Nirmala Kovvali is the Director of Facilities and EHS at Carbon, a 3D printing technology company helping businesses develop products to bring to market. In her current role, Nirmala is responsible for real estate, facilities management, and engineering. She is involved in facility strategic planning for research and development, amenities/site services, vendor management, and environmental health and safety. Before Carbon, Nirmala was the Operations Manager at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and the Senior EHS Consultant at EORM.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
- Nirmala Kovvali explains the value facilities managers bring to the corporate space
- Nirmala’s strategy for managing Carbon’s facilities in the aftermath of the pandemic
- Carbon’s techniques for 3D printing
- How Nirmala’s background in environmental health and safety (EHS) prepared her for a career in facilities management
- The challenges of remote work and how Nirmala overcomes them
- Tips for reassembling your team and reorganizing your processes after the pandemic
- Essential skills for facilities managers
- Nirmala’s advice for potential facilities managers
In this episode…
Facilities management requires understanding the diverse processes and roles within an organization. Yet, many facilities managers lack knowledge in these areas and struggle to collaborate with their associates. So, how can you ensure consistent performance across all channels?
When supporting a business at each stage of its process, it’s important to remain curious. Consistently striving to learn new things about both the business and the industry allows you to acquire the technical knowledge needed to solve problems. And, by communicating productively with your colleagues, you can form connections with industry and trade experts to manage your operations seamlessly.
Tune in to this episode of
Watching Paint Dry as Greg Owens sits down with Nirmala Kovvali, Director of Facilities and EHS at Carbon, to discuss efficiency in facilities management. Nirmala shares the value facilities managers bring to corporations, tips for reorganizing your team and processes following the pandemic, and essential skills for facilities managers.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
Sponsor for this episode…
This episode is brought to you by
McCarthy Painting, where we serve commercial and residential clients all around the San Francisco Bay area.
We’ve been in business since 1969 and served companies such as Google, Autodesk, Abercrombie & Fitch, FICO, First Bank, SPIN, and many more.
If you have commercial facilities in the San Francisco Bay Area and need dependable painters, visit us on the web at
www.mccarthypainting.com or email
info@mccarthypainting.com, and you can check out our line of services and schedule a free estimate by clicking
here.
Episode Transcript
Intro 0:10
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 an episode of
Watching Paint Dry podcast where we’re continuing our conversations with facilities, managers, property owners, business owners, and all things in the industry of real estate. And this podcasts like all of the
Watching Paint Dry podcast is sponsored by my company, that company is McCarthy Painting. We do all kinds of painting projects throughout the San Francisco Bay area, we seem to be doing a lot of painting of facilities that are being turned back over to the landlord right now at this time, which is an interesting time. I hope things change again, and people come back to work and come back in full force, because that’s better for painting. But we’ll see what happens. There’s still a tremendous amount of work going on out there. If you want to learn more about my company McCarthy Painting, you can go to McCarthypainting.com, or email us at info@McCarthyPainting.com And I’m excited to find out more I’m read up on Nirmala Kovvali, the director of facilities at E H s at Carbon 3, and welcome to the podcast. Nirmala.
Nirmala Kovvali 1:48
Thank you, Greg. Thanks for having me on today. So just just for clarification, yeah, the company that I work for is Carbon, Inc. or Carbon 3D. And we are in Redwood City,
Greg Owens 2:01
you have that you have that building right next to the freeway there. That’s right. Yeah.
Nirmala Kovvali 2:06
Speaking of painting, you know, we recently painted and now it’s much more obvious that we are where we are.
Greg Owens 2:14
Yeah, what our building? did? Did you paint it black?
Nirmala Kovvali 2:18
No, we did not. It was it’s been painted gray, but it has a very bright right header. It’s a color that we call burpple. So it’s not really purple. So for for painter, this is like their worst nightmare, because we cook up a color and then we say go figure it out. But it is obvious. And then we had some decals put on the side of the building. So that kind of really made it. Alright,
Greg Owens 2:45
I’ll definitely I’ll definitely check it out. We’re doing some work down in in Palo Alto right now. So I’m passing right past your building there.
Nirmala Kovvali 2:53
Awesome. Yeah. Don’t miss the burpple. Right.
Greg Owens 2:58
Now, I won’t be able to now write?
Nirmala Kovvali 3:02
Exactly. It was the hardest thing to find the exact color match to purple.
Greg Owens 3:09
Right, right. Is that what you guys had a color that you had off of ink samples? Or was it?
Nirmala Kovvali 3:14
I mean, it was part of what our marketing team had come up with as the color palette for Carbon. It’s kind of a unique color. It works really well on all of our marketing materials. And, you know,
Greg Owens 3:27
yeah, and color, and ink colors, on paper, and on the cover are much different. Yeah. They’re more precise and more exact and, and meaning world. They’re not quite there yet.
Nirmala Kovvali 3:42
Yeah, it was, it was definitely a new learning experience for me to go and figure out how to make this color. There’s nothing in the store match.
Greg Owens 3:51
Right? Yeah. Sounds like you really liked the design end of facilities management to
Nirmala Kovvali 3:57
I do. I mean, I think, I don’t know, you know, my, my background has been mostly in the safety. I mean, that’s kind of how I started my career out, you know, doing, eh, and S mostly in a variety of different industries across the Bay Area, right. So I was a consultant for a while now, I’ve been doing this now for 22 years, started off as a consultant moved to biotech had like, several years, working in biotech men. I worked for national lab, it worked for the Accelerator Laboratory in Menlo Park at SLAC. And then, you know, now I’m here at Carbon, so, but somewhere through that career transition, I think I could have discovered this world of quote unquote, facilities and it started very much more on the design side of facilities where I started this project or was a you know, a big part of this project where we needed someone to help translate like scientific requirements over to my Construction folks and that
Greg Owens 5:03
you had to you had to dumb it down so we could understand what the science people were trying to explain. Oh.
Nirmala Kovvali 5:11
I actually think it’s not necessarily a dumbing down. I think it’s like you’re speaking two different languages. Yeah. I think when you’re building something, you want to know exactly what you need to build to. You’re like, what’s stuck? How hard you know, how, how negotiable is this? You know, what room do I have to wiggle in and out of this? From the science side? That’s not how they’re thinking about it. They’re thinking about it as like, I need this because this is what the instrument spec said. And then you have to turn around and say, great, you can have that. But it’s going to cost you a bajillion dollars to do that. Would you still like it? Right? So I think that kind of, I think that’s where the worlds don’t necessarily collide, you know, because one side feels like, I just want to give you something, go figure it out. And the other side says, Well, this is I can do this, it’s gonna cost you a lot of money. So what would you like to do with that?
Greg Owens 6:07
We mostly paint that’s funny, because I just ran into this, we mostly do painting of buildings, but I was just asked to paint some, some testing equipment for scientists right at a building that we do a lot of painting for. Okay, we can it’s steel, it was outside, it was rusting. And I was like, totally, we can do that. And, and they’re like, Well, you know, here’s the specs from the scientists that I’m like, that that’s gonna be crazy money. They were asking for all kinds of things that is like, Hey, this is just in my mind, this is just a big chunks of steel. And, you know, looks like to me, there’s some wiggle room here. And you guys
Nirmala Kovvali 6:48
really, one says it has to be Yeah, and
Greg Owens 6:51
then no, do you really want to spend that kind of money to get it exactly like this with all these specs, or I could just get rid of the rust and paint it and, you know, because it’s gonna rust again, outside here, whether it was salt and that kind of thing in another year. So do you want to spend this kind of money? Or do you want to spend this kind of money and we do some maintenance along the way? And, and they finally they they relented. It’s yeah, it was crazy money.
Nirmala Kovvali 7:17
That’s exactly what it is. You know, I mean, so I do believe that that, like, you know, I think to keep our value and to, to really be I think, current to what our customers need, like, that’s important for folks in the facilities field, right? We’re not just, you know, people that can get a direction and just go do right, we bring something to the table. And oftentimes, I find, we forget that we do that, you know, what we do keeps buildings and science like moving and running. And it you know, if we didn’t show up to work one day, and something blue and the power went out, no one’s gonna do very much so. So I think it’s just a mind mindset shift for folks in our fields to realize, like, you know, what did we bring to the table that
Greg Owens 8:06
I like? Yeah, and I’ve talked about it a bit on this podcast, in that, you know, facilities managers job is to make it so that people don’t really notice the building in a bad way. Right, that they can go and like the scientist that you’re talking about can go and do their best work in an environment that’s comfortable for them and safe. Right, and feels good. And also, I mean, what’s amazing and awesome, and especially here in the Bay Area, is that they also make it beautiful. A lot of the spaces are designed well, right. And that way people can tap into their creativity more and more. And I think that’s super, I think it’s so important. And and so I think, yeah, and sometimes underlooked. And you feel it when you walk into a building, and you’re like, wow, how do people work in this environment?
Nirmala Kovvali 8:53
Yeah, wow, they actually put some work into this or like, whoa, they should put some work into this one would be good.
Greg Owens 9:01
Well, yeah, we were doing a lot of work for an accounting company. And it’s so funny, because they’re, they’re so conservative. Everything’s just like one color. And then they started adding splash, just little splashes of color. And they were like, we’re not sure. And they were super excited. And they’re like, look, we’re going high tech.
Nirmala Kovvali 9:23
Right? Yeah, I think Designing Spaces is a kind of an interesting. I mean, it’s become so much more relevant and prominent now. Right, just with this full shift in how people have chosen to work and all these discussions about what is the purpose of the workplace, you know, in the past, you never really thought about it. You were like, how many heads? Can I get into this building? Let’s just get everybody in here, you know, and that was the energy space, right? And now that’s been taken away from us in some ways. It’s forcing us to kind of redefine Yeah, what the purpose of those spaces are you I’ve been we’ve done, we’ve had people in throughout the pandemic, just because of what we do, there’s almost a third of our company that needs to be physically present in the office in order to be able to do their job.
Greg Owens 10:13
Well, you guys are building 3d printers, we’re building 3d printers so so you get it’s kind of hands, it’s kind of hands on, you have to be very much.
Nirmala Kovvali 10:21
Yeah, so we’ve got sort of like, three, three arms, so to speak, you know, that we we speak about our technology, we’ve got the hardware piece, which is we build, we make the printers we design and we we do that, we’ve got a huge materials piece where we do r&d, and we develop all these materials that will be used to do the printing. And then we’ve got here software piece, so the software piece kind of integrates, you know, so our platform is really all these three elements put together. And the first two elements that I talked about are very much like hands on physically be present in the mob, like doing things or, you know, we just recently launched a new version of our printer. And that was all done during the pandemic, like, we built it, we prototype, you know, all of that. So it’s probably
Greg Owens 11:08
a good time to launch that too, with so many companies and people in the supply chain and all of that being Yeah, it was challenging. It was definitely interesting. Yeah.
Nirmala Kovvali 11:19
So I think we’ve had always like a third of our population in the office and have always had to manage some number of people, even during the pandemic within the space. So, you know, while it was in, you know, everybody in the company was only those essential people, but it was a good number. And, you know, we had to be careful about who was coming in who was, you know, these are the priority, right? These people have to be here, you don’t have to be here, so. And then now we’ve come to this place where things have opened up a little bit more, the Party hasn’t changed. It’s just that things have changed in the external environment. And now we’re able to allow more interaction across teams and people coming back in. But not everybody wants to come back the way they used to, you know, and I’m sure you’re hearing this from every company that you’re meeting talking to right now. It’s what’s that magic? What’s the magic tablet that’s gonna like, you know, the pill that’s gonna bring everybody back? I don’t know. Okay, I’m not sure we’ll ever go back to where we
Greg Owens 12:22
were. Yeah, for sure. We definitely talked to some companies and friends of mine companies that are like that, they feel like they’re never going back into an office, right? Why have the expense of a building and all of that? Okay. But then, you know, the start looking, you started hearing things like Elon Musk saying, hey, you know, we want everybody back. And if you don’t want to come back, you can find work somewhere else. I’m like, wow, that that could definitely change things. Because, you know, if we are actually heading into a recession, which, you know, it sounds like we’re that way.
Nirmala Kovvali 12:54
Yeah, yeah, no, we have unfortunately taken that stand. And I’m grateful for that. Because I do think that gives you the opportunity to think about your space a little bit differently. No, and we will always need a physical space. So for us, the bigger question is like, what is this physical space need to look like? And what do we want it to be able to do?
Greg Owens 13:14
Yeah, and where and where to? And a lot of ways, right, and you guys are, you guys are in sort of the heart of Silicon Valley there. And that’s where a challenge is. So moving to North Carolina might be good. And you might be able to save a lot of money, but you might not be able to necessarily find same talent, talent. Yeah, I can design and build and work on these kinds of printers. Right?
Nirmala Kovvali 13:37
Yeah. It’s interesting, actually, that you mentioned North Carolina, our founder, Joe De Simone, who’s at Stanford now. Joe’s originally from he’s from, he’s to teach there. And so, so we do have a North Carolina contingent that kind of moved over when Joe started a company before my time, but
Greg Owens 13:56
yeah, I bring that up. My mom lives there. So I go back there.
Nirmala Kovvali 14:00
Oh, cool. Yeah, I don’t I haven’t I’ve never been so maybe I need my my list.
Greg Owens 14:06
Yeah, so and you were talking about the materials aspects. So they’re the 3d printers, you guys are, are are trying out different types of materials. And that’s where you have probably have a lot of creatives I would think, that are just sitting with like, What can this thing what can you do with this 3d printer? What kind of materials and that kind of stuff? Yeah, I mean, a lot of experiment painting, experimenting in that part of the facility.
Nirmala Kovvali 14:31
Our printing is kind of you know, so, 3d printing, you could do metal you can do like all these different things. Our technology is very focused on in the polymeric product space. So, you know, the polymeric product, or the resins are kind of Carbon owned resins, that, you know, we develop the formulas for them, all of that, kind of like you said the brain work happens at our facility here and Good city, now we work with like a facility somewhere else maybe to like, scale it out or make larger volumes of it at some point. And once we know, once you know what it’s
Greg Owens 15:12
yeah, basically you’re making the recipe, and you’re testing the recipe and then you’re like, outsourcing the actual making of it. Exactly, exactly. Yeah, that’s a whole different, yeah,
Nirmala Kovvali 15:23
it’s a whole different. So what we, what we need to do is like, you know, come up with this thing that we think is going to meet, let’s say, somebody says, I need a material that’s highly heat resistant, because I want to be able to 3d print something that goes in a really hot place, you know, if we come up, and if we find enough use cases, for something like that, then we would formulate that material in our lab, you know, scale, it’s, to some extent, test it. So we would do a bunch of test prints, we would make sure it’s stable and make sure it’s, you know, durability wise, giving us what we want, it’s able to print the way we want it to print you apart actually looks like it’s supposed to and all of that. And then we can say yeah, all right, like this is a viable material. Maybe we can now work with somebody to make this an official offering or product from our end. So yeah, but all that, you know, I mean, most of those people are chemists, you know, that have a pretty intimate knowledge about polymer chemistry, and think around and Alam Shiva and, you know, make different things. So it’s a pretty good sized group that we have on site that does that.
Greg Owens 16:30
Yeah. Sounds like that’s, that’s some smart people for sure.
Nirmala Kovvali 16:36
Different smart? Let’s just say we’re all smart.
Greg Owens 16:39
Different for sure. Yeah. I didn’t pass any chemistry classes. Yeah. Tell me more about you finding facilities and facilities management. So it’s fine that those origin stories interesting. It sounds like, Yeah, cuz you, you kind of came across it in another in a different way. And not necessarily looking for that.
Nirmala Kovvali 17:03
Right. So I’ve always felt like being on the safety side, I’ve always felt there’s a very tight connection, I think, between what safe what you do on the safety side, and what you do on the facility side, especially when you’re talking about managing a building or a lab or, you know, so that’s been my focus, mostly, like, you know, I’ve been in r&d type environments, which is the tie is just, I don’t know, I find it very hard to pull that apart, you know, to say, you’re gonna do your thing, all the do my thing, we don’t have to talk to each other. Right. So I’ve always had that interest, you know, like, how do you bridge those types of teams, and bring them closer together? Because there is, there’s a lot that can be learned back and forth between these teams. You know, and I totally agree, that’s been my interest all along. But then once I worked with the National Lab and had this role where I was looking at design, you know, I was looking at facility design, but with an H and S lens, because they understood that world well enough, you know, I knew that were regs I, I knew, like, you know, in construction, you need to do X in order to meet this regulation for each and s, right? Yeah, me, I feel like it just opened up this box where I was like, wow, oh, this is like, if you don’t have someone who can help you with this, you’re gonna make the wrong decision here to build something, you’re gonna have to go and undo it, and then redo it, which sucks, right?
Greg Owens 18:27
So costs and cost so much more money, right, and, and is
Nirmala Kovvali 18:31
so inefficient, that so many things that are wrong with that. So I, I found actually having the safety background really helped, you know, and having the scientific background because I’d spent a lot of time understanding science in order to be think very thoughtful about what kinds of safety protocols would make most sense for the science that needed to be done. So having that background looking at facility design, to me felt very not in touch with very natural kind of transition, or kind of use of my skill set, you know, in, in kind of this parallel area of work, right. And that kind of brought me to collagen, because when I came to Carbon, we there was, obviously there was already a facilities manager or a Director of Facilities was transitioning to a new role at Carbon and needs to fill his spot in order for, you know, business continue things to be operational. And so I came in with an eh, and S focus, and within two or three weeks, it was like, can you take it all, you know, like, yeah, yeah.
Greg Owens 19:38
I would think that Carbon like, almost like some of the pharmaceutical companies and other companies like that the health and safety aspects of it all is so much greater than, like, say, a mall or I mean, there’s, there’s, there’s health care, too. I mean, there’s, you know, intelligence. Yeah, there’s just, there’s just a higher level of like me eed to sort of pay attention to a lot of regulations, right? Especially in the laboratory with like, like different chemicals and things like that, that you’re working with. And I
Nirmala Kovvali 20:08
think the some of what we need to do in these types of environments, and I say all are the whole point of r&d is to be able to play and create and rule things out. Right? So it’s not like I’m making a widget. I know exactly how those widgets gonna look. I’m going to start at step A, and I’m going to end it step D, right? The whole point is this interplay this back and forth, you take two steps forward, maybe you take a step back, or maybe you take four steps forward, and and how do you think through that concept? And say, Okay, I don’t want to go over any crazy here, but like, what do I need to make sure this doesn’t blow up or you don’t get hurt while you’re doing that? And it’s still allow you to have the flexibility to move where you need until you’re certain, right?
Greg Owens 20:56
Yep. Are these bulk chemicals we’re buying? Don’t spill into the bay? Yeah, we should
Nirmala Kovvali 21:00
not be spilling any chemicals. I can’t think of anything where I’d just be like, That one’s good. You should go ahead and do that one. Yeah, so in general. No, no. Right. So we don’t do that. But yeah, so anyway, so that’s kind of like how I got into the world of facilities and built the team at Carbon to encompass like, you know, so our team manages facility like traditional facilities that we keep the lights on, and the HVAC systems running. And so that, to me, is like traditional facilities, right? Like the sprinkler systems and all that good stuff. We also have someone on our staff, who maintains all equipment across the company. So anything from facilities related equipment, which is a very small proportion of where he manages to everything required to do our science, everything in the lab, you know, so he manages that. We’ve been a lab manager who runs our lab. So it takes care of everything lab, you know, in some ways, and then we’ve got EHS on our team as well. So h&s takes care of all the regulatory stuff and assessments and things like that. And then we run the front desk, and like, you know, you know, so, and the office, we’ve got, like, these little arms where we do just about anything and everything across the company. Yeah,
Greg Owens 22:22
we’ve done some painting for companies that have had 3d printers. And you know, we’ve had to work around the printers, right. And facilities have been moving to printers while they’re printing, because they’re doing like some crazy, like, 3000 hour printing job that came Oh, my gosh, disturbed or something like that.
Nirmala Kovvali 22:42
I have not had that yet. But no, we haven’t painted the inside of a building and thinking about it. Yeah, yeah.
Greg Owens 22:52
Yeah. And so that’s what what types of challenges are you finding in this environment? Now? I mean, we were here in the summer of 2022. There’s a lot of unknown factors out there in the world because of this, including a war possibly a global recession. Yeah, luckily, we’ve haven’t had any major fires that that are like, yeah, yeah,
Nirmala Kovvali 23:18
I think the news this morning was was beginning to talk about when I was like, No, here
Greg Owens 23:22
we go. Oh, no, really? Yeah. See, I haven’t watched I don’t watch the news. I find out my news, sort of this way, having podcasts and talking to people and smart.
Nirmala Kovvali 23:31
Well, I’m the new strategy. I incessantly read the news, and there’s nothing exciting going on. Right?
Greg Owens 23:39
I find a couple of things what? Well, you kind of have to because you have to stay up on more safety things than I mean, I do too. But it one one, it just sort of repeats itself endlessly. Right? So it says nothing. Story, right? There’s those and there’s a tremendous amount. I have no control over whatsoever. Right? And I can I have my company, my employees, their lives. A lot of things I can have actual impact on and control over right? And I try to be the best citizen I can so do my voting and I do my things right. But yeah, it’s it’s
Nirmala Kovvali 24:17
it’s, it’s smart. I should I’m gonna spend some time thinking about what you just send me kid I read the news all the time. And it gets us I think it just makes me more and more more sad. Every time I read it.
Greg Owens 24:31
I don’t know if we as human beings were meant to absorb that much information from all you know, because we get it instantaneously from all over the world. And then they talk right mindlessly. Right and, and I can radio and I catch little things like I saw that there was a shooting in Illinois the other day, right? Awful. And I was like, okay, they’re gonna have this major debate about guns again and you know, that’s back in the news, right and that was just going through the gym right like can walk into a gym and I see the TV and I’m like, Oh, you’re like, Oh, I can’t what I needed to hear. Right. Yeah. But then I think I was working out. And then as I was leaving, I saw the TV again. And they were still talking about it about it like an hour later, an hour later, still going over it. Right. And I was just like, wow, what could they possibly be discovering more? I was awful. I mean, it is bad. And we have a problem in this country. Absolutely. Right.
Nirmala Kovvali 25:27
Yeah. Yeah. So the challenges answer your question. Talking about challenges. I mean, I just, I, you know, I don’t know, this is clearly this is just my perspective. I just think there’s just a lot going on, on every front, you know, you can slice it down, and you can say, at work, here’s my challenge. And at home, here’s my challenge. But, you know, I think our lives are just not so separated anymore. And I think what’s happening today is, all of these challenges are just like, turning into this one big pot of issues that people are trying to kind of navigate and deal with. And it surfaces everywhere. You know, what happens in your, in your home friends surfaces at work? What happens at work surfaces at home, I mean, it’s, it’s just, you know, for me, personally, I just feel like everything is very chaotic. And it’s just no order. Like, you start your day with like, a plan, and then boom, like, either something has had some event has happened in the world that just shakes you to the core, or some smaller thing has happened at work. And you’re like, Wait, I didn’t plan for that today. I just think it’s becoming harder. And maybe it was never like this. It just feels more like it now I’m not sure. But
Greg Owens 26:48
well, I think you’re lying. I think you’re right. In some ways. I’ve heard this a few times from friends that that are working from home. And they say like, they they’ll they’ll be working till five o’clock or 530 or finishing up something. And then like they’re there in their living room or something, and they close their laptop for two seconds or something. And then they’re bringing it back up to see what’s on the news or see something else. And so they haven’t really changed environments. They haven’t they haven’t gotten outside, like all day, right? Like, whereas before, there was some a bit more of like, I gotta get, I gotta go, or I gotta park and I got to see more things, right. And there was a little bit of a disruption to the day. And yeah,
Nirmala Kovvali 27:27
it’s very interesting. I don’t know, it is very, very interesting. You know, you can, I mean, if you work from home, you could probably just be home for weeks on end. And yeah, ever have to interact with anybody. Fortunately, for me, I need to do my job from around the office is very difficult for me to be at home. So being forced to go do that it has been tremendously helpful. Not put me in that hole. Right. Right, you’re just in more. But what it’s done is it’s given me, I think we’re in a trend, this feels very much a transitionary phase for many things. So I’m hopeful that you know, this will pass and we’ll get to some better new normal of how things should be run. But I do think that for workplaces, especially the future is going to be this hybrid model of work. Yeah. Where you give people the room to kind of create some flexibility in their lives. You know, you give people also the opportunity to focus on their families and focus on what’s important outside of work, and kind of figure out how to make that jive with what you need to do at work. And, yeah, so to me, I feel like you need to do it. Right. I think that’s where we need to be headed. From a work standpoint, for sure.
Greg Owens 28:38
Yeah. And I think you’re right, I think there is definitely some chaos right now with some people are not able to assimilate or to handle the rapidly changing things that are happening right now so quickly. And some people are a little bit more geared towards that or it’s easier for them and they have less life responsibilities. I have like I have friends that have gone nomadic, you know, and they’ve been there in high tech companies, they’re making really good money and they are just constantly traveling and going to one surf camp after another kind of lifestyle. And you Yeah, and you know, I think it’s great what they’re doing and I love them for it. Yeah, yeah, I don’t know if I personally would want to be doing that there’s something about being a little bit more settled. I like that feeling and like like trips and then coming back to having a hub contractor right and can’t
Nirmala Kovvali 29:38
be doing that. You can’t be in Baja, trying to like coordinate a paint job in the Bay Area.
Greg Owens 29:43
It gets more difficult.
Nirmala Kovvali 29:47
Complicated. I mean, maybe you could
Greg Owens 29:49
I’ve, I’ve done jobs, a few jobs, especially if I if I, if I was knew that I was going to be away at the start and I had all the pictures and all that stuff and then had pictures sent to me and I knew the buildings and that kind of thing. Right. So
Nirmala Kovvali 30:04
it’s coming, you know, yes, it’s more work. I think you’re right.
Greg Owens 30:08
Yeah, I can it can happen. But not
Nirmala Kovvali 30:12
can’t be the full time situation. Right. Right. I think that would make it impossible. So, yes, it is. There’s a bunch of chaos in general. But let’s, I mean, I don’t know, I’m hoping this will, at least in a bit, you know, I see in the Bay Area, it’s certainly like, I think we’ve all forgotten right. And we weren’t in to your pandemic. We’re not really out of the pandemic yet. And, you know, people are, you know, giving COVID, left, right, and center. Like, I cannot tell you how many people I’ve heard with COVID. In the last few months, it’s gotten.
Greg Owens 30:47
Yeah, it’s gotten so normal for me to hear like another person. And you’re right, you’re right. Like, my friends that were unbelievably careful, have gotten it now. Like they they were not seeing people and they were wearing and 90 fives everywhere. You know, and being super careful about it. And they they have gotten it now, too.
Nirmala Kovvali 31:05
Yeah. So I just think it’s just, you know, it’s just the moving pieces are still very much in motion. And while we want to, we want the narrative to be, you know, we’re back to normal, let’s get right back to whatever it is we were doing before, we’re really not back to normal. And we need to just be thoughtful and incremental about how, how we integrate, right? I think it’s been, I don’t know, obviously, there’s just like section populations just wants to forget whatever happened, you know, it’s done. But in reality, it does impact how, you know, how we move forward. So even at work, I always feel like, we just need to be intentional about it. Like, it’s okay to make a request. But people’s comfort levels are so different, and where they want to be, it’s so different than as long as we’re open to that, then we give people the room to sort of venture. Yeah, they need.
Greg Owens 31:58
And I feel there’s a good need for giving forgiveness, right. Because you know, somebody has a bad moment or a bad day says something out of line, or that kind of thing is not holding a grudge on that realizing that there’s a lot going on behind the scenes that we don’t know about 100%. Right. Yeah. And I see this was like, I have a lead painter that’s been with me a long time. And I just heard in our meeting yesterday that, you know, there was some some challenges coming up and some one of his jobs, challenges. And I’m like, That’s not like him, I better I need to go by and, and actually sit down and talk with him. check in and see what’s going on and see what’s going on with his family and his life. And yeah, and help create some room if even if it only it is me having that conversation to have some understanding and letting that having some time, right. Because, yeah, like you said, I think it affects their lives. You can meaning a house and going through something very difficult in your family life and think that that’s this, this is a reason this, this podcast is watching paint dry, right? Because then this to watching paint dry, but it also can be incredibly boring.
Nirmala Kovvali 33:09
And frustrating if you’re not mentally face.
Greg Owens 33:12
Right. Right. You know, and it’s the same for us. Like,
Nirmala Kovvali 33:16
I think facilities folks are, you don’t have you know, even when the world was going remote, just like other essential people, like we did not have the option to work remotely. Yeah, I don’t know, what we would do remotely, you know, everything we need to manage is, is here, and we need to be here. And it was really interesting to see, you know, you would notice, like the team would be really upbeat, just like we’ve got this will do whatever it needs to be done. You know what your work team or IRA or whatever. And like, you know, two or three months will go by, and then you’ll just see like, this is like a crush because you’re trying really hard to push through and ignore what’s going on around you stay upbeat, and then be great, right? And then it hits you and you feel like okay, so we spent a lot of time regrouping as a team and said, Listen, your mental health and your health is really important, right? Whether you recognize it or not like we’re a team because we can take care of each other like that. So let’s start frustrating across the team. You know, let’s, let’s make sure that if you need to take some time off, there’s somebody else on the team who can at least keep things going till you come back. You need a day off on a Friday. Go ahead. Just make sure this is your point person now and this person is not off on Friday today. So we spent a lot of time doing that over a pandemic because we realized we were like one person deep in so many spaces. Losing the one person really affects everybody. So we were just trying to work on if this guy is gone, you can do that. Great. If this person’s gone. You can see it’s like Tetris, but in a good way. And I think it really helped the team feel like okay, the burden is not on me. Like I actually can take got a bit of time to just regroup and come back feeling better?
Greg Owens 35:03
Yeah, that’s great. That’s great that you guys can can recognize that and see that that’s sort of such a big mean, you know, can you imagine, like the airline industry in a facility of one airline industry of having it sounds insane, right? It sounds insane. Because you also have all these passengers that are very, very upset, you know, that are trying to go to a wedding and try to go to the I try when I fly, I’m trying to be extra nice and nice initiative. And, you know, because I know, I can just imagine, like, what’s going on behind the scenes in that in that organization to keep things Yeah, and somewhat running and safe.
Nirmala Kovvali 35:41
Now, talking about airlines, it’s funny you mentioned like, like I was, last week, I was actually I was in Philly for work. And I had a moment where, you know, you hear all this on the news. And all people are crazy on the line, you know, passengers are just so impatient. We were landing in Philadelphia, and the flight was delayed or something happened. And there was a bunch of people on this plane that needed to get off and Philly make connecting flight to the next spot. And it was so amazing to be on this plane where I felt like humanity’s not completely useless, right? Like, everyone just stopped in like, ask the person sitting next to them if they had a connecting point, and let them out. And steed to everyone who had to get off first got off. Yeah. And then the rest of the time left. And I thought, This is awesome. And
Greg Owens 36:35
I’ve been on a flight where that happened to end. And I think like the news doesn’t necessarily a retiree, that there’s no news in that.
Nirmala Kovvali 36:45
Team, like, this should be the news.
Greg Owens 36:48
Right? That there’s that there’s all these like, there’s all these moments like that, that are still happening all the time, right. And probably way more often than not, but it’s the, you know, same. Same thing in my company, you know, at the small scale of my company, that problem job, or the problem client or the, you know, will take up most of 80 or 90% of our thought processing right for a chunk of time, right? Because it’s so like, Oh, that was bad. We broke this thing. We got to fix it, we got to figure it out. We got to apologize to the client. And you know, when you’re moving ladders on your shoulder, and you’re 40 feet long as you’re walking around the building three or four times, there’s a chance we break some we try our best to try we try really hard, but I can’t guarantee we never will.
Nirmala Kovvali 37:37
I mean, this is why we’re all insured. There’s a reason, because we know this is part of
Greg Owens 37:44
the job. Yeah, yeah. And I find perspective is helpful. Like, you know, how I just was mentioned, the airlines or I know that we I had to have a difficult conversation with a client who knew me well. And problem was were unable to, we had to push back the timing of their job, right. But they had some constraints. So I went over to have that. And I was like, Look, at least for not having to pack our bags and move from like a city in Ukraine to Poland and have no clue what we’re going to do next. And why? Because Russia’s
Nirmala Kovvali 38:18
stuff, watch the news all the time and think well, I really don’t have any problems. Yeah,
Greg Owens 38:24
yeah. And I try eating doesn’t always help to say that when like a team member is having a difficult moment. Some point, at some point, finding a way to like, add in perspective seems to be helpful, but not all of it. I’ve made that mistake.
Nirmala Kovvali 38:43
Do you know, yeah, have you know, I don’t I haven’t been like, you know, hey, there was a war in Ukraine. It’s just get over your problem. Yeah,
Greg Owens 38:51
it sounds like you’ve learned a lot about communication in your role. And, and like, you mentioned earlier, and you mentioned that a couple other times, like the the ability to communicate, you know, and take what the scientists are saying and take it to the, the, the contractors that are and I find that that comes up a lot within facilities as your you’re playing the middle person of being able to decipher a lot of things. Yeah,
Nirmala Kovvali 39:18
they are. I think it’s, um, no, I would say like communication is one of the most critical skills for anyone who’s going into facilities or for that matter, you know, even EHS or safety. Yeah. I mean, you so much of this is, you know, being able to tease out the information you need in order to make an informed and smart decision about what next to do, right. Yeah, in some cases, you might tease out all this information and be like, Alright, I need to do anything great. Check that out my best.
Greg Owens 39:51
I could just rely on the contractor they’re gonna take care of.
Nirmala Kovvali 39:55
Yeah, or you’re gathering the information. You’re thinking oh, no, like I need to get Jump in, because what we’re doing is wrong. And to do this in order to fix what we’re doing right, so I think it’s the most critical. And I think it’s the hardest skill for most people, because it involves one being interested. You know, so I know with my team, a lot of times we’ll say like, Do you know what we do? Like, if you’re going to run a facility, you should know what the bread and butter of that facility? Yeah. And you should know, reasonably? Well. You should, you don’t have to be an engineer.
Greg Owens 40:31
But and that takes, that takes curiosity, like being interested in it being curious, going a little bit further than what your, your, your technical job details? Right. Yeah,
Nirmala Kovvali 40:41
you know, or like listening, you know, it’d be like, there’s an all hands company meeting. And I find a lot of times, when people just verify, well, I really care that it doesn’t affect my job. We actually does, because if you don’t know what’s going on, and where the company is prioritizing work, and projects and resources, you’re just gonna be left out, or someone else is gonna make the decision for you, right. So this is your opportunity to be able to listen and say, yeah, that’s all great, this is important. But like, we also need this right, in order to be able to let you do what you need to do, we need to be able to do, I don’t know, whatever it is, you need a new lab, I heard about that project, it’s not going to be able to happen in the lab that we have, now, you’re gonna need something different, because you don’t listen, you’re coming to the party late and your bed and trying to convince a bunch of people, you know, so anyway, so I think, communicating, listening, like, you know, integrating being part of that company is very, very important for all, I’ve always seen,
Greg Owens 41:38
I’ve been blown away, and how much facilities managers have that I have walked through a building to look at some painting, but I’m curious and, and will ask about what they’re making what they’re doing. And they’ll take me, you know, oh, you got to check out this new machine. And it’ll take me into this thing where there’s a robot working right, and they tell me all about the robot. And I’m like, Wow, unbelievable amount of knowledge you have about this, this aspect of the computer, that they’re not even they don’t even get to go in and touch that. They know about it.
Nirmala Kovvali 42:07
I know. But if he if, if he or she didn’t know about, you know what that was, they would not be able to provide the support infrastructure to keep that thing working. Right. Yeah. So those are the questions you always ask, right? Like, what does it do? Its has an arm grade, how high? does the song go? What is it the arm? Do? You know? Will? Will it stop on demand? Like keep going? I mean, I think these are all worthwhile questions. And
Greg Owens 42:34
we also if somebody’s too close to
Nirmala Kovvali 42:37
take my arm, I think we all come to situations with with a perspective, because that’s kind of that’s how mentally we we are trained, right? Like, so I know, I work in this world. And I’m trained to think this way. And I do this, but you’re working in this world. And you can probably, you know, I could probably have a conversation with you. And you as a painter could say, Wow, I would never do that. I would never think about that. It’s just not what I’m, it’s not the world that I’m in all the time. And so I just, I think that’s why it’s important for all of us to ask those questions, right? Because what you’re thinking about that other person is probably not really thinking about, and they just learned something different. But they could also turn around and say, That was a good question. But that doesn’t happen with this piece of machinery. So don’t worry about it like it. This is why it’s not an issue. And then you learn something different, right? So I think it’s important for us to be able to do that and ask those questions. And I tell my team a lot, you know, before you say yes to something they always ask, it’s good. I mean, no one is gonna shoot you in the foot. Just, you’re just being curious. Just ask. Yeah, I need to you know, I need a 480 volt outlet. Great. Yeah. Why?
Greg Owens 43:49
482? Is that really? 480? Like, oh, my
Nirmala Kovvali 43:53
gosh, we Yeah, I mean, a lot of, I mean, a lot of common runs in the 240. There, we definitely have a few words just like, Oh, this one’s like, Uber special. And, you know, we so people will just come up to us and be like, Hey, can you get me one of those? And one, I can’t just get you one of those. Yeah. So if I’m going to put all this work in, what are you going to do?
Greg Owens 44:18
How are you going to use it? What’s the Yeah,
Nirmala Kovvali 44:21
I mean, just like, What is this piece of code? And why does it need for nd? Are you buying it? Or is that a preference you check? Like, do they have other choices? You know,
Greg Owens 44:32
it’s funny, because this is reminding me that testing equipment, big time because I think I had like, there was like three scientists, the facilities manager me all staring at this equipment, right? And I kept asking lots and lots of questions because I was trying to get my head wrapped around like, what is it we’re trying to do here? What’s the goal? What’s the
Nirmala Kovvali 44:52
what is this? I could paint in this hole. Is it going to blow this machine up?
Greg Owens 44:57
Exactly. I was I was like, Oh, what about these holes in what about these wires over here? How do you want? You know, what would you like? And you know what that piece of machinery does too, right? So I was trying to get my head down, they walked me to the back of the building, and they’re like, and then they call, they call all the scientists. And then they’re like, yes, we want to paint this. And here’s the specs, right? And I’m like, okay, great. I’ve got some questions. I don’t know, why hardly, I hardly looked at the specs. Because, you know, I took like, one glance at this, you know, what they were, they were handing me and I was like, yeah, that’s gonna be crazy money. And I kind of know the company. And
Nirmala Kovvali 45:33
yeah, you’re like, nope, let me ask some questions.
Greg Owens 45:37
Let’s see what really needed here. And let’s see if I can make this easier for us too. Because sometimes following some of those specs, you know, just too challenging, so much more challenging, right. And then also, we had, we have this ongoing problem with supply chain stuff, right, especially when it comes to this specialty product products. Right. And it’s harder to get so I knew that going into.
Nirmala Kovvali 46:00
Yeah, yeah. No, I’m glad. Yeah, I always say you should ask the question. It’s the right thing to do. So
Greg Owens 46:09
go ahead. Go ahead.
Nirmala Kovvali 46:11
No, no, no, no, no,
Greg Owens 46:12
I was gonna switch gears as we’re getting close to wrapping up here. But what a lot of times what I’m doing is putting shining a spotlight on facilities management and how people can get into it. What are some of your ideas or practices or things you can recommend to somebody that’s looking or thinking about or hasn’t even heard about facilities management? And might? Yeah, head into a career that way? Yeah.
Nirmala Kovvali 46:35
So what I’ll say is, if you’re the kind of person that is curious, you know, wants to learn about a business or wants to be able to support a business had possibly every level, in some ways, you know, you’re the person that come to when the bathrooms clogged, and you’re the person that comes in when they need the 480 volt circuit, right, like, you know, the breath is pretty wide. If you enjoy that, like, you know, I think facilities, technical expertise is absolutely important. And I’m not downplaying that at all, but there are enough people who are really good at their trade, if you can be a person that can make connections and learn things really quickly, you know, enough to be able to say, Oh, wait, you know, what, we should bring in the electrician to do this, and we should not try to do that, right. So to me facilities is if you’re a people person, you are quick at making these kinds of connections, if you can kind of connect one side of the house to the other side of the house, thing, it’s kind of a, it could be a really fun, fun career, I think to dive into. Technically, I also think it’s good to be able to understand the sector of business that you’re interested in supporting, right. So have some, I think, I think it’s always nice to have some connection to like, say, Hey, this is kind of like a fun place to be, as opposed to like, here’s a job that I just want to go and get done and go home at five. So that would be my recommendation. I don’t know if it’s a very good recommendation. But
Greg Owens 48:05
and there’s so many different aspects to it, too. I mean, one one is problem solving, kind of what you lose, or a bit, right. And it’s like, how to be a problem solver on a daily basis. It’s like figuring out constant, constant, never ending. But you bring up a good subject, there’s like, you can also choose as facilities, managers, something you’re very interested in, but you don’t want to do the actual thing. So I’ve met people that are like, in the gaming industry, as a facilities manager, they don’t want to sit there all day long at a computer program, but they love being a part of this entire culture of gaming company, right, and putting together these games that they also love to play. Or there’s a bit of quite a few people that are very, unbelievably scientifically knowledgeable, and have gotten like a job that say like, like, Mission Varnes guy he they’re making. They’re growing meat, right? That kind of thing. Right. And he’s very, he’s incredibly knowledgeable about that. And tire chemisty chemistry and all the things that are going Yes, are going into that business. Right? Are you here with Carbon, right? Like you’re you’ve learned so
Nirmala Kovvali 49:15
important. Yeah, definitely. I feel like, you know, I always say like, six months of Carbons, like, two years somewhere else. I mean, we’re just, we move fast. You know, we, we pride ourselves on being able to do that. And it’s great that we can do that, you know, but you have to, you have to constantly you have to be engaged and make those connections and kind of find those things that, you know, will help the business kind of move forward. Right. Every business is slightly different. But so I think, you know, it could be a really fun career and a really fun field. If you can kind of make those connections and whether we like it or not, I think facilities is always is not a revenue generating side of the business, right? We are always the side of the business that they have to spend into moneyline, in order to keep things running, so we’ll never bring in any profit, right. So the more we know about how the business works, and the more we understand the business, you know, the more valuable we can be to our leadership and kind of, you know, help the company make the right kind of choices when when it comes to spending or taking directions or moving or, you know, all of those things. So, I really play a really critical role more so than most people pay. Yeah. And it’s just knowing that you know, and, and then doing the best you can be valuable to the
Greg Owens 50:32
places that you work out. Oh, fantastic, and, and things you’re excited about here this summer in the near future, for you to work.
Nirmala Kovvali 50:41
Right. So we’ve got, there’s always exciting things that work. We’ve got, you know, new new projects, you know, we’re trying to build some new capabilities. So there’s, there’s some interesting projects that are on my plate to do exactly what I just said, you know, is this the right way to do it? Should we try it this way? Should we like, try this way? So we’re in the process of doing some of those new projects. And I’m excited for the summer, we’re going to be headed to San Diego at the end of the summer. So it’s been a while I apologize. Um, so I go down for and take a break at the end of the month in San Diego. So I’m kind of excited for that over the summer. And then we see I’m hopeful some of this this craziness was settled down here soon.
Greg Owens 51:26
Yeah, me too. for everybody’s benefit, like grew fine. Right? We find our new path and might take a look might be a little bit you know, all the recession worries. tend to have people very awesome. Freaked out right now. Because my mom retired is like worried about
Nirmala Kovvali 51:48
I should call my mom and ask her she’s worried about she’s probably like, what?
Greg Owens 51:51
What recession?
Nirmala Kovvali 51:55
No, it’s kind of chill. But
Greg Owens 51:57
only me. This has been wonderful. I really enjoyed this conversation. Thank you so much for being on the watching paint dry podcast. How can people find out more about you?
Nirmala Kovvali 52:07
Yeah, thank you, Greg, first for having me here. I really appreciate the opportunity. You had actually reached out to someone on my team. And he was like, I don’t like to talk. I remember like to do this. And I was like, what? having a chat with somebody. Cool. But anyway, so I’m glad he passed and I’m glad I got the chance to do it. How about that? Yeah. Yeah, um, you find me on LinkedIn. You know, I’m that’s probably the easiest way to reach out to me professionally, if anyone has any thoughts or questions and be happy to connect that way.
Greg Owens 52:40
Sounds good. Thank you so much, and enjoy your summer plans. I will thank you, you too. Have a great day.
Outro 52:52
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.
