Javier Maldonado is the Director of Corporate Facilities at VF Corporation – Outdoor Coalition. He has spent more than 25 years working in building management, starting from Real Estate and Property Management to his current Building Management position. Javier is detail-oriented and customer-focused, and he works with building budgets from $1M to $63M, making sure that even the most complex projects produce amazing results.
Here’s a Glimpse of What You’ll Learn:
- Javier Maldonado talks about his involvement in creating the campus for his company on Alameda Island.
- How do you manage the construction of a new building while observing the new restrictions due to the pandemic?
- How do you pivot quickly if the facility is compromised?
- The use of technology in Building Management.
- Javier explains the difference he found between working from home and working in the office.
- The future of remote work in the corporate space.
- How agile is used in building management.
- Javier describes how he started on his path in project management.
- The importance of creating a better relationship with building engineers and building management.
In this Episode:
Building management is a balancing act. Finding an equilibrium between making a building comfortable and creating a place where people can be efficient is a key component to managing a building with care and detail. Asking the right questions on important details such as air regulation, plumbing, and sanitation on a regular basis is crucial to the work of a facilities manager. Javier Maldonado deals with concerns around the different facets of building management as the Director of Corporate Facilities at VF Corporation – Outdoor Coalition. With the coronavirus pandemic, he needed to pivot his work and his team from working in the office to working from home in an instant. And he found out that providing his team with the right tools allowed them to remain productive and effective despite the work proximity.
In this week’s episode of Watching Paint Dry, Greg Owens chats with Javier Maldonado, of VF Corporation – Outdoor Coalition, about how to effectively manage facilities remotely. Javier discusses how he moved his work from the office to the home and how he led his team in doing the same, and he also shares how he uses technology and agile methodologies in building management. Stay tuned.
Resources Mentioned in this Episode:
Sponsor for this Episode:
This episode is brought to you by McCarthy Painting, where we serve commercial and residential clients all around the San Francisco Bay area.
We’ve been in business since 1969 and served companies such as Google, Autodesk, Abercrombie & Fitch, FICO, First Bank, SPIN, and many more.
If you have commercial facilities in the San Francisco Bay Area and need dependable painters, visit us on the web at www.mccarthypainting.com or email info@mccarthypainting.com, and you can check out our line of services and schedule a free estimate by clicking here.
Episode Transcript
Intro 0:03
Welcome to the Watching Paint Dry Podcast where we feature today’s top facility managers, property managers and property owners talking about the challenges and opportunities of managing hundreds of thousands of square feet of real estate and how to beautify and improve their properties. Now, let’s get started with the show.
Greg Owens 0:32
Hello, everybody. Fellow listeners, this is the Watching Paint Dry Podcast. I am it’s what is it? It’s Thursday, May 14 2020. And we’re in the midst of this COVID 19 pandemic and there’s tremendous amounts of challenges for everybody out there and I’m really hopeful that everybody’s families are safe. their loved ones are safe and friends are doing well. And we are continuing our conversations with facilities managers, property owners and building owners that are facing unusual challenges at this time. And in its unprecedented times right now. And so many things have to be looked at and changed and really excited to have these kinds of conversations and look at what’s the challenges and what’s the opportunities out there. First of all, this episode is brought to you by McCarthy painting. It’s my company. It’s been in business since 1969 started by my uncle Fred McCarthy. We serve residential and commercial painting throughout the San Francisco Bay Area. I got started when I was 16 years old, and one of the things we used to specialize in was painting flagpoles on top of buildings. We don’t do that as much anymore. But we’ve done a tremendous amount of work for different types of corporate clients like Autodesk, Fight Go, Abercrombie and Fitch, H&M, and many, many more. For more information about McCarthy painting, you can reach out to us through email info at McCarthy painting comm or go to our website McCarthy painting.com. And I’m really excited to have Javier Maldonado on our call today. He is the Director of Corporate Facilities for VF Corp. And VF Corp is like a holding company for iconic brands, like Lee, Timberland, North Face and many more, and it’s really excited to have you on this call today. Thanks. Thanks for taking time in your day to be here on our podcast.
Javier Maldonado 2:52
Well, thanks for having me, Greg. Yeah, ‘preciate it.
Greg Owens 2:55
Um, first check in with you Like how is your family in you and all this?
Javier Maldonado 3:00
We’re all good. Formally. We were in the Bay Area and Alameda specifically in last June, we moved to with a company, we moved to Colorado. So that’s where we’re building our new headquarters building. still under construction, but we’re doing fine. We’re, you know, we’ve got the two girls from college because they kind of get stuck here. Once California was closed, I guess. So yeah, we’re managing. It’s there. But it’s healthy. Thank goodness. And well, just trying to have we all have our little spaces where we do work or school or what have you.
Greg Owens 3:33
Oh, that’s great. That’s good to hear. I yeah. And I read about, um, the big move from Alameda island to Colorado. I know it was a bit of a surprise for Alameda Island and shocking over there. I think it was around 200,000 square feet of like, premium sort of building. It’s a beautiful
sort of Canvas.
Javier Maldonado 3:54
Absolutely.
Greg Owens 3:55
Yeah. Were you a part of building out that campus? I was
Javier Maldonado 3:58
I was fortunate enough. To build to be partners with the developer, and building the campus for the company and dealing with everything from the developer on the architects and furniture selection and getting the space ready, and then then owning the facility to manage it, and service, our employee base, kind of done it all, from soup to nuts, it’s been quite fortunate to be able to be in that position versus just having the building handed to you. And having no part in it’s in the guts of it. The mechanical, the electrical, the plumbing, the landscaping, you know, all the different things that go into making a beautiful property. So I was really happy that I was able to, to have to hope to hand that over to myself, basically.
Greg Owens 4:43
Yeah. Oh, I didn’t realize that so VF actually owns the building. There.
Javier Maldonado 4:47
We actually bought the property and then we sold it. Right. You know, and close, I think in June, sometime last year. Yeah.
Greg Owens 4:56
Yeah, yeah. And it’s a really beautiful Campus over there. And it’s also like built in with like, I think it’s like almost 100% sustainable in a way.
Javier Maldonado 5:07
Yes, we have a solar array, which provided for the most part, but 100% of our energy needs obsolete that LEED Platinum campus are the first in the island. So we’re really proud about that. And, you know, we’re, we’re very much into sustainability and doing the right things and the good things for for the people on planet. Yeah. That’s what we do,
Greg Owens 5:28
that’s, that’s great. That’s great. And it’s, um, it totally makes sense to me to why like, corporations such as VF is going to move to Colorado. It you know, with all the different brands that you have, like North Face and Timberland and those kinds of companies underneath it’s, it makes sense because that’s a tremendous amount more of your customer base, I would think is sort of in the rugged mountains and not sort of out there on Alameda Island in a way.
Javier Maldonado 5:56
Yeah, well, we really wanted to leverage a lot of the brands and create some synergies. Between the brands so they could collide as they go up and down the floors and share ideas. So and it was it just made sense at the moment to make the move. So, you know, had been in the works for a while and then it was executed and now we’re, we’re here in Denver, we’re in a temporary space and then we’ll be in a sense we finish our construction project would be in downtown Denver.
Greg Owens 6:23
Right, right. And, and I take it that you’re managing this this new construction, Yes,
Javier Maldonado 6:28
I am. It’s a big one. It’s a 285,000 square feet 10 storey building, that we’re kind of redoing from the inside, on the structure stays but works I’ve pretty much gotten rebelled on the TI side.
Greg Owens 6:43
Right? And are VF employees going to work at this time or they staying home? What’s up?
Javier Maldonado 6:50
No, no once once this thing kind of developed as I like to call it gradually and then suddenly and everybody was told just you know, work from home, there was like, almost almost, you know, within a weekend notice to you know, get your laptop to keyboard, you know, if you have a secondary monitor, take that home with you. And then we also started working from home. like pretty much everybody else.
Greg Owens 7:18
Right?
Javier Maldonado 7:18
So it’s been interesting.
Greg Owens 7:20
For sure.
Yeah, yeah. And I actually have Katrina Hayes. That’s also on this podcast with us today. And she’s a business development for McCarthy painting. And I know that we’ve had to, like make a lot of adjustments and work from work from home, although we were allowed to start working out again, in construction and painting projects last Monday, which was great, because, you know, we have quite a few painters that were going stir crazy at home, right? Sure. Yeah. So it’s really nice to have that kind of thing. Open up. Um, what When you’re looking at what are like your challenges right now, because you’re juggling, you already had a tremendous amount of a workload on your shoulders right? Like a full time job basically of just opening up this new building and the move and all of that and I’m now on top of that all of the new challenges of how you’re going to deal with you know, social distancing wearing masks, how even just a little everything has to be looked at inside the VA facilities. Now, what is it that you’re,
Javier Maldonado 8:33
it does? Yeah, so everything you know, that we have to look at, um, so I’ve got more in kind of two hats on sort of the facilities management hat, you know, how do we what do we do for the buildings to you can’t completely go dark equipment doesn’t like that. And then also during the construction management side with with the team, so I’m trying to keep that going. And that process rolling. Fortunately, in Denver, we’re able to continue building but it’s not A little bit of a slower pace. You’ve got inspections that take place and you kind of have to clear the floors out from the crews and an inspector comes in, they do their thing. And then once they leave, then you can resume work. Well, if you can imagine that, that start stop, you know, you’d lose some efficiencies on that. But on the facility side we’ve had to have I still have a small building in Alameda, and that’s the one that I’ve been focusing on. Fortunately, I guess for us, we we release a temporary facility. So the burden really falls on property management. But internally, we know we’ve had to be within planning, right? How do we resume? When do we resume? What do we need to do? So there’s been a committee that we set up, which involves facilities management or what we now call workplace experience. And then we’ve got our HR health and safety and senior leadership and just trying to figure this out. Well, when did we pull the trigger? When is it out, you know, it shifted a couple times, but things that we are focusing on is what do we need to do for our people? Right sort of PPE? Can we make available to them? How do we source masks? So we know that’s a challenge. Just simple mask and how do we source us and simple things like cleaners and hand sanitizers at an astronomical rate, of course, and it’s it’s been challenging in essence, so you know, we’ve got safety, you’ve got cleanliness, we have to put so we put together a guide, like a reentry guide. And that talks about, you know, cleanliness frequencies of cleaning things that touch on an everyday basis, we get discussions on what about public areas such as cafes and gyms, when do we open that? Do we not reopen it? What’s the cadence for that? process for if someone has a confirmed case, once a return of COVID what do you do? What’s the communication plan? You know, what do we do for the associate What do we do for the neighboring assistant? See, it’s. So it’s been a lot of moving parts. We’ve got a pretty good team that’s worked on that. So just I’m trying to get some guidance from, you know, reading store journals from the medical things that they recommend. CDC, industry experts just trying to gather as much information as possible like everybody else, try to come up with a holistic plan, something that makes sense that it’s not so restrictive. In some areas where we’re the recommendation is to take temperatures, we’ll do temperature checks, blast people to self monitor at home, you know, and we’ve come up with simple things like what if somebody writes her back to work, their temperature is going to be elevated. So what do you do then? What’s the protocol for that you can’t just assume they’re sick, because they just had a 20-25-30 minute ride. So maybe you let them sit down and pull off recheck and if it’s going down there, okay, if it’s remaining steady are going up. Now the problem. So it’s a lot of those sort of moving parts that you really have never had to think about before. And you’re forced to really think outside the box. It’s really good to have a team around you to help. Think of all these you know what if scenarios and try not to get too crazy, and come up with something that that we can produce that we can deliver to the associates saying, here’s our best foot forward, here’s what we think is the most reasonable way of protecting associates trying to restart the business. And then looking forward, how do we do that, you know, we’re going to go we’re going to move in in phases. So our first phase will move into the, into what we call our temp space. And they’ll be critical functions only. So probably 20% of the population and our phase two will be moving into the new building, and then there’ll be a phase three and maybe a phase four. If we kinda have to call the carts a little bit close to our vest on that it’s going to depend on other more cases, but the case is slowing down. what’s really going on out there before we you know, there’s no flipping of the light switches that were It’s very gradual and really employee safety first. That’s Yeah.
Greg Owens 13:04
And I think you have to be adaptable to as you gain new information because this is unprecedented. And like you said, we’re all trying to like gather as much information as we can to make decisions moving forward, but then knowingly, like communicating to everybody that, hey, these decisions. This is what we know right now. But hey, by the way, they might change as we gather new information, and we might have to pivot or slow it down, or we can open up
Javier Maldonado 13:32
more learn. Yeah, certainly, it’s a very fluid situation and Narcissus have been really good about kind of handling that. And I think our management has been really good about giving frequent updates. I think that’s an important part is the communication piece. You know, you almost have to over communicate them under communicate in various circumstances. This is certainly one of those where you do want to have senior leadership you know, do some videos and talk about what they’re doing. You know how that happened. Businesses progressing what’s happening, actually realistic view saying how are we doing as a company? You know, what’s our bench strength? What’s our? What’s our financial strength? It’s gonna be fine. You know, we’re going to resume what we have to kind of get through this
versus just not saying anything.
Greg Owens 14:16
Yeah, yeah, there’s just quite a few examples of like, best practices around how to deal with crisis’s. And then there’s also some examples out there that we’ve seen and I’ve seen and read, people not communicating enough and people left in the dark and in my mind start going like they start building these stories. Right and that were tremendous amounts of fear comes into play. And a lot of like, I know that within my company, a lot of what we’re doing is is like, how do we make it so that the workforce feels safe? Right, like they feel like we’ve done our due diligence and because they’re really looking to us as leaders and like, you’re like, Hey, what is this is this the best practice moving forward? And I know you’re wearing like different hats here. So you’ve got the building in Alameda island that you’re, you’re focused on and and then also, you’ve got a probably a tremendous amount of employees at home. Are you having to do any of the facilities around like, outreach to them as far as like if they need another monitor or they need, like a stand up desk at home and things like that? Is that
Javier Maldonado 15:24
Yeah, some of the discussions I’ve been had, and it’s and it’s really, really the recommendation of speed work within your teams, and see what you need and what’s reasonable as far as what they need, and I certainly don’t want to want somebody to, you know, be hurt at home because they’re working or whatnot. So we did touch base on how are you doing? You have what you need, you have a second monitor if that’s what you need. On You know, for some folks that said, okay, you know, you get like, we’ve really restricted who can go in so we’re trying to limit people from going in at all until it’s clear, but we have have to say to people because you can go in At this time from this time, you can pick up that second monitor or that keyboard or a docking station, anything that you have at the workplace, but now you sort of kind of need to have that at home as well. So there’s been some of those discussions for
Greg Owens 16:12
sure. Yeah. And I know I’ve been sort of using the analogy with my team around like, it’s time is like Island time now. Right? where things are going to take a lot longer to get sort of than used to be that you could just run into a paint store and get your paint and come out, but now we really have to order ahead. We really have to plan ahead and
Javier Maldonado 16:38
be very purposeful as you’re going about your day to day business. Yeah.
Greg Owens 16:44
Right, right. And then also like impatient, too, because there’s going to be like you said, like we’ve been on construction sites now where, where they’ve, they’ve said, hey, we’ve got this other team is coming in right now. We need everybody out. Right? And so then It’s like everybody goes outside and they’re my painters we’re having to sit in their cars and take a lot longer lunch and sort of be there for a bit while they do something else inside the building and then and then we all go back in. Oh, what are you doing? What is your Have you guys figured out around? If an employee does come down with Covid-19 and what you’re doing around tracing and that kind of thing, what have you what was the knowledge that you’ve gained around that so far?
Javier Maldonado 17:30
So, so far it’s been if somebody does have that, then what we’ll do is we’ll actually close the facility down for a 24 hour period with deep clean notify associates that work with associates, you know, ask them to coordinate self quarantine, you know, for a couple weeks on just to prevent any kind of a spread and then do a do some contract tracing, you know, talk to them who did you talk to who were you near when they when when did you have a meeting who was who are the attendees And those sorts of things, and they end in the workplace, just to try to get a sense of, you know, how far could this thing possibly have gone? And try to, you know, mitigate that to the extent that we can.
Greg Owens 18:13
Yeah, yeah, we just had this conversation the other day with my team and, you know, could easily like, like half of our company because we’re not a big company like VF Corporation. So it could easily take half of our company of one painter comes down with it at one job site where there’s a bunch of other painters there, we would have to, you know, slow things down for quite a bit of time. But we’re, you know, we’re fully aware of that and trying to stay prepared on that on that front. What other things have you had to like, consider or challenges that you’re looking at? In regards to especially the new construction? Are you moving forward with the plans as they were drawn? Probably like a few years ago, or are you now looking at them and adopting them? To the new circumstances of what we’re looking at moving forward.
Javier Maldonado 19:04
So we’re far enough along in the construction, that to pivot and change, workplace settings, furniture layouts, that sort of six foot office that’s been floating about on the internet. That would be a little difficult for us we have most of our furniture has been installed. We’re sort of now focusing on the finishes. So we’re almost there. But interesting. We’ve gone to, you know, you do your typical punch, walk. So you walk with the architect, you walk with a contractor, and you’re everybody’s taking notes, and you’re sort of kind of going out, doing a once over. So we’re doing that now virtually, which is interesting. So we have someone with either a GoPro or an iPad, and they’ll walk through the building, showing us different things and we’ll say stop pan left and right. Let me see that. And then what we’ll have is so we’ll have a general contractor and then we’ll have one of our architects, so a local architect with them. And then for us, you know, we’ve got Five or six people on the call looking at different things that they’re looking at. So it’s been odd but actually interesting and not as bad as we thought it was going to be. And it hasn’t taken us longest we thought it would take maybe taking an hour and a half to go through one floor, virtually. So that’s been pretty good. We’ve caught some things and made some corrections and taken some notes and then the architect will go back through and then just refine the little nitpicky things that we would, you know, typically spend hours doing so it’s actually been okay hasn’t been that. So that’s been one of those things that we’ve had to adapt to, but it’s actually worked out okay for us. All of our meetings are of course, virtually so any change order meeting. That’s a little challenging because sometimes you can see people on the other side sometimes they prefer not to have a video on so you’re reviewing these change orders on, you know, requirements from the IRS. department or requirements when the building department or what have you, and you have to discuss this large 80,000 change order, change order, like why? Why are we here? How come What happens? So you’re debating going back and forth to figure out what happened. Should we go forward? Should we not go forward? So there’s a lot of q&a there’s a lot of it can get a little tense sometimes. And so it’s, I find it easier to actually have the face to face virtual interaction because you can kind of read people’s faces and expressions as to what’s going on, versus just a straight phone call where you’re just discussing numbers in a situation trying to figure out what needs to be true to make this thing right. So those conversations are difficult to have. But better, virtually face to face than then just voice only.
Greg Owens 21:52
Right? Yeah, no, I have been experiencing the same thing. It’s like you said like a walkthrough on A zoom call with a few people and somebody holding the camera and moving through in different spaces, right at first was like, This is odd and awkward. But then I started thinking like, Oh wait, this is like I would have easily wasted the hour and a half just getting into that facility and here in the Bay Area, right, like, drip drive over there and find parking and all of that. And then, you know, and then and it actually worked out really well. I’ve been painting for 30 over 30 years so I can easily and I’m sure like you You can easily recognize things even if it’s just man through right like it’s like we have so much milk no hiccups Yeah, and so you can kind of like the Hey back up. I just saw something there we zero in on that. Okay, cool. You know, that’s definitely not the right color scheme for that area. Let’s Okay, now we can fix that. Let’s go on.
Javier Maldonado 22:55
I mean, it certainly makes me miss the building because I’ve been with it. Since we started building back in July, August, and I see things as a finished product that I haven’t been part of, usually, and we were there on a weekly basis. So it’s been at least two days a week, just going through the building, dealing with different things, seeing progress, taking photos, and now you sort of see that finished product and a walk through. You’re like, Oh, that looks fantastic, looks beautiful. And like you want to be there. You know, write it and see it, and then really experience it. And so you kind of get that longing for I really wish I could just be there and you can’t. So the next best thing.
Greg Owens 23:37
Yeah, yeah. And one of the one of the beauties, I think, I mean, at least for my job, and I think for your job too, is that normally, we wouldn’t be at a computer all day long, we actually get to walk through, right and that’s one of the great things from my personality. It’s always been really, really good. Whereas this like These multiple zoom calls in a day and zoom walkthroughs and zoom chats with clients and that kind of thing, um, is somehow so much more exhausting to me. Right, then
Javier Maldonado 24:11
it can be and you lose track of time
Greg Owens 24:12
and you lose track of time. It’s like one thing blends into the next thing in the right ways, right? Have you done anything personally around how you can manage your own energy and your own time and that kind of thing?
Javier Maldonado 24:24
Well, let’s see some wife and I try to get out at six And walk, walk a couple miles or four miles and just just decompress and talk and is I know, once once I get to my little table here, and I start, it’s hard to stop. It’s hard to because you’re not only doing zoom calls, but there’s a list of to do’s things that you have to some deliverables that you owe people for various work streams that I’m working with. There are so many meetings that trying to find that quiet heads down time. It’s very difficult and sometimes that ends up being after five o’clock. So you’re you’re up They’re Southern doing different things and someone says, Are you gonna have dinner? realize, oh my gosh, it’s seven o’clock already. You know, and we have a dog that he’s very punctual. He comes with no time. So usually it’s 5:30 so we’re circling the wagons. Come on dad, six o’clock dinner time. So I know that that’s that’s almost a cue from me he’ll come up and kind of scratch me and like Okay, let’s go it’s a it’s a kind of break that reality like you know what I’m at home so that’s been a positive, right? At least I’m home I’m able to see you know my loved ones and see the puppies and whatnot. So that’s it’s been a nice to have from just being in the office because I could easily be in the office at seven o’clock every night. Yeah, and
Greg Owens 25:49
it reminds me of a meme. I saw where it was the cat’s fur like okay, we need a plan for getting the humans back to work and the dogs are like Hey, it’s like, Hey, we need to talk about this. This is actually good.
Javier Maldonado 26:04
I’m getting more walks in I used to,
Greg Owens 26:06
yeah, any other positives and opportunities that you’re seeing in this at this time.
Javier Maldonado 26:12
Um, I think the positive is, people are realizing that they can work remotely, you don’t have to be tied to the office. I’m assuming that at some point in time, maybe not now, but a couple of years. I think people will start reconsidering how much space they actually need to use. Maybe do a little bit more hotelling or hot desking. And you don’t have to be in the office, you know, seven days a week, seven days a week, five days a week. You really don’t maybe you need to be there for a couple of meetings, some face to face. Some if you’re a product developer working on the next greatest thing that the Northeast is going to produce. Maybe you need to be there to look at patterns or forums or prototypes, then a lot of the work you can actually do right remotely, you don’t really have to. And we’ve, we’ve kind of started that a while back, not not being at the office, but trying to have the technology available to us from our digital technology team that allows us to work from wherever, whenever. So laptop, iPad, cell phone, you know, sort of have this freedom, that you don’t have to be tied to, to a landline, you can pretty much work everywhere. And that’s sort of how we’ve designed the building that we want to, it’s, you know, we’ve got a lot of breakout areas, and you can go to different places. So you don’t have to be at your desk, right, your desk would be sort of a destination for some headset to work, but other than that, you could work at a Starbucks. And that’s sort of how we initially started talking to people. You know, it’s like you working at Starbucks or working somewhere else. You’re just you just need that good connectivity. Yeah. And have your meetings and so I think people are realizing that it’s okay. And I think managers are realizing that you know, they don’t have to see their people Every single day, or they’re not working, right, I mean, that’s, that’s such an old way of thinking. And I don’t think that we do that, but, but I think people will realize that, you know, it’s okay, you sort of have that freedom. I think it works certainly for we’ve got three generations of workplace, three different age groups. So I think everybody’s sort of working and then figuring out that it’s okay, you know, we don’t have to be there all the time. Right. And I’m sure it’s working better for for the younger set. They’re more agile, more mobile. To do that, versus, you know, US oldsters that are more used to that I need a pad of paper and the pencil or not necessarily. There’s one note. There’s other technologies and things that you can leverage to still do.
It plus,
Greg Owens 28:45
yeah, I’m always surprised because I’m surrounded by millennials in my company, and Katrina here is one of them. And, and it’s so interesting, because I’m always the one pushing for more technology and more sort of work from home and that kind of stuff. She’s one of the ones that’s like, Oh, I kind of like feeling the paper.
Katrina Hayes 29:06
Totally. I’m, I’m totally someone who needs to have that paper and that pen but I totally agree with what you’re saying around we’re moving towards a virtual work at home. And and this pandemic has given us the opportunity to shift and make what works for us and what doesn’t.
Javier Maldonado 29:25
Yeah, I think another huge perk that I just don’t hear enough about, um, you look, it seems like
you can actually see Everest from down low, and it’s not a cloud of gray. Venice, you can see the water is clear. So there’s some of these real positives that are taking place on our planet that that I don’t think it’s been touted enough. I don’t think it’s being talked about enough. We’re very much stuck up all the crazy things that are going on, but there’s some real benefits taking place. I’m hoping that Last, hoping that we’ll sort of go back and start seeing gray again, you know, not so much so that I think that’s been a huge, huge plus just thinking to sort of force pause,
Greg Owens 30:12
a force paused? yeah?
Javier Maldonado 30:14
regenerate itself, as opposed to
Greg Owens 30:17
Yeah, I, I have some friends in India and they were showing pictures of New Delhi, you know, on their Facebook account, and I was blown away because I’ve been there and have seen how much smog and congestion and everything’s there and and see how clean it is and, and part of me was hoping kind of like what you’re saying is like, almost like the people like say, Hey, we could have a better air quality and a better life. Can we like, look into this more like this is actually really, you know, giving them that experience, right where it’s like, wow, I don’t go outside and go for a run and it feels
Javier Maldonado 30:55
it doesn’t take decades. And I think the old thinking was well we just can’t possibly make that much of an impact that’s going to take years and decades and, folks, six weeks, six weeks, you can see every six weeks, there’s very little smog. Six weeks, you can see the water and Venice like, six weeks,
Greg Owens 31:13
six weeks.
Javier Maldonado 31:15
apostrophe
Greg Owens 31:18
Yeah. And you’re right. There hasn’t been I hope that they’ll do some studies and show and really broadcast that like, hey, look, we, you know, if we did a pause, say in the future, right, and slowed things down a bit and took this took this time to let the environment sort of like, make some adjustments, right. It’s, it’s pretty amazing. And part of the part of the reason for this podcast is I’m also like, sharing information about, about becoming a facilities manager for people that are interested in that as a career as an a direction because I know, I know for a lot of people they don’t really realize like there’s this whole sort of area. of work, that’s, that’s really fascinating. You’re not necessarily in front of a computer all the time, you really have to learn how, how a building and an organization functions, your thoughts around how people can get started in that career a little bit about how you got started in in this and
Javier Maldonado 32:19
oh my gosh, when I got started that was, you know, gosh, 31 years ago. And actually, it’s, I find it interesting when I think about it, um, I just moved to the Bay Area back in 1989. And, you know, I was looking for what was my next to do because I was doing something different in Southern California where I moved from, and so I got a headhunter and they interviewed me and it was for, you know, to manage in a tutorial for an in house janitorial, and I thought, Oh my gosh, I’ve got a college degree. I am not gonna get janitor, right, which is just awful, right? But I thought, okay, okay, I’ll do it because I need a job. I have to do something that it was managing and then that can lead to other things too. small projects. And one thing sort of really led to another and next thing you know, I’m sort of managing properties not really knowing that that’s what I went into life for. Yeah. And so it’s a great I mean, I think the quickest way for anybody to really join it, they have to hook up with you the BOMA, BOMA San Francisco’s a great organization. Yeah, the guys there for a while, and also, if not the International Facilities Association and and that’s kind of one way of doing it. I know there are some junior colleges that are that have some tracks into into doing that. I know.
I’ve spoken at some of the some of the classes
to people who are just starting out in real estate because they don’t like it’s the one thick and broke around their property management side or the residential side or our facility side. Just trying to demystify that, a little bit for them. So it’s something that you need to start no one. Who’s the facility managers made an intentional decision? I’m going to be a manager. But I have talked to over the years, I’ve tripped onto that career path. But it’s certainly a very rewarding.
Greg Owens 34:12
Yeah, yeah. And it’s, you know, I think you end up learning just so many different aspects around
how construction how and how work happens.
Javier Maldonado 34:24
Construction building systems, you know, people walk into the building and they don’t think, Oh, it’s comfortable, because the temperature has been regulated. I can see cuz the lights are fine. It’s clean because there’s a crew cleaning it. You know that the facilities work because the plumbing is working. There’s all these it’s a living environments with all these things in concert working together to create this positive environment that you walk into, whether it’s a retail shop or an office or school, or what have you. You know, it’s all sort of this organism is built environment. Yeah, that we live. Plan. No one really thinks too much about one of the inner works. Right, buddy, but is curious. Yeah. And that’s that’s a good path to get into it. And the best thing is that if you’re young property managers out there listening, ask questions. And your best friend is a building engineer, the chief engineer, and you know, sometimes that can be seen as a antagonistic relationship. But if you take the time to ask the questions, I’m asking to take you through the machine rooms and the boilers and chillers and fan rooms, you are genuinely interested in they’ll systems, they’ll spend time with you. And you’ll be better for it. I’m better for it because I had a great chief engineer who kind of took me under his wings and showed me all these things. Which I like, love the curiosity. I would have just sort of stuck to my I’m dealing with my tenants. I’m dealing with my boss. And that’s it. Right? There’s so much more to it than that.
Greg Owens 35:56
Right? Right. As a painting contractor. I mean, I get this I love like You know, going through the sort of guts of a building, right, get to see the boiler room, get the seeds, sort of a whole bait, a maze of a basement that, you know, like buildings on top of buildings have been built on for years, you get to see all that history and everything of all that construction process, right. And the behind the scenes of how things work is can be
Javier Maldonado 36:19
fascinating. It’s completely fascinating. And then you understand when there’s a complaint or a hiccup comes up, kind of in your mind, once you get that education and that experience seeing these things, you can kind of see it from start to finish. Oh, I bet you this is going on. Because these conditions are taking place to make this condition true. Right, whether it’s hot or cold or stuffy or what have you. But you really need to be very curious and ask questions all the time. Yeah,
Greg Owens 36:49
yeah. Well, I really appreciate you taking this time. I noticed these challenging times and am really happy to get this sort of information out there. On any any last thoughts and then where people can contact you if they wanted to if if LinkedIn is the best way or
Javier Maldonado 37:05
LinkedIn is probably the best way if somebody has questions, and I’ve had a lot of questions asked, you know, well, how about this? And how about that, and I’m happy to share what I know if it helps them. So yeah, so LinkedIn, Javier Maldonado, LinkedIn. That’s the quickest way of getting a hold of me.
Greg Owens 37:20
And this has been Watching Paint Dry Podcasts, really happy to have Javier Maldonado on the call from VF Corp. And, again, thank you for your time. And we will hopefully at some point in the future, if you’re back in the Bay Area, we can have a coffee or something like that.
Javier Maldonado 37:39
That will be awesome.
Greg Owens 37:41
Thank you.
Outro 37:51
Thanks for listening to the Watching Paint Dry Podcast. We’ll see you again next time and be sure to click subscribe to get future episodes.