Steve Wallis is the Vice President of Operations at GSH Group, a premiere provider of global integrated facilities management and building engineering services. With over 20 years of experience in the facilities engineering field, Steve oversees the operations of dedicated professionals as they efficiently accomplish their objectives for the global clientele.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
- Things that facilities managers from Europe deal with that are different from those in the USA
- The impacts of the pandemic on their industry
- Steve Wallis talks about decommissioning – and if they are experiencing it in their buildings
- The trends that Steve is seeing in the industry
- What are some of the challenges of using Zoom to do business — and the benefits of doing face to face business
- Steve shares some of the projects that they are working on right now
- Predictions on what the future might look like in terms of technology due to the pandemic
- Steve shares his origin story of how he got where he is now, and HVAC — the apprenticeship program he went through
- The kind of people they want to hire and the challenges they are facing as a result
- Exciting things Steve is seeing in the future facilities management realm
In this episode…
How can you create greater value for your clients by having well-structured, executed facilities management programs? What does it take to be a manager that can deliver outstanding value to their clients?
Steve Wallis has more than 20 years of experience in the facilities engineering field, which he uses to help his clients achieve their goals. He says that people need to understand the industry they are in to be able to tackle any issue that arises and achieve their goals in the long run.
In this episode of Watching Paint Dry, Greg Owens and Katrina Stephenson sit down with Steve Wallis, Vice President of Operations at GSH Group. Together, they talk about facilities management, the impact of the pandemic on the industry, trends in the industry, and predict how the future may look. Steve also shares his journey of how he got to where he is so he can encourage other people to achieve their goals too.
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
- GSH Group
- Steve Wallis on LinkedIn
- IFMA
- MTA
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 0:02
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 0:22
Good morning, everyone. This is our first episode of 2022, Watching Paint Dry. It’s a new year. At the very end of 2022. I ended up getting COVID. And sort of it was like perfect timing to be sort of sequestered at home and luckily, it wasn’t too difficult a strain. So hope everybody out there is safe and sound and their families are doing well. I know it’s still very turbulent out there and in so many ways, and so many unknowns. This podcast like all our podcast is sponsored by McCarthy Painting. It’s my painting company. We do painting for both commercial and residential throughout the San Francisco Bay Area. Last year, we did a tremendous amount of work for SMG carpet, which is a local carpet installation and retail company. And it was super fun working for them. We do a lot of work for Zooks and many, many other companies throughout the San Francisco Bay area. If you want to know more, go to info@McCarthypainting.com. Today on the podcast we have Steve Wallis, is that correct?
Steve Wallis 1:39
That’s correct, Greg. Yeah. You said that correct.
Greg Owens 1:41
All right. And you’re the VP of Operations at Global Facilities Management company?
Steve Wallis 1:46
Correct. Yeah. And the company’s GSH Group.
Greg Owens 1:50
Oh, nice. Yeah, perfect. We also have Katrina Stephenson, who’s also on the podcast and joins and jumped in. Katrina works for McCarthy Painting and likes to add color or questions as she sees fit here. So how are things for you?
Katrina (Hayes) Stephenson 2:05
Happy to be here.
Greg Owens 2:06
Yeah, thank you, Katrina. How are these things for you, Steve? You’re located in Manhattan.
Steve Wallis 2:11
Just outside, our office is in Parsippany, New Jersey, which is about 30 miles outside of Manhattan.
Greg Owens 2:17
Which town?
Steve Wallis 2:18
Parsippany.
Greg Owens 2:19
Parsippany, I don’t know where that is. Is that like, so Newark? I’m very familiar with where is the Soprano’s film?
Steve Wallis 2:26
Yeah. So you want to do 10 West from there. Straight out from there. Yes, you’re going to pass the Sopranos on the turnpike and go straight through from there. We’re located in Morristown in Morris County.
Greg Owens 2:38
I actually know Morris County. Yeah, I grew up in New York and grew up in closer to like Westchester, Dutchess up in that vicinity.
Steve Wallis 2:46
Yeah, I know that area well, we’ve done a lot of work in Westchester County for many years doing all the county buildings. Probably 10, 15 years. I know it well.
Greg Owens 2:56
Oh, damn. Nice. That’s great. It’s such a good memories of that part of the country for sure. Although I live out in San Francisco now, which is pretty nice too.
Steve Wallis 3:08
God world. Yeah. I spent a lot of time out there last year work with our West Coast team. Obviously Joe Nino and Ken Katherine, you know already? So we’ve spent a lot of time with them before the holiday season, as we were looking to ramp up a lot of services in the area. We’ve been out there for probably eight years now and continue to grow in the engineering world.
Greg Owens 3:31
Oh, man. That’s fantastic. So really expanding right now.
Steve Wallis 3:35
Yeah. I mean, that’s the growth part of the company, which obviously started in the UK back in 1895 in the engineering field and kind of grew from there. So we’ve been all over the US since 96, and we continue to expand into different regions all the time.
Greg Owens 3:54
And where are you originally from? I detect a slight accent, although it’s mixing with a little bit of like New Jersey accent in there.
Katrina (Hayes) Stephenson 4:02
There’s definitely an accent.
Steve Wallis 4:06
Depends on who I’m talking to. So I’m from South Jersey, but I don’t think that’s going to fly today. So I’m from Manchester, England originally, so
Greg Owens 4:14
Right, where they speak proper English.
Steve Wallis 4:17
I don’t know about that. Not Manchester from where I’m from, but anyone from Liverpool will probably disagree with me there because there’s quite a railroad between the two cities. From Manchester, originally, and been in the US since 2006. But quite a few years now.
Greg Owens 4:35
Yeah, it’s interesting talking to a few of the facilities managers out of Europe because of the things that you have to deal with in Europe in such really old buildings compared to here in San Francisco or New York City, that kind of thing. Like it’s such a big difference. There’s so many other things that they have to consider.
Steve Wallis 4:54
Yeah, I think especially obviously, from an all standpoint, historic is different legislations if it’s a list of building things along them lines, but even in terms of equipment, the heat and cooling loads here in the US are much more extreme. You’ve got quite a flat curve line in terms of temperatures in the UK. Whereas obviously here right now, it’s I think, 80 degrees outside in New York. And then obviously, in the summertime, you got 100% humidity and 90 degrees. So two extremes where you’ve got to be able to condition spaces just the same as you would in the UK as well.
Greg Owens 5:34
Yeah, definitely. There’s definitely those kinds of challenges. And how have you been through these last few months, with Omicron and COVID. I know, a lot of companies we worked for they were all getting ready and excited about being back in the offices out here back in October, but then they kind of shelved all of those plans. And really, I haven’t even heard any new announcements in this area, as of now, about coming back to work in a big way.
Steve Wallis 6:04
Yeah, that day keeps getting pushed back. I know, obviously, summertime, it was September 1. And then we came back maybe on an hour off, which became back probably about 30%. But then in other offices, throughout kind of the Northeast, we’ve seen this pockets gone back, but then there’d be a case, then the show back down, to try to follow what they’re doing with the school systems as well. So if this kind of remote aspects, they’ll try and revert back to that as well as very flexible. But then, obviously, New York City has been very tough. With the change with everybody having to be vaccinated to go out to a restaurant. That’s them extreme. So we’ve seen that the initial comeback from people into New York increase, and then it kind of really died off just before the holidays again. So that was in New York, just last week, going in again tomorrow and just been on the train. I think it was only six people in the car with me, which was obviously very, very light. So hoping that will change. But just speaking to a client yesterday, they had originally planned coming back, beginning of January, that’s now been postponed again, with no date of when to come back. Because the case is just through the roof right now, I know, one of our mobile contracts in New York City, where we’ve got about 20 technicians running contracts, I think we’ve got six of them out right now. COVID-related issue. So it’s affecting everywhere, and it’s become a strain. We’ve had clients come to us asking us for additional support, can you manage another facility for us? And we obviously want the extra business, but it becomes difficult so as to provide them services within the workforce that’s available.
Greg Owens 7:52
Yeah, it’s interesting, because the buildings still have a lot of maintenance needs, even though they’re not being used very much. I know for us, we’ve gotten an opportunity to go inside and do a lot of painting in the last, especially like in the last quarter, sort of getting ready for people to come back in and kind of cleaning things up and that kind of stuff. And it was pretty surprising to see how much wear and tear is out into a building that’s not being used as readily.
Steve Wallis 8:19
Yeah, and you’ll probably see it more as well, because there’s not much foot traffic. So you’re going to see the pain in the walls where there’s scratches. Whereas normally if there’s that many people want, brilliant, your eyes are not really drawn to that. So your eyes have been drawn to things that you wouldn’t probably see in the past. And we’re doing a lot of projects right now, as you were saying about the paint, and we’re doing a lot of restoration projects. Now while building the choir. So if anything more busy than we were before, because people want to take that time to update the facilities, maybe do some lighting upgrades, painting, restoring a lot of benches now an old train station. So just things like that. They’re just trying to get things complete. I don’t know where the money’s coming from. That’s separate.
Greg Owens 9:01
Yeah, totally. I wonder when the money will dry out in that way. Katrina, you look like you have a question.
Katrina (Hayes) Stephenson 9:06
I do. I’m so curious about decommissioning. Are you experiencing a lot of that in your buildings? Just breaking down of the offices?
Steve Wallis 9:19
No, we’ve not really don’t see much of that. I know there’s been changes of build outs of spaces as people have been looking at going from an open plan, maybe putting up partitions, again, or are facing out desks for them off. So we’ve seen a couple of them elements in New York. I think that will continue as people start coming back. Again, they’re going to be looking at how people are seeing arrangements. But in terms of like equipment, a lot of the clients obviously because of the temperatures outside and you’ve got to condition space and always been talking about or maybe or mothball the building while there’s no one in there, kind of input. Obviously that’s not good one because to then bring the building back into habitable kind of approach, it’s just not going to work. So need to continue to condition the space is obviously, we’ve been looking at the energy usage has gone right down, which has been a good thing for the environment. So maybe change in set points, keeping it as a 60, 70 degrees, maybe you’re dropping, it’s like 60 or 66 degrees in spaces when it’s not occupied. And, again, I’m just looking at them pieces in the wintertime and in the summer to make sure you’re getting them the most extreme. And I think that’s where a lot of these companies are asking for the support and what can we do to be a bit more efficient so we can reduce our operating costs right now, while there’s not that many people in there. So there’s a lot of moving and shaking on a day to day basis space management to maybe relocate some people into a space where they can turn off the air conditioning on one whole side of the building, maybe really reduce it. So a lot of them questions are coming in by, we’ve seen that.
Greg Owens 11:00
Yeah, it’s interesting, most people don’t realize how important it is to kind of keep the space breathing in a lot of ways, right because like, I have a facility that I’m a part of, it’s like 3000 square feet, it’s a martial arts studio. And they’ve been keeping the heat and the air conditioning completely off and opening all the windows and all that. But the whole building is starting to have this sort of moisture building up and mildew and stuff started to grow because we’re not getting that airflow through and kind of keeping the building condition. And people don’t realize like there’s a lot of things that start going bad. Really bad if you don’t try to keep that activity up.
Steve Wallis 11:42
Yeah, and quickly as well. People don’t realize how quickly it can happen. I mean, after a month and before you know it, you got mold growing.
Greg Owens 11:52
Yeah, that’s about but about what happened and had like a month of of sort of just letting it sit completely just letting it go cold but then moisture built up inside and mold started growing. We had to go back and clean it up. And I’ve had to argue with them saying, hey, look, I know you’re worried about the heater and COVID. But we’ve got to have the heat go on. We need the airflow and we need to dry this place out because you just can’t keep all the windows open and keep all these humans coming in and sweating and that moisture needs to go somewhere.
Steve Wallis 12:23
Yeah, we got it in summertime in our building, one of the spaces was empty. And we were looking at some of the furniture that I had. But we’ve looked at some of the metal cabinets, filing cabinets and they were all rusted. So a pot temperature gauge and humidity gauge in there to check it out. It was like 80% humidity in there. All the moisture that was just being built or wasn’t being taken out because they turn off their air conditioning and it was starting to ruin all our assets that were in there. So there’s a lot to think about when people are looking at these things. It’s not an easy just to switch off, walk away. It’s really to see how it’s going to affect the space and things that are in the space as well. Not just the actual walls, it’s equipment, computers, chairs, desks, everything.
Greg Owens 13:07
Yeah, no kidding. We’ve also been a part of decommissioning. That’s where I think Katrina’s question came from and Katrina’s also on IFMA that was a big subject, I think in the last quarter of last year. it came up quite a bit about decommissioning spaces and kind of closing, people, they’re like, hey, we’re not having employees come back to work. Why do we need all this office space? And then one of the trends I see, and I don’t know if you’re seeing this on the east coast there, but I know a lot. Some of the high tech companies have reconfigured so much space to have smaller, what is it, group collaborative space, but where people can be sitting on couches sort of a little bit distance from each other. So maybe there’s like four couches, all kind of squared off to each other. And you’re able to like work, what seems like your living room at home. And so it’s really super cozy. But then there’s lots of these little sections all over the building. Unfortunately, I haven’t seen anybody using them because nobody’s been back to work. So I don’t know how well that’s going to work going forward. Are you seeing any trends between both your New York offices, Midwest and California?
Steve Wallis 14:20
Yeah. Well, as you’re saying about IFMA, we went to the IFMA show in Florida. In the last year for the National Conference, right after we’ve been to the Bama one opened in Boston as well. So we’ve got a lot of opinions from a lot of the outbreak sessions that they were doing and listening to see what they were saying. And then there were some conversations that were going back and forth between the people but I think we’re seeing it probably on the west coast a bit more where they’re trying to keep the space and I know you said about decommissioning. So a lot of people try and give back some space but obviously there’s long term leases in place so they’re really trying to reconfigure them because, if we got 30% people back, we can still use all the same space. But as you were saying there, let’s break out. So you’re not all the chairs right next to each other, let’s make it more of a breakout area where they can work on their own, but they can still collaborate safely. And we’ve seen that in New York as well. So they’re not downsizing the space or just reusing the space because you still need the same footprint, wherever it’s because you’ve got 30% people, but you’re trying to space out that same kind of way. So it’s still being used in the same footprint. It’s just obviously rethinking how it’s been done. So I know, I’ve seen a lot of furniture for sale, shall we say?
Katrina (Hayes) Stephenson 15:41
That was a huge one was, what do we do with all these cubicles and chairs and desks?
Greg Owens 15:47
Yeah, and we’re not seeing quite a few buildings we do work for, they got rid of all the personal offices. And they’re making them sort of hot offices where it’s sort of like, whoever wants an office that day can book the office, they can go online, which the technology piece is pretty interesting, where they can just go online, and they can say, oh, look, the corner office is open today, I’m going to have a corner office for today. And be able to go in and bring their laptop in, but they don’t have their personal items in that room anymore. Are you seeing that too?
Steve Wallis 16:20
Yeah, definitely. That’s a big one. I know, like the shared space is going well, we work as well. And all they would obviously have been one before COVID. But they just I think they’ve re-evaluated how that operates. And yeah, so they can anyone can kind of block space and utilize it because I mean, people still want to get out the house to meet them feel that they’ve done some work, whether it’s not every day, at least it’s percentage, and just to get a break from that business home divide as well. And I’m a big one for that I like to be in the office as much as possible. Keep home life and work life somewhat separate as much as possible. Obviously, you always bring it home, but you feel like you’ve done a better day in the office sometimes.
If you see people as well, whereas I think there’s been a lot of time lost recently where you’d normally just have a quick chat with somebody walking past or a phone call. Now it turns into a video call and you’re asking how you’re doing. And what was a five minute call is now an hour video call and though is just as great as they are cut out some of the travel elements to it. So not to travel down to say Baltimore every week to meet with the team Im on a video call with them again, go on not the more day to day aspects. And you’re probably losing time by having video calls for no reason.
Greg Owens 17:34
Yeah, I mean, this is a great format, it has been a game changer for sure. We’re able to do these podcasts, I get to meet you in New York and have this kind of a conversation and put this kind of information out there in the world, which is really been amazing. But there’s also like, before any zoom call, and I have to today, there’s always like, one; I’ve got a plan to be at an office, which for me, I don’t have an office. So I’ve kept a plan to be home or somewhere where I can have these conversations. And there’s always like also, even though it might be a 15 minute or 30 minute zoom, there’s like a wasted 20 minutes or 30 minutes before the call because you can’t really get into a project. It’s a weird dynamic that I haven’t quite in two years of doing this now quite figured out exactly.
Steve Wallis 18:23
Yeah. And there’s always the meet and greet like, oh, how are you doing today? Where are you doing? What you were on yesterday, or you’re in the office, there’s all that reconnects in that you’re doing as if you’re not seeing each other for six months or spoke to each other where I think if you could just simply even do it on a quick phone call, or even by an email, quick email, say yeah, this is what you need, send it back, rather than and I know we like obviously teams as well I get phone calls just directly through teams with a video is that well, not just to phone me, just use the phone just to make quick art because there’s no reason to make it a video call for no reasons.
Greg Owens 18:58
Right. Yeah, and having a video or appointment call.
Katrina (Hayes) Stephenson 19:05
That’s interesting that you bring that up too. But when there’s crosstalk inside the Zoom is extremely hard. You can’t turn to your neighbor and just talk. You have to sit through their conversation.
Greg Owens 19:18
Yeah, totally. I know they’re working on it. I’ve seen glimpses of the metaverse that Facebook is coming out with where it’s supposed to be a little bit more like, you have your virtual sort of headset on and you go into a virtual room and you can turn and talk to people. Yeah, there’s an aspect but I also think there’s an aspect of that that’s going to get for me anyway because I’m old. It’s going to get old quick. There’s something about like, and I think this is true for a lot of facilities managers being able to just get in a car or get on public transportation, go to a facility and start walking through it. They get me thinking about work more. Like, it’s sometimes I know when I’m here working at home, it’s nice to just like, no, I want to go look at a project.
Steve Wallis 20:09
Yeah, I agree with, we did a big walkthrough with the MCA a couple of weeks ago, we built a new East terminal, which is on Grand Central base for Long Island, railroads come into the bin out of the O&M and the retail aspects to manage it for the next 10 years. And again, they’re things oh, yeah, we can do a virtual talk we’ve done that we’re going out or just to give you anything of what’s really going on. So in person piece where we walk the size 17,000 steps, I think in six hours of the walkthrough is significant. But it was easy, there’s nothing you could do. I mean, you’ve got the give you all the drawings but they mean nothing until you visually see.
Greg Owens 20:52
Yeah, you got to feel the space and feel how traffic’s going to move through that space. There’s something about that, that’s very, I don’t know, for some of us, it’s so much more of a better sensation. You get a better feel for what people are going to go through, valuable.
Steve Wallis 21:12
We need to be able to bring that back and really write down what you’re seeing and see what was there, like you said about the high traffic areas, basically, from a janitorial spot. You got to look, where’s the entrance is where the trains going to be laying off, where it’s going to be the quickest escapes through so people can get to this store, or to get to the subway for the next one. You got to really plan them things out and take them in visual because a that might be a shock through air that people are going to use and it’s going to be obviously need to clean more and things like that. So this is definitely an element of in person that you need.
Greg Owens 21:46
Is that a new facility that you guys just picked up?
Steve Wallis 21:50
No, we’re going to be bidding it is I think it opens at the end of this year. So we still got a lot of work, but they’ve been doing it for like, last 10 years. It’s spectacular. I mean, obviously Grand Central’s beautiful facility anyway. Always unbelievable. And then what to do with the new terminal, they’ve tried to mirror the architecture of it. So it’s like you got the arch is I mean, I’m not really supposed to say too much about it, because the NDA on it and stuff like took pictures been hard to share in them was just beautiful, just to see and experience it. And I just really enjoyed it, which is very interesting. I’ve seen buildings like that.
Greg Owens 22:28
And I take it it’s not open yet. It’s on last cusp of being opened.
Steve Wallis 22:34
Yeah, they’re still working on it. They were doing flows while we’re there. So it’s going to be going through for probably the next nine months. Still getting it ready.
Greg Owens 22:43
And how much square feet is that?
Steve Wallis 22:45
I think, 600,000 square feet.
Greg Owens 22:50
I was there in August, was in Grand Central but didn’t realize there was a project of that capacity going on right next to it.