Scott Lewis Judkins is the Head of Facilities Management for Fortinet’s Global Head Quarters at C&W Services, a leading integrated facility services provider. Fortinet is the global leader of cybersecurity solutions and services. As a highly accomplished construction and facilities executive, Scott’s experience includes serving as the Regional Facilities Manager for the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy, where he managed 14 historic buildings and grounds. He specializes in planning, building, and renovating facilities with complex electrical, mechanical, and automated building systems.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
- Scott Lewis Judkins shares Fortinet’s business functions and his role as facilities manager
- What is Fortinet’s return to work plan?
- How Fortinet designs workspaces to fulfill its organizational goals
- Key considerations and functions of sustainable airflow technology
- Scott discusses the challenges of his role as Facilities Manager for the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy
- How Scott got his start as a facilities manager in aquatics
- Advice for future facilities managers
In this episode…
When it comes to developing buildings or office spaces, sustainability is a priority for many businesses. So, what do you need to consider when establishing sustainable sites to ensure optimal comfort and operational effectiveness?
Adopting sustainable practices requires implementing automated technology to monitor carbon monoxide levels, measure air quality, and reduce carbon footprints. Scott Lewis Judkins affirms the importance of conducting examinations, engineering, and testing to determine the precise demand for this type of innovation. Facilities managers must acquire the range of knowledge needed to execute these projects successfully.
Join Greg Owens in today’s episode of Watching Paint Dry as he interviews Scott Lewis Judkins, Head of Facilities Management for Fortinet’s Global Head Quarters at C&W Services, about how facilities managers should consider sustainability. Scott shares how Fortinet designs workspaces to fulfill its organizational goals, key considerations and functions of sustainable airflow technology, and advice for aspiring facilities managers.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
- Greg Owens on LinkedIn
- McCarthy Painting
- McCarthy Painting Contact No.: 415-383-2640
- McCarthy Painting Email Address: info@mccarthypainting.com
- Scott Lewis Judkins on LinkedIn
- Fortinet
- C&W Services
- International Facility Management Association (IFMA)
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 0:10
Welcome to the Watching Paint Dry podcast where we feature today’s top leaders, industry experts and more to discuss issues affecting facility managers and property owners. Now let’s get started with the show.
Greg Owens 0:29
Hello, everyone, this is Greg Owens with the Watching Paint Dry podcast where we have been interviewing facilities managers, business owners, consultants, and everybody in this industry of construction, building, facilities management, ownership, and all the good things that can come out of that entire enterprise. This podcast like all the podcasts are sponsored by my company McCarthy Painting. It’s a painting business that unifies and protects people’s homes and businesses throughout the San Francisco Bay area. If you’d like to know more about McCarthy Painting, you can go to our website, McCarthypainting.com. And find out more. And you can email us at info@McCarthypainting.com. And I’m really excited to have on the podcast today, Scott Judkins, and he is the head of Facilities Management for Fortinet. Good global headquarters, and we’ll find out more about the global headquarters of Fortinet here. And sour us, Scott, thank you for being on the podcast.
Scott Lewis Judkins 1:43
Absolutely. Thank you, Greg, for having me. And it’s a privilege to be here and happy to talk facility management. I’ve listened to your show. And this is full circle now. So
Greg Owens 1:56
Oh, fantastic. That’s great. It’s fun. It’s been weird for me to hear people talking about my show, or like, I was interviewing somebody for a job position. She listened to all the podcasts. And I’m like, oh, man, that’s a lot. And she knows a lot about me already, just from these conversations. So it’s kind of cool, right? Because then she can have a better sort of understanding of who I what my personality is like and who I am.
Scott Lewis Judkins 2:26
Sure. That’s a wonderful way to get to know somebody before you interview actually.
Greg Owens 2:32
Right. Right. Right. And, and so and where are you located right now and tell us a little bit about what’s going on for you at this. What is it? It’s the end of August and beginning of September. Fall is in the air I start feeling it’s a little more crisp out there.
Scott Lewis Judkins 2:50
Maybe in San Francisco Moran but down in Santa Clara Sunnyvale area, it’s, it’s still warm as it is. It’s we’re We’re hot, hot August night. So it’s it’s nice 80s and mid 90s on a regular basis. So it’s much different where I used to live in Daly City, San Francisco area for the past eight or nine years. And then recently, a year ago, I made the transition down to the South Bay after I accepted this opportunity down here because I’ve been in primarily San Francisco. opportunities and things like that for the past decade. And yeah, finally decided to make the trek down to the South Bay and to the heat. I was tired of chasing the sun, as they say, but yeah, it’s it’s pretty nice down here. It’s you’ve got all sorts of different wonderful Redwood hikes and things like that that are much closer than if you live in San Francisco. Well, unless you go north to Muir Woods, but yeah, I currently. I’m Scott Jenkins, I manage the global headquarters for Fortinet at their campus in Sunnyvale, California. And we also have a small operation that’s growing rapidly in Union City in the East Bay, where we’re kind of split for the two different sites, and then Fortinet is growing at a very rapid pace and purchasing lots of new properties. And we are the facilities team is helping them along the way and helping manage their properties and construction projects if they need our support for a datacenter and things like that.
Greg Owens 4:43
So wow, that’s a that’s a that’s a lot of things going on. I love hearing about companies that are in the process of growing right because all I hear is this this sort of drum roll of recession and bad bad news, right and I don’t actually watch the news it just Alright, hear from the people around me and people that talk to me and that kind of stuff. What does? What does Fortinet do? What is it? What is their primary sort of function?
Scott Lewis Judkins 5:10
Sure. So Fortinet is one of the industry leaders for cybersecurity, in both hardware and software. So they, not only did they make the hardware components, but it have, I don’t want to be quoted, but like 1000 patents at least. And then they have software cloud based cybersecurity functions that they do. So as after you buy the equipment, you need to do your annual renewal for the subscription on a regular basis, I guess, because I just spoke with one of the directors on that theme. So
Greg Owens 5:47
that’s all I knew of the company. I just sort of blanked on it there for a little bit.
Scott Lewis Judkins 5:53
There one of the I believe, if not, number two, they’re number three for the for the world. And they’re the Fortinet Fortinet championship at the Silverado PGA championships. So they’re the sponsor, PGA sponsor championships every year for the next I believe, seven years. So we’ll be going up to Silverado. I think, what is it at the end of the month? Are you coming up?
Greg Owens 6:26
Silverado up in Napa? Napa? Yes. Yeah. I’ve been a long time since I was there. But it’s that’s beautiful part of the country to absolutely, yeah. Well, that’s great. Yeah, good. I mean, cybersecurity is so unbelievably important these days more so and more so than ever, as we put more of our lives online. Right. And absolutely.
Scott Lewis Judkins 6:48
Yeah, the, the industry is, you know, Fortinet’s really revolutionized a lot of different key aspects like the FortiGate app and things like that, that we use just on a regular day to day basis to login safely to our equipment and things like that. But yeah, having the ability to work with some of the lab owners and things like that have really been a pleasure. And it’s some cutting edge technology. I don’t get a huge amount into that side, because I’m focused on the facilities and but from, from even the user end, the the software’s, it’s wonderful to use. And it’s, it’s pretty easy as well, which is great for the the facilities, staff and team.
Greg Owens 7:38
That is good. Yeah, man managing passwords these days is because it can be a job in itself. It’s absolutely mind boggling, right? And what are you guys? What are you seeing for Fortinet? Like, coming back to work strategy at this point in time? And, and I get it? I mean, it’s been, it’s been changing for the last three years, right? Like people have sort of these ideas of what’s going to happen. Lately, companies, bigger companies, including Apple, I think just just started requiring most of their workforce to come back. Like at least three days a week, I saw a meme about Google, and they’re like, Hey, we’ve done messed up, like the CEO, and, and he’s saying, we need to come back at least one day a week, guys, come on. We’re gonna have and then let us know what like food and beverages you want for that day? Absolutely. What do you what are you seeing on your end? And you said, you guys were acquiring new properties and expanding, which is great to hear. Because, you know, so many companies that we do work for, are shrinking their footprint, because people aren’t coming back to the office?
Scott Lewis Judkins 8:53
I think. Because the Fortinet CEO has a pretty good, a very good understanding of what he his kind of strategic long term plan is the Master Site Plan for the campus and Sunnyvale my direct supervisor Brian Hill, the senior director of facilities in real estate globally. So I get to I get a little bit more informed than probably more people, but I would say that just the return to office in general, it’s been, you know, a slug or kind of just like, it’s been delayed over and over again, every time. Every time you know, there’s a return to work, you know, statute, it gets moved or kicking the can down the road, if you will, because COVID happens or something else in the, you know, the medical recommendations for the state or the Fed changes, and that’s really what is the the unknown at this point. So I remember being One year into it thinking, wow, how much longer is this going to go? Is this going to be, you know, for the rest of our lives, there’s going to be just one more year. And then now we’re thinking this is probably going to be for the foreseeable future. And that’s where you’ve got to kind of start to think about adapting those policies and procedures to what we currently do today, to accommodate the employees to accommodate the clients, basically, in the offices and the campus, the best we can so but I will say that, I think a lot of the industry CEOs of the tech industry, if they had their choice they would have in office 100%, because you’ve got these, you know, magnificent, magnificent, magnificent campuses, these lead industry, sustainable buildings, these expansive construction projects, and then no employees inside. Yeah, it’s really, it’s really interesting on that aspect. But Fortinet has recently gone to like a, I believe, a return to work plan. Similar to the most industry leaders, I believe it’s three days a week. So for those three days a week, the parking lot is filled, things are really jam in. And it’s pretty exciting to be here. So it’s nice to actually have bodies inside the building versus, you know, just working in an empty facility.
Greg Owens 11:32
Right, I noticed it, because we do work throughout the whole San Francisco Bay Area. And I drove drive up and down the corridor a few times a week. And it’s interesting to me to see like, so Monday is pretty easy. A lot of days. Like I think a lot of people are not coming into work on Monday, and Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday get really bad. And then Friday, early like earlier than ever before, maybe like around noon or something. It seems like people are vacating a ticket, I can get, you know, leaving whatever.
Scott Lewis Judkins 12:06
Absolutely. We’re right there with them. I want to say our how we support them, the best I think is just trying to offer as many workplace services as we can, you know, amenities that we can while they’re in office, like fruit and fruit and bagel and Donut Day and stuff like that ice cream
Greg Owens 12:29
you haven’t gotten you haven’t gone to a full chef like Google yet?
Scott Lewis Judkins 12:33
Not yet. Yet. I think the main thing is the amount. It’s got to make sense, right? If the amount of staff in office or below a certain percentage, it’s not going to probably happen until that percentage gets at least to a economical range. So like above 50 to 60% in office, at least at all times. So yeah, that’s that’s where we’re struggling. But I think the main thing is COVID were to be right there and practical to all the employees it’s been. It’s just been, you know, changing and evolving at all times. So that’s really where I’ve been on a few different teams that have led the policies and procedures for COVID-19. At my last company, we designed the return to work office kind of playbook. And I led that team. So it was an interesting time because things were changing so quickly with the federal government and the state and the local that sometimes they were contradicting each other. So you didn’t know who to get the information from and who to follow. But now at least there’s standards there standards that you can follow through the government. And yeah, and
Greg Owens 13:51
they seem more reasonable now, too, right? Like they’re not they’re not as you know, once upon a time, it was like, they’d be tested positive. It’s like 10 days, no, no work, no coming in, and then test negative right now. It’s, I mean, I don’t want to quote exactly, I don’t remember exactly what it is, but it’s about five days without symptoms, right?
Scott Lewis Judkins 14:12
Yeah, five days, I believe.
Greg Owens 14:14
We still we still have people test which is interesting right now, too, is because the way COVID is gone. We have we’ve had more people client N and painters getting COVID in the last month or two than all of the last few years combined. Right? It’s an interesting how it’s spreading. No, thank God that there’s no none of the cases are severe or anything like that. And, you know, it seems it seems much weaker than it once was, but But it’s definitely been spreading through the rest of everybody else.
Scott Lewis Judkins 14:48
Yeah, I think as this thing evolves, they’re just going to continue to have to whack a mole with different types of means and you know, different variations of the vaccine and just whatever they can do to slow Let’s progression down because we’re, we’re just at its mercy, right where human beings are. So social creatures and we want to interact, I want to interact, I don’t want to be locked up at home with my two year old who wants to go play with other children and things like that. So I think that’s the difficult part is finding that balance with life and also being safe and practical with all these recommendations. Because trying to put a mask on a two year old, even though that’s the starting age, it’s like good black.
Greg Owens 15:34
Orderly, yeah, that would never work for me. He had till about 12, maybe? Yeah. So are you seeing anything in how you guys are designing office spaces, and how you’re designing workspaces. And I’m assuming with your kind of, you have like probably a hardware component, that means sort of laboratories to actually work on physical hardware, and then a software component where they can be they can kind of work from anywhere. So there’s probably a bit of mixture that happens within your organization.
Scott Lewis Judkins 16:11
Yes, absolutely. I think I know what you’re asking. But basically, from my perspective, managing the hardware labs, or the QA labs, as they call them. And then, you know, obviously, we, we have a data center and revenue generating lab as well, that, you know, for all intensive purposes, is as important as the data center, it’s a critical infrastructure cannot go down. So 24/7 monitoring and management, most labs do, but these spaces are our critical infrastructure, and they cannot go down. And in those spaces, that’s where a lot of the magic happens, if you will. But I, from what I’ve seen, it’s for the new spaces, it’s a lot has been leaning towards the, you know, sustainability and things like that, even for the laboratories and those new builds that we’re we’re currently in right now. So we’re, we’ve got a couple of different buildings that we’re rehabilitating, and then building into labs and small data centers, basically, right.
Greg Owens 17:24
And so big emphasis on making the building sustainable, and probably how you’re going to heating and air conditioning, lighting, ventilation, all those considerations,
Scott Lewis Judkins 17:35
then, yeah, of the MEPs, as they say, the mechanical, electrical plumbing. And the big thing with building these types of labs is the planning side is trying to convey to the lab owner that getting all of the infrastructure done in the front part of the project is really the critical, one of the critical steps to a successful lab and plan down the road. Because once you start, if you don’t plan correctly, then you’re going to spend considerable amount like millions, potentially more than if you would have planned ahead in the prime and made sure you did all of your key load examinations and all of your engineering, testing and making sure you know, what type of equipment, what the KPA, and all the electrical load is in the specific labs, because you could start out with a small number, and all of a sudden, everyone finds out you’re, you’re building a lab and in the company, and then they all want to put their equipment in the lab, and then the lab gets bigger and bigger, and now you’re expanding into two spaces, two spaces becomes the entire building. So that’s kind of one of the things that’s happened recently. But yeah, it’s interesting how, you know, this company operates versus another, but I would say there’s incredibly talented individuals that I get to work with. And it’s, it’s a learning from both sides. They don’t the engineers typically don’t have a facility management background. And then I don’t have a, like a program or I would say, hardware lab background.
Greg Owens 19:23
Right. That’s that sort of lab tech, scientific sort of background.
Scott Lewis Judkins 19:27
Yes. Like being able to put in PD use and running different equipment and software through that. PDU. So
Greg Owens 19:36
it’s so it’s always so fascinating to me that you as a facilities manager, do have to learn so much about what happens within the facility and like the general sort of plan like you were saying around expansion and that kind of stuff. So you know what, what they’re looking trying to accomplish and trying to do, and you have to know enough about sort of what’s going to be needed it in some of these buildings to be able to like, be the voice that sort of like says, Hey, like, Hey, have you considered this? Right? Yeah, and that’s an ongoing it’s an interesting place to be as a facilities manager, because you have to, you don’t want to get into the nitty gritty of knowing you can’t learn every detail, but you have to know a sort of general direction and what’s needed and what’s going to be happening.
Scott Lewis Judkins 20:25
Absolutely. Yeah, if you don’t know what the products are, or what the equipment is that your client, for us, it’s sportnet. Because I’m a technically I’m a Cushman Wakefield services employee, and my client is for that, yeah, they, you have to know what your client wants, and what is going to make them successful. And it’s been a crash course into all of the QA labs and the different types of equipment. But there’s a lot of things that are transferable transferable skills like MEPs, mechanical, electrical plumbing, it’s just the equipment that they’re putting in are generating a lot of heat load. And that’s where you, you have to ensure that you have redundancy. And if it’s a critical infrastructure, then you need plus one or redundancy, you need UPS background, or backup, and then generator, and those open up pull another can of worms because then you need air permits for the generator. And then you need regular ongoing maintenance, if it’s a lead acid battery for the UPS system. And that only gets you about 15 minutes, 30 minutes at best, and you better hope your generator works and turns on.
Greg Owens 21:39
So there’s all sides. It’s funny we did for a client, the generator, they built the head put generator in because they’re like, We need generator backup. And then a year later, they’re getting all these complaints because the generator has to cycle every month and turn itself on. Correct to make sure it’s working. Right. And that’s understandable. And the neighbors though, were complaining about the noise, right? Because it was the way it was turning on so and then they tried playing with different times it would turn on and they still were complaining. And so the solution, they asked me to come out and take a look at it, which I don’t get involved in these kinds of things that often but it I know enough about, I’m a general contractor too. And Greg is there’s something you can do around noise, this sort of like, and I was like, looking at it, I was like, well, we could build up the three sides of the block, surround wall, go up another four or five feet and make the noise projected back into your building and away from the residential. And that’s and that seemed to cure their problem, right and but it’s these kinds of things that I get involved in after the building is built right because I don’t we’re not we don’t do any new new construction new products. But sometimes they have a need. We’ve done that a lot back when before COVID was making a room more soundproof. Right? Because like maybe, yeah, maybe sensitive information is being discussed in one room but the the room right next door can hear it right. And so then they’d have us come in and tear open the walls and start over and, and tune in. And just like we were saying there, that stuff is it’s so much cheaper to do it on the front end of construction, like hey, we’re gonna need some sensitive rooms where information can flow freely between these two rooms, right?
Scott Lewis Judkins 23:33
I was in the I was the person involved in the commissioning of their fort next flagship building and their campus. It’s the new flagship building on their global headquarters, and it’s a LEED Gold building.
Greg Owens 23:50
Is that the one you’re in right now?
Scott Lewis Judkins 23:52
It’s the one I’m in right now.
Greg Owens 23:53
Yeah, okay.
Scott Lewis Judkins 23:54
It’s won some architectural awards. And, you know, it’s been, I think, put in the news a couple of times, because of its sustainability efforts, it’s going to be a carbon Net Zero building. So for the lifetime of the building, it will generate zero carbon emissions. And that’s, you know, that’s That in itself is pretty bold statement. And then I believe, Fortinet as well as going carbon neutral by some date in the near future 20 or something. But yeah, I think for this building, in particular, the commissioning was difficult because it’s this building’s the fully one of the only buildings that I was told in North America that has fully operable windows. So basically, at the top of the main windows, it’s kind of like the, the, the top part of the window basically, it has a smaller window that opens and closes depending on the sensors in the building the BMS system, which it has, we have the No medicine is and through JCI. And the we have all sorts of different sensors that determine the air inside and outside of the building. And depending on if it’s cool enough outside, it can open the windows and allow fresh air. And so it’s a very unique function. It adds a lot of unique aspects to the facilities team, because all sorts of different fills and failures have happened during the commissioning of the building, since I’ve been involved with this building for over a year. Now,