FM units played a critical role in keeping information flowing and supporting the response as conditions changed. Thank you to the Customer Response Center for serving as a steady point of contact for the campus and managing a high volume of questions from concerned students and parents. FM’s Communications and Safety teams also worked nonstop to coordinate messaging, support frontline operations, and assist as situations developed. Warehouse and Fleet Services provided essential support to teams in the field, helping ensure equipment, materials, and vehicles were available to keep work moving under challenging conditions.
We couldn’t have done any of this without the support of our partners beyond FM, including Procurement, colleagues across the Division of Administration, and our dedicated contractors, whose collaboration was critical throughout this event. Please extend our thanks if you have the chance.
I look forward to thanking many of you in person next week at the FM Staff Appreciation Luncheon.
Please stay warm and safe, and continue to look out for your teammates.
Best,
Bill
William Olen
Interim Associate Vice President and Chief Facilities Officer
Facilities Management
University of Maryland
301-405-7336
wolen@umd.edu