Jim Stephens (Georgia Institute of Technology)

Jim Stephens brings an engineering and manufacturing background into his work in higher education facilities. Now focused on connecting systems and people, he works to ensure asset data supports better decision-making. Jim shares insights on workforce challenges, integrating CMMS and financial systems, and how automation and emerging technologies can help organizations get more value from their data.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:04

Hello and welcome to Telling Your Asset Management Story. Jim Stevens began his career as a mechanical engineer and spent years working in manufacturing before transitioning into higher education facilities leadership. Today, he's focused on connecting systems and people, ensuring that the data organizations collected actually support better decision making. In this episode, we'll talk about workforce challenges, integrating CMMS and financial systems, and how automation and emerging technologies can help organizations get more value from their asset data.

SPEAKER_02 0:37

Jim, thank you so much for joining us today on Telling Your Asset Management Story. Really looking forward to hearing your story, learning more about uh Georgia Tech and how those two things have come together to find you where you are today.

SPEAKER_00 0:50

I'm very excited to be here. Thanks for the invite.

SPEAKER_02 0:53

So, Jim, we start, we always start our podcast by by getting folks to tell their story. I'm I'm always fascinated with the journeys, the many different journeys and unique journeys that everybody takes to get where they are in the facility and asset management world. So why don't you uh let our audience know how you ended up at Georgia Tech?

SPEAKER_00 1:11

Well, sure. So I, you know, I always wanted to be an engineer. So I I did. I went to Georgia Tech as an undergrad, mechanical engineer. Uh then I worked my way through industry probably the first half of my career. Uh started as a plant engineer. Uh, worked through being a plant manager, uh, did that for a number of years, and then uh those are those are long-hour jobs a lot of times. And I switched into uh higher ed probably 16 years ago. Uh served at uh Florida State University, ran their maintenance groups and engineering utilities, and then about three and a half years ago, I had the opportunity to come here to Georgia Tech, uh, really primarily with the the goal of of bringing our our utility infrastructure and some of our building infrastructure up to date. And uh since then I've uh I'm on my third job now. I'm currently the vice president of uh infrastructure and sustainability. Uh and it's been a really exciting uh time to come back to my uh kind of my home turf.

SPEAKER_02 2:18

It's it's interesting. Uh uh, you know, you we were both at the higher education facilities forum earlier this week, and probably three or four people that I talked to were did go back to work at in facilities at their at their alma mater. Was that always part of the plan, Jim? Or did that was that just sort of serendipity that you ended up back there?

SPEAKER_00 2:38

You know, I think it was serendipity that I ended up back here. That was um, I I in fact, this is probably not the best joke, but I had a lot of my uh friends that I knew up here, and they said, Well, why did it take you so long to come back? I said, Well, I didn't like it that much the first time. But the uh it was it was a very uh very hard you know place to go through and get the degree, but it was uh probably the most valuable thing I ever did. And uh and then when I had the opportunity to come back, um, you know, all jokes aside, uh, I did see it as an opportunity to for me to give back to an institution that set me on a career path um that's allowed my entire career not to really have to worry about finding a job.

SPEAKER_02 3:19

Oh, that's awesome. That's great. Yeah, it is, it's it's really neat how so many folks have have have kind of had that had that same that same idea and and find that same mission in going back to the school where where they were taught. So that's awesome. Um why don't you can you tell us a little bit about you know Georgia Tech, your campus, your portfolio, just the the the facilities, the size, that sort of thing.

SPEAKER_00 3:43

Yeah, so this campus, it's about 450 acres. We're now uh at least as of the last um few months, we're the largest school in the state of Georgia now. Uh we have uh well over 50,000 students. Uh we have uh a mix of the biggest and brightest and most modern uh buildings down to uh some of the oldest and uh and worst. So it's a it's a blend of uh old tech and new tech, uh great condition and and needs a little work condition. And uh the um the campus um has been a leader in sustainability for a long time. So we have uh probably the only living uh building in the southeast, uh the Candida building. It uh generates double the amount of energy it consumes with a set of solar cells.

SPEAKER_02 4:33

Yeah, I had a chance to see a presentation on it at a conference uh I think it was earlier this year. It's a pretty spectacular building.

SPEAKER_00 4:40

It it is, and it's connected to our Eco Commons, which was the university really building an urban park that is an active part of our stormwater management system. And uh so it's uh kind of an area where you don't really uh maintain turf. You've got uh natural uh native veget vegetation that serves the purpose of filtering. Um a lot of people don't know the city of Atlanta has a mixed sewer system, so everything stormwater goes right into the regular sewer. And um so a lot of what we're trying to do is minimize the amount of stormwater that we put into the to the system.

SPEAKER_02 5:17

And I guess get being kind of right downtown, what are some of the unique challenges? Just with that regular, well, before we get into the asset management challenges, but just being right downtown, what how does that, how does you how do you manage that given that it's I mean Atlanta is such a busy metropolitan area?

SPEAKER_00 5:34

Yeah, well, that's that's the an interesting part. So, you know, lately, you know, our all of our new projects are just getting taller. We're just uh we'll be wrapping up this year an 18-story uh tower for our industrial engineering and our college of business. And those present new challenges to a maintenance group that's largely not familiar with maintaining high-rise buildings. Uh and so that's going to be long-term challenge because the the property uh in the Georgia Tech neighborhood is all extremely expensive. So as the institute grows, we're going to have to build up to be able to justify the cost of land. And then on the the campus core, it's finding it's finding technicians that can deal well with the uh current technology, but also have a enough understanding of the old technology.

SPEAKER_02 6:24

Right. Interesting. And I mean, yeah, we've kind of we've kind of morphed into the the the asset management challenges and things like that. So obviously, you mentioned having you know some brand new buildings, state of the art, some old, finding people. What what would you say, again, relative to the the the asset management and and and uh aspects of of the campus, what what are the three biggest challenges that that you're facing at Georgia Tech right now?

SPEAKER_00 6:47

So my my answers on that may be a little different than the rest of the world, but I I see um and I know workforce availability is is a problem for everyone, but I see that as an asset management problem. Um it's it's well essentially if we're gonna maintain these assets and care about them and track them and do all the things we need to do, we've got to have a trained workforce that is able to you know to do that. And um so for example, if you know where everything's at, but you don't have the tools to uh to maintain, that's a real problem. So I also see that um the complexity of new buildings and the control systems that are are put in um are a little too much, I think, for a lot of the the new technicians. And uh I I go back to if you um look at things maybe 10-15 years ago where you were still on a lot of the um 485 uh you know networks for uh your field devices. When everything went internet, um or Ethernet really, uh you lost a lot of technicians that knew how to do that work. Um and so what ends up happening, there's a a million different reasons for why they your technicians are going to say they don't know how to to service the equipment the same way. And so it it it it makes for a little more complex uh contracting and it also makes for um you know a situation where uh you're in this continual training mode. Um but we but going back to item number one, you still don't have uh a real good ease of getting people into the trades. Um the third one is cost management. If you don't manage your assets, you can't track the cost. And so if you can't track the cost, you don't know where your spend is, and you can't uh tailor your organization to a point where it can manage those expenses in an appropriate manner. And I would say in higher ed, um there's varying levels within varying inst varying institutions for how they track cost. Um but coming from manufacturing, we had to know our cost because our cost uh rolled into our standard um cost models, and that's what determined whether or not your plant made money or not. And uh so that that same type of thing I see uh really going to be a bigger thing in higher ed because as budgets get pinched, you have to know where to cut, and you can't know where to cut if you don't know your cost.

SPEAKER_02 9:37

Right. How how are you and your team trying to overcome that uh on campus?

SPEAKER_00 9:42

Well, so our first uh step is uh we have a uh your cupcarize maintenance management system, but it has never really been fully set up with the assets in it. There are there are pieces and parts. Um our first part is we're gonna link the uh financial fields in our financial system with the same fields that we have in our in our CMMS. Um then we're going to rebuild the asset register and make sure that um everything that we want to track cost on has uh you know is set up in in that system. And uh at that point, then we can track cost. And so what's typical in higher ed is you're gonna have a a financial system that's largely to you know organized for the larger numbers, and they may not be able to break it up into smaller GL accounts for your unit. So they're counting on um the fact that your units are gonna have to be able to subdivide those those larger buckets into the smaller buckets, and so um that's that is one thing that's a little different between manufacturing and uh higher ed. In manufacturing, you would already have gone and divided up um in higher ed, it's typically on the units uh back to to come up with those types of things, and so that's what we're working on.

SPEAKER_02 11:02

Excellent. And I guess with across all the different departments of the units, there's got to be a lot of coordination and standardization so that that data is aligned.

SPEAKER_00 11:12

Yeah, if you're not standardized, you're in real problems. And and even if you um, you know, it's it's it's critical in asset management, but it's even more critical if you look at how uh data is being used today. And so a lot of what we're looking at is your modern uh facilities group and a large you know institute's gonna have multiple enterprise software systems, and we're looking at how all those data fields you know should match up. And uh because if we can't get them to match up, we can't combine various data sets together to to draw different um you know analysis on.

SPEAKER_02 11:50

So yeah, yeah. And one of the other individuals that I that I interviewed um was just talking about building names. Just, you know, you have five different systems and the building names themselves, which is, I mean, look, everything in asset management, um, when you're talking about facilities, you know, starts at the building and then kind of rolls down. And when you don't have those data points lined up, you know, or when a name changes, it only gets changed in one system and not the other four and other things like that. It it you you're almost you're almost defeated before you even start the battle, right? In those cases.

SPEAKER_00 12:20

Well, that's exactly it. And see, on space, for example, we have standardized on that to a set of tables. And so as we take our other enterprise systems, we're importing the tables and only have one system a record for space, and that and that's where we're heading for each enterprise system. We determine what is it the record of, and then it will dominate the pushing of that type of information to the other systems.

SPEAKER_02 12:47

So that's great. Have you come across because I mean again it's it's more of a thing of the past, uh, Jim, but uh like have you come across any closed systems that aren't willing to share, like across any of the enterprise systems that you have, or are all your have you are all your systems open and easy to share?

SPEAKER_00 13:03

Ah, that's a really interesting question. That's actually one of the things that we faced uh you know recently. So you have some systems that aren't you know really good at sharing. They they're still depending on on someone to log in and go and and gather information out. But that's where robotic process automation comes in. So robotic process automation allows us to have build a bot that goes and logs into the other system, extracts and transfers information into the other system. And so um that's a part of our analytics team uh right now is we have several RPA bots running. And I would say that's probably a little bit unique for a facilities type organization, but uh one of the bots we built, uh we have the uh City of Atlanta uh water system, uh still doesn't have really the data connects we have, and our bot actually goes, uh pulls the bill out, collects information, transcribes it into our database, and so that we now have eliminated just tons of hours of work for doing that.

SPEAKER_02 14:07

Wow. So I mean, you're right. I I haven't I haven't heard of a lot of organizations that have uh that type of a team. Is that something that that you brought to Georgia Tech, or is that something that was there before? And and if you were there in its inception, how did that come about? Because I think that's a really kind of interesting idea.

SPEAKER_00 14:26

So and it's also a very bizarre story, actually. So so when I first came to Atlanta, my title was AVP of infrastructure, and everybody thought that I was IT. And so all the social invites I would get to where I was, you know, meet and greets were I would get there and I realized that I was the only person that wasn't IT, and they all thought that I was. And so every time they would use a term that I wasn't super familiar with, I would go look it up, research it. And one of those terms one day was RPA. And so I I researched what it did, and I said, Well, wait, this can solve a lot of my other problems. And so I talked to my director of analytics and said, Hey, looking at this RPA, and he said, Well, what's RPA? And I later found out that after I had talked to him, he went and looked it up. And we uh and so that's really it's a curious start on how we uh found you know that type of technology, but then we realized that um it wasn't that difficult to deploy, and it allowed us to connect systems that we otherwise may not be able to. So not everything is uh you know a uh unique uh thought or or some advanced thinking. This was just literally us listening and us uh seeing something that had potential for us and and capitalizing on it.

SPEAKER_02 15:50

It's it's kind of a really it's really an interesting and and and and uh strong argument for getting in the room with people you might not otherwise be in, right? Like it's almost it was almost by chance that you ended up in the room with these IT folks and and look what happened, you learned something new. And I think that's you know, we're we're big supporters of Apple and other associations where like-minded people from similar industries get together to share best practices, but it's kind of a neat, it's kind of a neat uh uh you know, proof point for the value of sometimes getting outside of your own uh, you know, the rooms that you're usually in as well.

SPEAKER_00 16:25

Oh, absolutely. So it's it's really been uh that's been a fascinating process because I've learned so much from uh not only uh, for example, in the whole area of district energy, uh spending some time in Columbia and seeing how they practice district energy there is different than how we do it here. And in many cases, they found ways to do different um scale of projects, smaller scale, because they just don't have the capital that we have in the U.S. And so as I learn I've one of my I think a strength that I have is that I am an avid learner and I will go and I will look at what people are doing, and I have no extreme pride on doing it exactly the way I've done it. I will capture and and and bring ideas into the mix that that I see. And um, and that's really been a key to my growth in manufacturing as well, is that I'm I'm open to ideas as they come along. I I do the appropriate vetting and make sure they make sense. But I'm the industry's changing and I have to be able to change with it.

SPEAKER_02 17:29

So absolutely. No, that commitment to lifelong learning and curiosity and and and rethinking, I think, is is is needed now more than ever because things are changing so quickly. And and and kind of in that vein, we've talked a little bit about kind of where you are today, some of the challenges and and some of the things that you're um facing and how you're how you're tackling them. Um let's maybe shift to the future and thinking five, 10 years from now. What do you see as how do you see facility and asset management evolving? What's gonna be different? What's gonna be the same? Um, you know, you're already tapping into some pretty cutting-edge things with the RPA that you're talking about. So where do you see things going from here, Jim?

SPEAKER_00 18:09

Well, I think, you know, it it sounds a little bit trite to to say it with everything in the market, but I do think AI is gonna change a lot of it. And um, you know, in in just the whole realm of the costs that you have associated with uh gathering and loading information into systems, I think there's gonna be better tools that take out some of that uh manual work and actually bring down the implementation costs for systems. You know, usually when you um look at software deployments, the you've got the the actual cost of um you know either cloud service or your cost of software on site, but your biggest cost is uh um well actually I will say it's your second big biggest cost. Your second biggest cost is loading up the system with the data and getting the implementation right. The first biggest cost would be a system that you didn't implement right.

SPEAKER_02 19:05

Um so well, and it's it's it's it's you know it's it's funny you mentioned that kind of that that incorrect or incomplete implementation because a lot of people I talk to, they're like, oh, our CMMS system is terrible. We got to change. And in reality, when you dig when you dig a little deeper, oftentimes it's not that the CMMS system isn't good, it's that your implementation of the CMMS system isn't good, or the data in your CMMS system isn't good, and therefore you can't expect to to take bad data and turn it into a high performance uh system.

SPEAKER_00 19:40

Well, so we could think about that in terms of education. So a person makes a decision to go to college, maybe they want to do like me and become an engineer, and they decide, you know what, I will get a half of an engineering degree.

unknown 19:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:54

And so some of those things for you to really capitalize on the value you've got to get to the end of it. And um, and so I think that that what happens, and a lot of times there's a lot of excitement uh going into putting systems in. Um many times organizations underestimate the the effort they're gonna need to put into it. And um and many times I don't think they realize the fact that they don't really get the value back out if they don't do the the work up front.

SPEAKER_02 20:24

Yeah. It's uh it it I mean, in my opinion, it's one of if not the most potentially disruptive things to a facilities group is to change their work order system, right? It's you know, whether whether the pre-existing one was working well or not, uh it touches on so many aspects of an operation for sure.

SPEAKER_00 20:45

Well, yeah, I I remember early in my career in manufacturing when we were first putting in um our first CMMS systems there, and um you would see that uh I would go into places and and see so many partially implemented systems like that. And and that they all had good intent. They needed to understand their costs, they need to understand how to um you know manage their workforce, and they just never finished them and they never got the benefit. And then of course it was, well, what a terrible system that is. Well, the system was just fine. Uh it just wasn't wasn't implemented.

SPEAKER_02 21:23

Absolutely. No, absolutely. So um Jim, I wanted to, I wanted to kind of kind of wrap up uh today with, I mean, as as we were talking beforehand, right? You you are one of the most prolific folks within the facility infrastructure world that I've seen at social media posting and and I think you have a Substack now and on LinkedIn and other things like that. Can you can you tell our audience a little bit about the history of how you kind of moved in that direction and and and uh you know kind of how you keep up and maintain the level of commitment to to that to that that work that you?

SPEAKER_00 22:00

Do well uh if you go back uh four years ago, I did not have a LinkedIn account at all. And uh and now I have over 10,000 followers on LinkedIn. And you may say, Well, how did how did I start? I'm I've never been that interested in social media, uh, but what happened is I realized um, you know, it was actually while I was at FSU, I would hear the stories that were put out on things, and I realized that we weren't telling our story or our part of that story. Um and so I've used it for two things. One to get the story out there, and then the second piece to celebrate, you know, what's going on with the team, people who had made accomplishments. And that's really how it started uh was was it was funny to me. It started kind of as a humor thing. Well, as I got working with it, people started reading it and started signing it, you know, up on uh, you know, basically uh liking posts or following me. And um and as I kept doing the content, uh things got um you know, I would start going to conferences and people were saying they were reading it, and I was thinking, well, I didn't think anyone was paying that much attention to it. And so, you know, fast forward to the time I started at Georgia Tech, um, I realized that um there was this significant piece that was was being missed that um people wanted to hear the stories of facilities uh or the different types of things we're working on, but in a more uh natural tone, not pumped up uh like you would see on a on a brochure somewhere, but a little bit of the good, a little bit of the bad, um a lot about connectivity and trying to bring people together, uh, because I really do believe that um if we're gonna fix whether it's fixing problems in the world or fixing problems in our in our organizations, we've got to be able to talk to each other and communicate with each other. But I realize that if we're going to be successful, we're gonna have to learn to um communicate with each other. And so so today, as as I uh have looked at it, is I've my thinking has evolved a little bit uh in understanding that being able to tell our story at the right time uh is really important. And we all think about having all this pressure to do a complete story. But you know, my brother, for example, he's an associate publisher with a um for computer books, and uh one of the things that they do is you know that computer technology is changing so fast that one of the product offerings they have is you can actually buy the book and get the chapters as they're being written. It's like a a premium service.

SPEAKER_02 24:56

Interesting.

SPEAKER_00 24:57

So recently I've been thinking about that myself, and I'm starting to put more, you know, things out that are part of our journey. Um I uh, you know, and I've incorporated different elements in it. You know, recently, um, you know, I wear uh I wear a hat on campus to keep the sun off my head, and and originally uh all I had were straw hats, and I didn't want to look like a farmer, you know, walking around on the campus, and so I bought a fedora type hat. It worked great for keeping the sun off, but then it became this uh symbol uh within the department that everybody on campus knows who I am now because I'm the guy I'm the guy with the hat. And so so then I started using AI uh generated art and integrating it into my stories, and um, and so it's been it's been one of those things. So if you're asking what kind of drives the the doing it, it's it's that it's fun. It's not really work uh that I'm having to do. I think it it plays a great value in celebrating the successes of our team. Um, but I think it also starts connecting people. Um and then when I look at the amount of different uh followers I have on there now, um, I get a lot of questions through messaging from various people, and you you realize that um people have been missing that level of connectivity. And so uh recently when I started the Substack, it's just mainly there so I can do a little more longer form articles when I need to. Um, but everything I do is about bringing people together and uh and because I think that the problems we solve are a combination of technology and people, not just technology or just people.

SPEAKER_02 26:41

So no, that's awesome. That's great. And I I love I love the focus on story. I mean, that's that's part of the reason why um why we started this podcast was because I, you know, because I'm lucky enough to get around to conferences like Half where we were early this year or APA, I get I get to hear people's stories, but little bits and pieces, snippets of people's stories. But they're really, really cool, whether that's a career journey or a challenge being faced. But but I do think that that, I mean, it's you're spot on that that that that shared connection, that shared learning. You know, none of us as smart as all of us. So those types of things, that's that's uh that's that's how we're gonna deal with these challenges that honestly have been decades in the making that we only have years to solve, right? Um so uh no, that's that's that's great. And and thank you so much, Jim, for sharing your story. Any last thoughts you'd like to leave our audience with before we before we say goodbye and let you get back to campus?

SPEAKER_00 27:39

Well, I would say the the big thing is is that um you know you see a lot of doom and gloom painted out there for higher education. I think higher education uh will do fine. It's it's kind of finding its footing. If you're a smaller school, you you're dealing with that demographic uh demographic cliff. Um, but I think that um if we look at how to serve our our students, uh, and it and at Georgia Tech definitely students is our first you know focus. I think that we still have a big job educating all the people that need to be educated. Um I think we need to think about how we can better equip them with the technology that we have so that they can uh really know all the pieces they need to know to to do some of these complicated implementations or our systems we engineer or or even uh process on how we manage. But I I don't think that the future is doom and gloom for higher ed. I think it's a it's got a bright future. And uh and really honestly, I think if uh all of us in the world work together, we all have a bright future.

SPEAKER_02 28:46

So that's awesome. I no better way to wrap it up than that. Thank you so much, Jim. I really appreciate your time, your insights, and uh your ongoing commitment to higher education. So thanks so much for joining us.

SPEAKER_00 28:59

No, thanks for the invite. Appreciate it.

SPEAKER_01 29:07

Jim, thanks for sharing your perspective. Your experience really highlights how powerful asset management can be when systems are connected and teams have the information they need to make good decisions. At the end of the day, technology only works when people understand and trust the data behind it. Thanks again for joining us on telling your asset management story.