Kate Peevey is the Manager of Facilities and Real Estate Services at Telecare, a family- and employee-owned company that has been treating individuals with serious mental illness since 1965. Telecare specializes in innovative, outcome-driven services for high-risk individuals with complex needs. Its programs are recovery-focused, clinically effective, and designed in partnership with local, county, state, and other behavioral health organizations.
Previously, Kate worked as a Job Captain, Architectural Associate, and Architectural Designer for Pacific Design Group and Weston Miles Architects. She holds a bachelor’s degree in architecture, conceptual design, and urban development from Woodbury University.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
- Kate Peevey talks about Telecare’s mental health services and her role in the company
- How do Kate and the team at Telecare approach facilities management?
- The unique design of Telecare’s facilities
- How the COVID-19 pandemic affected Telecare — and how they adapted to the restrictions
- The challenges Telecare is facing in 2021
- What Kate is looking forward to this summer: traveling, reconnecting, and supporting others within her community
- How Kate launched her facilities management career, and her advice for those starting a career in the industry
In this episode…
According to Kate Peevey, your environment has a big impact on your mental health development. That’s why she’s working to provide services, programs, and healthy environments that will help individuals — and the community — grow. However, Kate’s role in facilities management comes with its challenges. So, how is she navigating these obstacles to help the community thrive?
Through Telecare, a mental health service provider, Kate designs home-like, barrier-free facilities that allow a diverse group of individuals to feel comfortable. When the pandemic came along, Kate and her team had to create spaces that supported social distancing practices while still making patients feel at ease. Even in 2021, Kate, along with many other facilities managers, face difficulty getting the items and tools necessary to complete their jobs — but this won’t stop her from designing spaces to aid Telecare’s customers. Kate says that the industry is always changing, and in order to keep up, you have to continue to learn and say yes to new challenges and opportunities.
In this episode of Watching Paint Dry, Greg Owens is joined by Kate Peevey, Manager of Facilities and Real Estate Services for Telecare. Together, they discuss how Kate is helping individuals improve their mental health through the facilities management industry. Kate talks about her role at Telecare, the importance of strengthening relationships within the community, and how you can get your career started in facilities management. Stay tuned!
Resources Mentioned in this episode
- Greg Owens on LinkedIn
- Katrina Stephenson on LinkedIn
- McCarthy Painting
- McCarthy Painting Contact No.: 415-383-2640
- McCarthy Painting Email Address: info@mccarthypainting.com
- Kate Peevey on LinkedIn
- Telecare
- The American Society for Health Care Engineering (ASHE)
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 1000s of square feet of real estate and how to beautify and improve their properties. Now, let’s get started with the show.
Greg Owens 0:31
Good morning, everyone. This is Greg Owens with the Watching Paint Dry podcast. This is sponsored by my company McCarthy Painting, we do commercial and residential painting throughout the San Francisco Bay Area. We have done many, many projects. We just did some projects for spin, h&m, Google, Chase, no Valley here, which is really just came out really beautiful. We even had the owner of the property reached out to me and said, Hey, this is this is so good. We were working for the bank and they were just blown away at how nice the building came out. And many other projects. We can do both interior and exterior throughout the San Francisco Bay area for information about McCarthy Painting, go to McCarthypainting.com. And this morning, right before the Fourth of July weekend. I have the honor of speaking to Kate Peevey and she is the manager of facilities and Real Estate Services at Telecare and good morning. And how are you doing today?
Kate Peevey 1:42
The morning? I’m doing good. Looking forward to the weekend. And thank you so much for having me on here.
Greg Owens 1:49
Yeah, I think like almost all Americans are looking forward to this weekend. It seems very, it seems very lively out there. I was just travelling and got back yesterday from North Carolina, to here in Mill Valley where it’s foggy and cold. But I’m sure it’s just seeing the amount of people out there travelling it seems like things are looking up for sure. And everybody’s super excited.
Kate Peevey 2:17
Yeah, a lot of good energy.
Greg Owens 2:19
Yeah, that’s it a lot of good energy. Right. People are people are just enjoying life right now and being able to move be mobile and move around. Yeah. And so how do you know this has been a super challenging last 14 months? How are you your family? loved ones?
Kate Peevey 2:37
Good. We? We did we did well. So I’m really grateful for that.
Greg Owens 2:44
That’s great. Yeah,
Kate Peevey 2:45
yeah, some people have been so impacted by what’s been happening over the past year. And every day, we’re just so fortunate that we were able to work remotely and continue productivity and and still be able to do that.
Greg Owens 3:02
Yeah, that’s great. That’s great. I mean, I have this sense of gratitude every day to that one that things are opened up to that at the moment Anyway, there’s no smoke and you I keep forgetting how bad that was right? Not only did we have a pandemic last year and in 2020 but which was incredibly challenging incredibly hard, but didn’t hear in California we had tremendous amounts of smoke that shut like even shut us down as painting contractors. We couldn’t go outside even with the respirators and everything on it was super hard to work. Yeah, side right. It was really just so bad and hold Yeah, it was a brutal year. Hopefully we do better. I know, marine County’s got super strict water restrictions and, and that kind of thing going on this year. And but hopefully things get better. Getting better. Tell us about like your Telecare and what what they do. It sounds really interesting. Super needed service. Yeah,
Kate Peevey 4:02
yeah, so um, so Telecare is a mental health service provider. And we have a variety of different services. So we do everything from very acute care, all the way through crisis, short term, long term stay facilities, and then we do community outreach programs as well. So the spectrums really broad for the services that we provide. But yeah, it’s much needed and it’s been growing really rapidly. Even in the amount of time I’ve been with telecare. It’s been about four and a half years. We went from 80 programmes to you know, 100 plus program, just in that that small amount of time so it’s wonderful to see counties and communities really responding to the needs. Mental Health Services, because really, that’s who we contract and deal with on a regular basis. So,
Greg Owens 5:08
Oh, that’s great. And so you nd and do you have services where you, you do in home care and have the facilities that sounds like
Kate Peevey 5:17
so we don’t do in home buy? Yeah, but but by community programs, I mean, you know, working with homeless or maybe people in temporary housing, things like that.
Greg Owens 5:32
Right. Yeah, right. And what’s your what’s your role with Telecare?
Kate Peevey 5:36
So I am the manager of facilities and real estate services. I am one of there are 1234. There’s six of us in our facilities team. So as a team, we manage all of the 100 plus facilities throughout five states. So we’re very busy, which is great. Right. And so our role is operational support for existing facilities and for on site facility management staff. And then we also work with counties on ground up facilities, new facilities, we work with relocations of different programs amongst various counties. And then just standard Office tenant improvements and, and work of that nature. Right, right. And broad spectrum.
Greg Owens 6:41
Yeah, what’s the what’s the type of buildings or what’s the size demographic? Give us an idea of that? Yeah,
Kate Peevey 6:47
so we can, for our inpatient facilities, anything that we do that’s new, is no larger than a 16 bed treatment program. So a few years back, I’m not really sure about the timeline on it, but there were changes to mental health care and how many beds the services could provide. And it was a really big change for mental health because it allowed smaller groups of people and better individual care. Right. So we do have some point, which makes sense. Yeah. Kind of like classrooms. Right. So, right, keep up smaller, you get more attention. So, um, those are new, but we do have some programs that have been around for a very, very long time, that have 93 beds, big, big facilities as well. But those are, those are few and far between these days. Wow. And it’s such a needed service to it’s unbelievable how challenging it is. I’ve
Greg Owens 8:02
had some family members that have had mental challenges, right, and being able to have some sort of backup system, like Cameron county has some really, really great, like, key in patient care, you know. So it was it was wonderful to see that aspect, right? Because when you watch movies of any kind of hospital mental care hospitals, it’s pretty sad. Yeah,
Kate Peevey 8:29
yeah. And that’s, um, it’s changed a lot, right? Yeah. And since the 50s, and even the 90s, it’s changed a lot since the 90s. As well, right? Oh, I didn’t know it was gonna end up in mental health. You know, it wasn’t something that I really set out for as a career path. It just kind of happened naturally. And it’s been, it’s been really, really great on so many levels, being in that niche, especially for facility management, because of the diversity of projects, and then the whole other component of the standards for client care.
Greg Owens 9:13
Right, right. So what what kind of things you consider when you’re looking at a new location? Do you guys want to build from the ground up? Or do you want to look for facilities you can remodel? What’s the, what’s the direction you tend to go towards?
Kate Peevey 9:27
So we typically look for leased properties is what we typically do. But counties will put out contracts for operators on new facilities that they’re building with in their counties. And so we work with other divisions of our company to write proposals for services and and to try to get Those county contracts. And then when that happens, we’ve had a couple of new builds in up in Washington recently in the past couple years, then we actually get to be a part of the design and construction process. So it almost you get awarded prior to the construction of the project, which, which is really fun as well. But those are few and far between because they’re county driven. And it’s it’s really about, you know, services provided and what, what they feel that they need,
Greg Owens 10:32
right? I can only imagine the contracts on those are incredibly extensive. Yes, and I’m not in contracts. Yeah. And if you’re just thinking that bureaucracy and that kind of stuff, we do some permitted work, and tenant improvement work. And you know, just even doing like a retail store is complicated, right, I can only do what you have to all the all the leaps and hurdles, you have to go over for a facility like what you guys are doing.
Kate Peevey 10:58
Yeah. And and, and that goes true for any tenant improvement projects we do on our existing facilities. So we have, because of the nature of the work, you know, we’ll work in and be occupancy or office type buildings, which are generally pretty simple. And then once you start getting into our acute and high security facilities that are are locked, right and fully secure, it brings in not just standard California or state codes, now you’re dealing with tonnes of other governing jurisdictions that you have to meet requirements on. So for example, we want to switch out a stove at one of our, our skilled nursing facilities. And we have to, to go through an entire stove replacement project, hire an architect with a stamp and go through a permitting process, not with the state or county of Alameda, but with another governing organisation called OSH pod. Yeah. So we do that a lot. And it’s, um, it creates something as simple as replacing a stove turns it into, you know, a massive undertaking.
Greg Owens 12:21
I dealt with them a long time ago on a at a health care facility. We we replaced a walk in refrigerator. Yeah. And, and I remember that, and when it wasn’t just that it was the normal city permits, yeah, county permits, health care permits, and then OSH pod came into there, say, oh, info and the, you know, the phone. Dietary and yeah, right. Right. Right. So that’s interesting, because you see, you guys have to find facilities that hit different needs out there. And depending on what’s what’s coming up in the pipeline, I guess, from different counties, or different organisations that you’re working with? And you have your own also, or is it mostly working through sort of other other, like, the counties and that kind of thing? That is that is premier? Yeah. Yeah, that’s, that’s what drives our services. Right. And, you know, we see this big trend in like high tech and that kind of thing of really making the buildings very visually appealing and that kind of thing. I haven’t been in a healthcare facility in a little while. Yeah. What are you guys doing that’s like fun, innovative or unique in that way.
Kate Peevey 13:41
So we, our facilities are trying, we tried to build it very home like, right, so, um, what I find interesting, coming from an architectural background and then into mental health is that it seems that people in their personal lives are trying to create a more sterile kind of cold environment with modernism. And then in mental health, it’s opposite, right? It’s warm woods and colours and a real home like environment, and telecare has exceptional standards of quality of care, right? So their whole mission is to really, really provide an environment where people can feel comfortable and at ease and at home. So a huge thing that’s happened is getting rid of any type of barriers around nurse stations. Oh, interesting. Um, and it continues to be a cop, a topic of discussion. And it’s actually really interesting, because when COVID hit people, we’re trying to put protective barriers back up, after we had spent, you know, the past few years taking them all taking them all down and the conversation Around the nurse’s station still was, well, we need protective barriers, because that’s where clients like to gather and talk to staff. And we need it for our social distancing practices. But when you start bringing that into Well, how is this going to make our clients feel? How is this gonna help, you know, affect their recovery and their, you know, their journey? Can we find other methods of social distancing, besides putting the barriers back up? So the nurse’s station surprisingly, is a is a, it’s a hot topic, and you’ll go to, like I go to I’m part of American Society for Health Care Engineering, which is called ASHE. And they are you familiar with them?
Greg Owens 15:51
No, not not. But yeah.
Kate Peevey 15:53
So they, they have some, you know, summits and conferences, and at their design conference, every single year, the discussion of the nurse station comes up. And it’s really funny, because it seems like such a simple thing. But they’re, they’re the heart of the facility, typically. And when you’re trying to create a very friendly and home like environment, to have, you know, essentially a place where you can hide, doesn’t, you know, doesn’t really fit that model. So that’s one thing that’s, that’s, we do a lot. And now they’re talking about removing them all together, you know, so, um, so,
Greg Owens 16:37
so walk me through this a little bit, because I want to make sure I get it right is there. So you’re going towards, like having, like, the intake room be like a living room, and there’s no desk or something like that, that the, the nurse sits behind, and especially No, like, window or separate office? Right, that there’s, those barriers are like, not eliminated, but not necessarily super obvious? What’s
Kate Peevey 17:03
Correct, correct. And we’re trying to have smaller, maybe little offices for intake, but the nurse station should be a place of conversation and friendliness and, and community, and you’re right there in the centre with like, a living space surrounded. And then, you know, from there, we get into, like, the use of home like materials, right, woods and paint colours, and, and, and all of those types of aesthetics as well.
Greg Owens 17:37
Interesting, because good came to mind was like, old time dive bars, right? They were designed in such a way to have the bar height and the bar width. So it was super hard for patron to reach over and grab the bartender, or anything else on the other side, right, like, and so sometimes when you travel, and you see some of those kind of old time, but now they’re a little bit more sophisticated and that kind of thing. But yeah, there was a time when they you know, they were looking at how we can protect ourselves, right? Yeah, exactly. Including like, Hey, can we make this thing bulletproof? Right. That’s true. Now they just cut you off before it gets to that point. Right. Right. Right. Right. They’ve gotten much, much smarter about Yeah, wow. So and what other considerations so you because you’re you have a unique niche and industry that you’re in around like this last year with COVID. And those kinds of things. You talked about it a little bit, anything else you guys had to must have been really at first overwhelming a year ago when this first got to happen, because you guys are created these environments where it’s more whole, like, and then all of a sudden, you’re supposed to do social distancing, and not have people connecting and outsiders coming in. It must have been unbelievably challenging.
Kate Peevey 18:50
It has it was very, very challenging and really keeping our clients safe, right, from staff that are out in the communities outside of work and, you know, not really knowing how well they’re practising, you know, their social responsibilities.
Greg Owens 19:10
mental illness, there’s a chance that they’re really good or really bad. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So
Kate Peevey 19:17
we, um, it was we relied a lot on our administrators and programme leaders in facilities that didn’t have on site facility staff. And then we relied a lot on our facility, on site facility staff where where we had them because with COVID, you know, our travel pretty much seized. So we were still traveling a little bit as necessary. Yeah. I’m in kind of March, end of March, April. And then once it started to go into May, it was like no more. We’re not trying anymore. You know, I was doing day drives down to San Diego and back getting up really early driving, you know, sitting in a hotel or anything. Yeah. You know, going down there to do business and then driving straight back. And, you know, you were just doing it, you’re kind of in it, right? We’re really thinking, This is nuts or, or, or Wow, that was a 16 hour drive. And you were just thinking like, I, you know, need to provide support. I need to be here for for these programs. We depended a lot on the people in the programs during this time.
Greg Owens 20:48
Yeah, that makes sense. Like, like, and I know, I drove to LA, sort of San Diego area also in drove straight through straight down there slept in my truck. Yeah, haven’t done for a very long time. Yeah, it was, it was weird times. What other things did you guys have to consider as far as like as protocols and that kind of thing. And, you know, in sort of, like the middle of COVID you know, once once once you realised, I guess it was gonna stick around longer, and the shutdowns weren’t going to be two weeks.
Kate Peevey 21:24
Yeah. Um, so our facilities department are off our VP of facilities, he kind of took over this product and procurement for all of our PP and E and the various system is being able to, to supply Once there was a, you know, kind of a bottleneck with the the, the supply chain for PP, it really started to impact our our facilities, right. So the facilities department just kind of took on that role and decided to work with, you know, other people of our organisation to really make sure that we were ordering anything that they needed. Protective barriers, we had new policies about cleaning up door, you know, just typical stuff. I think that most most people did. Um, but ours was on a massive, massive scale. And then any, any programs that could work remotely, so for inpatient programmes, everybody’s still had to go to work. Right. Those are 24 hour facilities. There’s
Greg Owens 22:40
right you can’t stop that. Yeah,
Kate Peevey 22:42
yeah. Um, for our community based programs, they were able to kind of be a little more flexible with with being able to work from home and, and, and everything, but for inpatient programs, it really was critical, and then just the accountability for staff to, you know, do their part outside of the facility as well, to ensure that everyone stays safe.
Greg Owens 23:09
Yeah, it was it was interesting, because, in retrospect, when I look back on 2020, early part of January, we buy a lot of PP, equipment, right respirators and that kind of stuff. All of a sudden, the price skyrocketed, right? And we couldn’t I couldn’t get them out. I’m like, you know, we’re doing project. So I was like, is this this is this is people getting paranoid about COVID? This is before it was a requirement and all that, right. And so we had I had early on started stocking up, just for our company need, right? Like, while we this is people are going nuts like this is this is going to be crazy. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, interesting times for sure. And now here we are in 2021. What’s your what’s the challenges that you guys are facing this summer right now?
Kate Peevey 23:58
Yeah. Our our biggest challenge for us right now is getting things that we need. So we have a couple programs that are opening this summer. And we’ve been working on acquiring the spaces for them. And now it’s time to move and we can’t get furniture, desks, chairs, even data networking equipment. It’s all I heard that. So it has been, it’s been a really big challenge because we have set timelines. So our development group will set, you know, they’ll say we have a new program coming up and we need to find a space and we want to open on, you know, August 1, and then you guys laugh, you know, and then we try like how to make that happen. You know, because, as our facility department looks at it like we are providing service for our administrators and our programs, right? We technically work for them, like we, they are our customer. So even though we’re all part of the same company, yeah, and you know what it’s like to be in the service industry and to really want people’s needs to be met and for things to go smoothly as possible. And, and it has been a challenge, because the timeframes that we’ve had prior to COVID, or in the before times, we are still setting those and then realising furniture is not four weeks anymore, it’s eight and a half weeks, right? Or maybe you don’t get all the choices that you use to have you have to kind of take what they give you, or, you know, it’s gonna take eight weeks instead of four weeks for small construction projects, or contractors are so busy now that, you know, it’s like, yeah, we can help you out in like, six, six or eight weeks. But it’s been a big challenge, because everything kind of just seemed to go back. It was one day, we were at home. And then the next day, it was great. Let’s get these projects done. You know, and I think everybody had that,