Bruce Mace 30:21
We do. Yeah. And they’re highly regulated and testing and documentation of all the testing that goes into it. And then, at a new hospital, like we’re building or down at Mission Bay, where we’re 100%, redundant, those emergency generators fire up on the roof, and we can carry the entire Mission Bay Hospital complex on backup energy.
Greg Owens 30:43
Wow, and they put them on the roof. That’s good.
Bruce Mace 30:47
Yes. When they start up, it feels like they’re going to lift the whole building off the ground, but it’s good. Businesses use usual to our clinical partners, which is, if you’re the person on a surgery table, or you’re the person in a clinic.
Greg Owens 31:02
You don’t even notice there was a glitch in the system.
Bruce Mace 31:07
No you just get a little blip. It’s a less than a 10-second transfer, is the mandate, from power loss to alternate power.
Greg Owens 31:16
Yeah, yeah. That’s a sophisticated system, for sure. I mean, my I’m still on old school where I haven’t generated and I have to, like, start-up and plugin. I’m a contractor, we need generators, right. Otherwise, I’d use candles. I don’t have the same needs that you guys have. Can you imagine you’re in the middle of surgery and the lights go out? That’s bad.
Bruce Mace 31:40
Yeah, I mean, in just that thought alone, right? Let’s say you have a surgery going on, how complex is a surgery? If you lost power, how long does it take to wake a patient up safely? How long does it take to mobilize them to a motor transportation, like a wheelchair, and to get them to evacuate a building, right? So if you have a fire or a power loss, and you’re trying to get people out, there’s a huge amount of code that sits behind how that process works. And it’s tied to things that are seemingly silly is how big is your fuel tank? How long will it allow those generators to run? What kind of plan do you have in place for loss of power? Once your fuel is gone do you have a replenishment? Yeah, that’s an interesting thing. I think about hospitals, and it’s part of what I enjoy so much.
Greg Owens 32:33
That’s high levels of complexity right there, right? Giving that thought analysis of like, what needs to happen if this is the scenario, we have an earthquake, and we need to evacuate this building and there’s no power, how do we get people out of here safely?
Bruce Mace 32:48
Yeah, we have, like I say, just an incredible team, both in facilities and support services, and then safety and emergency management, all those groups. And when those experts in subject matter, experts all sit down or put heads together, it’s pretty, pretty amazing. What comes out of it. Yeah, remains largely hidden.
Greg Owens 33:09
I have a feeling you’re never bored.
Bruce Mace 33:12
Never bored. No. That’s for sure.
Greg Owens 33:16
And then being at your level, you’re always able to sink your team into what interests you most to write because you have a team, and then there’s certain aspects that you’re taking on personally, or being involved in? Because you’re interested in it also. I mean, I’m sure there’s things you’re not interested to, and you have to do.
Bruce Mace 33:33
Yeah, there’s plenty of that. But I mean, you go through a career and yeah, hopefully end up at a place where you’re passionate about what you’re doing. You’re good at what you’re doing, my leaders, just barn on are fantastic. Each and every one purple unicorn, what they do.
Greg Owens 33:53
What you guys are doing, I mean, UCSF is cutting edge, in so many aspects, right? Like it’s world-renowned. And it’s pretty amazing. Like you said, it’s a team, and then people don’t realize is this entire team that’s making things work. That’s making it work seamlessly, right. So that generator does its job when it’s supposed to, and it seamlessly happens, and they don’t even know maybe a 10 second blip or whatever.
Bruce Mace 34:22
Yeah, it’s amazing. And I’ve seen over time, and I’ve been at UCSF for 16 years now. But where we’ve moved from more of a mechanical world to a automated electronic world, and that in a big way, reflected in some of the work we’re doing now, where the architecture used to be 10 years ago, it’s 2d, it’s CAD, it’s flat piece of paper, it’s a flat surface. And you have plans and elevations and well, now we’re working in models, and they’re three-dimensional models. And it’s object-based. So if you put an air handler into the building, that takes up space. And it’s got a location. And guess what, it has 1500 pieces of data associated with that object. Well guess what? All those data pieces feed the maintenance system. And so we’re now involved with specification of contract to delineate the way the objects are named, and conformed and put into classification and families, such that we pull that data straight out into our maintenance program. And we operate in a 3d world. It’s coming around, it’s pretty amazing.
Greg Owens 35:37
That’s that’s some new technology there. It’s definitely changing architectural structures, building maintenance, all of those things in so many ways. And I bet you probably can control on your smartphone, aspects of the new facilities, or new pieces that come into play too.
Bruce Mace 35:56
Yeah, we’re building that right and now, I mean, on mobile device, when a building is being built, we’ve already worked with the project team throughout the development. And we’re in the field with mobile devices validating on 3d model, what is actually being built in the field to guarantee compliance, right? Yeah, things in the old days, as simple as we can’t reach device up in an interstitial space, because that valve, somebody put 10, conduits right below it, and we can’t get access. So now we’re building into the models, two foot by two foot, no fly zones during design that go deck to deck and they’re hanging on every actionable device. And then at the end of design, those are turned off. And guess what everybody has built around that two foot by two foot? What is now an access space for us to get to about?
Greg Owens 36:52
Yeah, I mean, there’s some hope in there. It’s still not perfect. I mean, maybe going forward, it’ll get more perfect. But I know, we’re on a building right now, for a pharmaceutical company. And granted, I mean, this is a project, it’s just being going online right now. Like, but they have a lot of those things built in crazy amounts. Its beautiful building, we’re doing a bunch of painting of conduit for because cell phone service isn’t working on certain floors in the parking deck, too much mass basically. So we’re having to go through and paint a bunch of conduit so that they can get those phones to work in those parking decks so that people still have access to all the things they want to have access when they’re parking their car, or when they’re in the facility. Right? And it’s an eerie building to because you go down like two floors, and you’re in the basement area in a parking area, where they’re on the weekend painting. And it’s one of those with the smart lights, so as you drive your car, the lights turn on. So everything’s dark, continue to get to that next spot, and it lights up. It’s kind of this eerie, weird feeling. But I mean, I get it, it’s the same energy, and there’s no reason. And if you don’t move for a few minutes, all the lights go out too.
Bruce Mace 38:08
Yeah, I mean, and that’s where I think our world is headed most is, you hear digital twin bantered about a whole lot these days. But the idea that you can have a working model, reflective of your physical building, and you tie in your controls, you tie in your utilities, your energy, all of your information coming in out of temperature and humidity systems. And you basically create that living model, which is reflective of your environment. And now I have a problem in my environment. What is the monitoring and alarming that tells me something’s going sideways, so I can get at it before it’s completely lost or gone down? Or impacted somebody negative?
Greg Owens 38:55
One of the podcasts that have was an AI company, that does using slack, the employee can say, because hot cold is a big thing in facilities, right? Using slack, the employee can say, I’m too cold, just say that, right? The AI picks up on that, and that employee that sitting right there in that chair in his office or her office, here’s the fan change. And then just that behavioral switch, like they made a text and something changed. Now they’re happy. Even though the temperature is exactly the same, nothing’s changed in that regard. It’s going to take some time, but they know that something happened, right.
Bruce Mace 39:41
And you’re absolutely right. As over-simplistic as that sounds, we had built in all of our terms, you know, HVAC and temperature and this and that. And then we did a word crawl on our work order system, just to learn more about what people really think. And it boiled down to that I’m hot, I’m cold. And those were probably the two biggest work orders that we see cumulatively over the year. So yes, if you can take a large problem like that, and reduce it and create a reaction to it through a simple device, that’s awesome.
Greg Owens 40:16
Yeah. And mean, like, that’s where the technology’s going as AI will make those decisions, right. Which is, I think, is great, because like you just said, you’re spending a lot of time having to hunt down and figure out and have a human make these switches for other humans feelings about the environment, which is going to change, it’s not going to be five people in a room and two are cold and three are hot, right.
Bruce Mace 40:41
And then in the hospital, I mean, obviously, we’re a different breed, where you can be in a sterile processing unit or an intensive care unit. And the layer of regulatory ranges that are mandated not to be exceeded either high or low, become constrictive, right, and sometimes almost mutually exclusionary. So there’s no end to the work we have to do.
Greg Owens 41:09
Yeah, especially with those parameters. Wow. I love like touching on your origin story and how you got to this place in time and this career path, if we can go back a little bit and talk about that.
Bruce Mace 41:24
Okay. Yeah, I went to Cal Poly down in San Luis Obispo. Oh, it’s great. And I loved it. But I chose architecture. And I ended up leaving in my second year because I did not like it. And I went to work on a custom framing crew out in Black Hawk here in Danville. And did that for almost two years and realized, okay, I don’t want to just be nailing stuff. Because building for the rest of my life, did a little traveling, and then went back down to Cal Poly and got my degree. And then I spent my career prior to UCSF, all working for myself, and was building homes and buying and then building out bigger and redoing, and then the economy was having troubles there in 2005, six, and I had been offered a couple times, hey, come take a look at this job at UCSF as a construction coordinator for major capital projects. And second time I was offered. I said the market was having enough trouble that I said, Yeah, I’ll do that. And I was afraid of being stuck in a cubicle. And doing the same thing working for somebody else.
Greg Owens 42:40
I mean, you’re going from working for yourself, essentially, to, to then going to a big multibillion-dollar organization in that way. With a bureaucracy and all of that.
Bruce Mace 42:54
Yeah, I found was when I got inside and was looking around at how business was done. There was a lot of leeway and allowance for if you see a problem or see something that had a better solution, bring it forward. And that started my path at UCSF, and I think it’s important that I had architecture and planning, building background, before coming over to the dark side of Facilities and Operations. It’s given me I think, quite a head start on, looking at the continuum.
Greg Owens 43:28
Yeah, and with all the construction knowledge, you have a sort of broad knowledge base of how buildings are put together. Incredibly useful in conversations with subcontractors with and then also being able to explain to others the whole process of why you just can’t move a wall quickly.
Bruce Mace 43:48
Yeah, and that’s true, it sounds funny, but it’s true. And then what we’re doing now with the architecture, and with facilities being involved every step of the way during project design and delivery, is our team is growing up with these new builds. And the data is being ported over traditional handover and instead of like getting keys at that handover fence and just tears you’re building and now go learn it and treat patients in it. Well now I joke about it but it’s almost true where my guys and girls can sit out front and lounge chairs on patient day one and be ready and just really understand every nook and cranny every system because they’ve been involved in building it, that’s absolutely critical.
Greg Owens 44:37
Yeah, I never really, because complex things have gotten buildings, but also that handoff like you said like in the old days, you can keys or hand and then now you have to figure out this building. But you guys have been your team has been in this process from day one. Learning looks and crannies this entire new structure. Right? And I know that even just from painters, right like when we go to a new building to do painting inside a building. That’s just any mall, any skyscraper, it takes a little bit of time for the painters to orient how they’re going to get through this building, how they’re going to get to the location, as opposed to how they’re gonna get through security, right? What are all the protocols and all that. So if you guys are doing this from the ground up, you, man, it’s such a massive, like, you know all the in the building isn’t do you?
Bruce Mace 45:31
Exactly. Yeah, and I think we had a really, it’s a valuable ROI, that it’s also a good lesson. About three years ago, in our BIM for FM building information modeling for facilities management, as what we call this program, we did our first building start to finish in 180,000 square feet, seven stories. And we were involved every step of the way. And the data was being scrubbed electronically with tools, software tools that we have built. And the model data that we’re interested in, we got to that turnover place. And it went from the model directly into Maximo, which is our computerized maintenance system. And that flip of a switch to being fully populated, already scrubbed 100% QA QC, took about five hours. And we’ve always said that a building of that size, given keys at handover to enter all the data to run a building of that size would take one person a year. And yesterday, we were in a meeting talking with a colleague back east at an academic medical center, and they just did a building and out of his mouth, it took two people about 13 months to do all the data entry. And to think that the development of tools and software, and then the knowledge that comes with it, just huge hurdles that are being jumped, I think.
Greg Owens 47:00
Yeah, that’s incredible amount of time savings, right. And then you guys can get on to good, I can only imagine with that sort of switch and handover and it only taking five hours to upload that you guys are able to get to the real sort of needs that are happening rather than just backtracking and doing data entry and trying to get this thing feed.
Bruce Mace 47:22
Yeah, that’s my analogy is sitting out front in the chaise lounge is right, those folks would normally be sitting at desk doing data entry for the next six months each. But instead, they’re all there standing at the ready, and we get a real hey, I need help with this from a clinical partner, and you got everybody jumping out of the chairs to go do something because they’re ahead that far ahead on the data and the model and the understanding and they’re up and going.
Greg Owens 47:48
And that’s something that I haven’t really given much thought to is to how that handoff goes. And that’s crazy, that there’s that much time savings.
Bruce Mace 47:59
Yeah, I think it’s huge opportunities, and we’re realizing it for sure. So that’s why the programs being developed at UCSF, we’re pushing hard on it because of the real-world benefits.
Greg Owens 48:10
Right. And you need engineers, because at the end of the day, you have patients that need care.
Bruce Mace 48:17
And you know what, thank you, the whole podcast can be boiled down to that. That’s it is patients, and then everything works down from there, right? So direct or indirect patient care, clinical part partners that support that direct or indirect patient care, and the systems, the buildings, the environments, the regulatory, that’s the tip of the iceberg, right?
Greg Owens 48:43
Because all of that should be background to the patient’s experience, they shouldn’t even notice it, right, like the environment should be comfortable. It should have the things that they need at hand to the day, they’re already under enough stress.
Bruce Mace 48:58
absolutely. And lack of stress goes to healing.
Greg Owens 49:02
Yeah, I just read some things about that with COVID. Like the third cause of deaths of COVID was stress after like, after like diabetes after like, a heart disease, things like that cold mortalities. The third one was like stress, too much stress.
Bruce Mace 49:19
You’re absolutely right. So whatever we can do in the environment to make it more calming, make it easier, make it stress-free, clean food availability, that all matters.
Greg Owens 49:32
Yeah, that all matters massively. They’ve learned so much about that, right? Yeah, it’s unbelievable. Are you guys hiring? I mean, I’m assuming with a team your size, you must be hiring all the time. And then how would somebody get in touch with you? What’s the best way?
Bruce Mace 49:51
Let’s see we currently are hiring couple operations managers who are responsible for individuals sites, we don’t have a whole lot of turnover, which is great. The team is, like I say, I’ve got an exceptional team, but either direct contact to myself, or simply going to the UCSF health, HR website, and they have a jobs posted, and then you can search it by facilities, and all the options will come up there. But I am more than open to taking phone calls. And folks reaching out this sounds like something that’s interesting to them.
Greg Owens 50:31
Yeah. And how would you suggest somebody that was new or thinking about facilities career or transitioning into it, how would you say would be the best way to get started in it?
Bruce Mace 50:43
Well, I would say it depends for us on what you’re interested in. We have leasehold department, we have construction, design and construction, we have our call center, we have our software team, our BAT team business applications. So depending on if you’re it or if your energy and utilities. But if somebody has an idea that they want to work for an institution like UCSF health, I would be happy to take phone call and talk to them about opportunities, whether it be under our umbrella of seven departments, or if it’s under others.
Greg Owens 51:18
Yeah, because I can imagine, somebody out there that people don’t know what careers exist, right? What types of career like you probably didn’t realize that this type of career path existed before you got started in it.
Bruce Mace 51:31
No.
Greg Owens 51:33
And you found something that you’re very passionate about. And you’ve been learning a lot about. And sometimes I feel like it takes like getting started in it just to see like maybe even if it’s just like working in the mailroom or sweeping or spending an A with somebody like yourself to see what the job entails even right,
Bruce Mace 51:52
Yeah. And we do some of those sorts of cohorts to show people what it’s like people that are interested, we do a three day thing and run them through all our departments, we bump them into our colleagues in different departments. And it’s chance to look around and say, hey, that really interests me or I come from an IT background. I’m interested in software development towards the facilities and whatever it may be.
Greg Owens 52:17
Right. Facility like yours, there’s so many different directions that person can go in. Endless opportunities to constantly learn and be right on the cutting edge of problem-solving.
Bruce Mace 52:33
And different areas. Yeah, absolutely. And that’s what’s so rewarding. Besides working with people, I would call number one people. And then it’s the ability to be creative and solve problems that are real-world affect others.
Greg Owens 52:49
Well, this is joy talking to you, Bruce, thank you for being on the Watching Paint Dry Podcast.
Bruce Mace 52:55
All right. Well, I appreciate the opportunity, Greg, and like I say, anybody who’s interested, just reach out and I’d be happy to chat.
Greg Owens 53:03
Okay, yeah, we’ll put your information along with everything else in the show notes, for sure.
Bruce Mace 53:08
Awesome. Have a great day.
Greg Owens 53:10
You Too.
Outro 53:15
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.