UAB Synopsis, Vol. 24, No. 13, April 11, 2005
UAB Associate Vice President for Facilities Brooks H. Baker III, son of an English teacher, is a natural born storyteller, relating vivid lessons learned during boyhood on a 250-acre farm in rural Warrior, Alabama. All of the prolific writer's articles contain references to farming. "It strikes such a deep core in me. It means never becoming self-satisfied or complaisant and having an intense sense of pleasure as you continually reach for a new goal...."
Baker recently completed a successful tenure as president of the Association of Higher Education Facility Officers (or APPA, since the organization was founded as the Association of Physical Plant Administrators in 1914).
He came to UAB in 1979 as maintenance engineer, was promoted the next year to director of hospital maintenance, then to executive director of facilities management. In 1995, he became assistant vice president for operations and in 1997 also was named associate vice president for facilities.
"What drew me to UAB was the desire to live within driving distance and raise my family in the countryside," Baker says. "I wanted my children to learn the lessons of the soil. I wanted them to work for what they have, to be able to live off the land." So in 1979, leaving a prosperous job at Tuscaloosa's Phifer Wire Products, he packed his family back to the farm and came aboard UAB.
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"Farming the land — and working at UAB — have been a joy."
Brooks Baker
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"In those early years, my toughest job at UAB was keeping our aging physical plant operating efficiently against a backdrop of tightening fiscal policy. The continuous need for facilities renewal and modernization is awesome and often hard to promote." So, with the help of a carousel of slides with the cover of "The Decaying American Campus" as the introductory image, Baker moved through offices and conferences around UAB's campus, "like a traveling salesman," talking about facility renewal needs and the critical importance of heeding small signs of neglect. His goal: encouraging employees to report problems to him before they become worse.
Deferred Maintenance
APPA and its publication, Facilities Manager, were founded to enhance the professionalism surrounding maintenance, protection, and promotion of quality educational facilities. Key factors include planning, design, and construction, as well as management of janitorial services, energy, grounds and landscaping, and maintenance of the facilities. In one of his first columns as president, Baker wrote: "Last weekend, I was driving on a two-lane road winding through the flatlands of LA (no, not Los Angeles, Lower Alabama), an area of our state called the Black Belt. I saw a stately old colonial home with enourmous columns in front. Once the home of a well-to-do cotton farmer or cattleman, the house had a sagging roof and peeling paint."
What's the connection between a decrepit Southern farmhouse and higher education? Without care and funding, says Baker, deterioration and irreversible damage can take place at an astonishing pace. It took only a few years — not generations — for that old farmhouse to lose its paint and roof.
"Similarly, in Alabama, although we are fortunate to escape some of the more drastic higher education budget cuts, we have lately experienced diminishing budgets. All such cuts translate directly into reduced maintenance funds, a real balancing act to absorb while providing quality services to our customers — faculty, staff, students, and patients."
In the face of tightening budgets for facilities operations, the Facilities Division has:
- Managed in-house design and construction projects up to $1 million in scope, overseen operational budgets of $80 million annually, and handled $400 million in construction and renovation over 7 years. Work is now under way on UAB's new state-of-the-art 14-story biomedical research building, one of the university's crown jewels, he says;
- Ensured that UAB's cost of maintenance is now less than half what it was in the 1980s, when adjusted for inflation. "Our first approach, as we began to get squeezed, was to reduce management staff," he remembers. "That worked for several years, but we had to look for other ways to economize";
- Next, they explored technological advances in housekeeping, maintenance, and other labor-intensive areas. "After cutting the fat, we began reluctantly reducing the level of services provided by facilities-related departments" — a common but often unsatisfactory approach;
- Code issues are now being explored as a means of "common-sense cost savings." Here, APPA can be an advocate for items related to facilities design, construction, and operations, he says. Known for his expertise in fire safety and prevention, Baker, for instance, has lobbied the National Fire Protection Agency to remove overly burdensome "consensus codes," resulting in millions of dollars of savings annually to health care and higher education;
- He authored — and promoted in Montgomery — owner-controlled insurance programs for state entities, saving the university millions of dollars and providing a safer construction environment for workers.
- And, career development for APPA members remains a major focus, particularly during periods of economic stress. In addition to founding an apprentice program at UAB for mechanics, plumbers, and electricians, each year, he champions professional development among facilities managers.
Baker knows the importance of higher education. In 1997, he earned a MBA, with honors, from Vanderbilt University. His "honor" was the Methuselah award — he was the oldest graduate in the Business School.