In this today's episode, Stephanie Skordas from Ready 2 Respond discusses the critical importance of in-house emergency water response capabilities for facility managers. Joined by her colleagues and industry experts Mike Redd and Michael Haws, they delve into the significant benefits, common challenges, and essential equipment needed to effectively manage water damage events in your facility. Together they share their extensive experience and provide actionable advice on building a robust response plan, selecting the right equipment, and training your team.
In this today's episode, Stephanie Skordas from Ready 2 Respond discusses the critical importance of in-house emergency water response capabilities for facility managers. Joined by her colleagues and industry experts Mike Redd and Michael Haws, they delve into the significant benefits, common challenges, and essential equipment needed to effectively manage water damage events in your facility. Together they share their extensive experience and provide actionable advice on building a robust response plan, selecting the right equipment, and training your team.
Resources Mentioned:
It's important to realize that with water losses, the first few hours after water intrusion determines the amount of damage. The quicker you can start to mitigate, stop it, get rid of the water.
It saves you damage. It saves money on the backend.
Host: Welcome to Connected FM, a podcast connecting you to the latest insights, tools, and resources to help you succeed in facility management. This podcast is brought to you by IFMA, the leading professional association for facility managers. If you're ready to grow your network and advance in your career, go to IFMA.org to get started. In today's episode, Stephanie Skordos from Ready 2 Respond discusses the critical importance of in house emergency water response capabilities for facility managers. She's joined by her colleagues and industry experts, Mike Redd and Michael Hawes. As they delve into the significant benefits, common challenges, and essential equipment needed to effectively manage water damage events in your facility.[00:01:00]
They share their extensive experience and provide actionable insights and advice on building a robust response plan, selecting the right equipment, and training your team. Now, let's get into it.
Stephanie Skordas: Every day, facilities face the threat of water damage events, whether it's large scale weather emergencies, flooding from frozen water pipes, sink overflows, or human error. You've probably experienced a time where you had water in your facility. in places where it shouldn't be. Chances are you've called a contractor to help you with those water damage events, which affects your budget, maybe even your insurance deductible.
I'm Stephanie Skordas with Ready 2 Respond, and your facility may be able to fully handle those emergencies in house or start the process of extracting water while waiting for your contractor to respond. I'm joined by my colleagues, Mike Redd and Michael [00:02:00] Hawes. Mike Redd, can you briefly introduce yourself and tell me about your background in facilities management and emergency response protocols?
Mike Redd: Stephanie, Michael, thank you very much. So I've coach supported trained and work alongside facilities managers on water and fire losses for roughly 15 years. I started my journey with legend brands about 10 years ago. And then recently. I was watching a podcast or not a podcast, but a part of if my Seattle panel discussion about a month ago.
That's my local chapter. So shout out to them. But on that panel, they talked about the importance of having a construction background, how helpful it is for facilities. And so I started out my career in construction. So that's a little bit about me.
Stephanie Skordas: Awesome. Michael has same question to you.
Michael Haws: Certainly. I'm currently a member of the Legend Brands R2R assessment team. Prior to that, I spent over a decade in facility management. I had the opportunity to manage everything from custodial and [00:03:00] landscaping, to maintenance and construction, safety, health, and compliance, working in local government, federal government, retail, and higher education spaces.
I'm excited to now be on the side of helping and teaching others how to respond to these water events.
Stephanie Skordas: Wonderful. All right. So Mike Redd, let me get started with you. So what are the benefits to facility managers and organizations for bringing emergency water response capabilities in house?
Mike Redd: That's a great question to start. So let me share the experience of a hospital system in Canada. Year after year, they had ongoing issues with bursting frozen pipes due to a combination of very old buildings and very cold winters. They were constantly filing insurance claims and calling in water restoration contractors.
Eventually this had gone on for so long that the deductibles kept going up, the costs kept going up, and then the insurance care actually finally said no more. We're canceling your water damage policy. We're sorry. Then things got [00:04:00] really expensive for the hospital. They're paying for everything themselves.
So to try and control costs, they decided to to form an in house water damage response team. And so they got a bunch of resources together. They provided the training for themselves and then they successfully implemented and got this program up and running. And then after about a year of doing it, they looked back to see what they discovered, how things might've been different.
And this is what they found. First, they experienced a roughly 40 percent savings over what they were paying before. Then also, they realize that they're reoccupying their spaces twice as fast. So, the surgical suites, the patient rooms, they were getting them, the work done faster and turning them back, turning them around so they could be occupied.
And then they were able to respond quicker than when they were calling in outside contractors. minutes rather than hours in some cases. And it's important to realize that with water losses, the first few hours after water intrusion determines the amount of damage. The quicker you [00:05:00] can start to mitigate, stop it, get rid of the water.
It saves you damage. It saves money on the backend. And so the quick response time helped them prevent secondary damage, such as mold. It saved structural materials and it stopped the water from spreading. And finally because they were doing the work in house, the hospital protocols for health and safety were more strictly adhered to because it was their employees and they provided their training.
So really the, the benefits that organizations have from bringing this kind of work in house, it's first provides you options. Do you call a contractor or is it something you can handle themselves? Or is it part of it that we can handle ourselves in house? And second, it'll save money over what their current annual spend is.
And then third, it gives you the option to complete the work easier, faster, and an often safer.
Stephanie Skordas: Awesome. All right. So Michael Haws, what are some common scenarios facility managers should be prepared for? I know you've seen a lot in your [00:06:00] career.
Michael Haws: So I would generally try to categorize the things you're looking for in three general topics. The first being weather related. Are you in a region where you need to worry about frozen pipes bursting, flooding the building, or are you on the side of the spectrum where you're more worried more about the humidity outside or tropical rainstorms just adding moisture to your environment, where an open door, an open window suddenly becomes a catastrophe.
The second we look at infrastructure do you have an aging building? Are you seeing problems with overflowing sinks or plumbing fixtures? Are you seeing failures of Drinking fountains, things of that nature. And then finally the human related errors. Are your staff starting sinks, filling up mop buckets and walking away?
Are students in your hallways disrupting the fire sprinkler heads in the ceiling. And once you get an idea of. Though, what your customers are presenting to you, what the environment is presenting to you, you start getting an idea of what you need to be prepared for. [00:07:00]
Stephanie Skordas: Okay. Follow up question to you, what are the first steps facilities should take to develop and hone a response plan?
Michael Haws: Sure. I think the first thing is identify what historically have been your problems and what are the problems that you believe to be coming down in the future. From there, you can get an idea of what scope you need to be prepared to handle.
Some facilities are lucky in that their events are limited to generally 10 or 15 square feet from a frozen drain line on an AC unit. Some units are dealing with much larger cleanup, and so once you've identified, you start to look at the scope of what you can do and then start to see your response capability with your staff.
Is this something where you have one person you're deploying? Is this something where you could have a team of five or six? And that'll inform the next decisions for equipment for training and your response plan.
Stephanie Skordas: Interesting. So what are some of the common challenges or obstacles that you see facilities facing when they're building a response [00:08:00] program and how can they overcome them?
Michael Haws: Certainly. The first thing that we often see is quite, quite common facilities are responding to water events as a custodial issue. They're sending custodial personnel and custodial equipment to try to do something that's outside the realm of what they normally do. We often have great custodial teams out there with great training, but the tools are designed to pick up the amount of water that they're putting down.
If you're grabbing shop vacs, if you're grabbing carpet cleaners the first real step to solve that is to get the tools that are the correct ones for the job. Once you have something that can properly extract large quantities of water, you can pick up that wet water while it's on the ground before it's saturated your building materials.
Once it has saturated the building materials, you could trust your internal BAS system and HVAC controls. You could put out some small box fans, or you could go the route of putting in the commercial grade equipment that your contractor is going to bring out when you call them and be able to handle that in house.
[00:09:00] Beyond the equipment being in place, really having a plan for your staff to know what to do. We all on our teams have that person who always gets the call when something goes wrong. And making sure that that Ron or David knows exactly what to do. Having that plan written down so that when they're on vacation, someone else can step in and fill in.
To make sure that we're not creating more hassle for us on the back end.
Stephanie Skordas: Yeah, really great ideas. So, Mike Redd, what are some resources and equipment that facility managers should consider having on site to support those response efforts that we're talking about?
Mike Redd: So, let's start with the equipment. You should consider having professional grade flood extractors, air movers, dehumidifiers, portable air scrubbers, and moisture detection instruments specifically designed to handle water damage events.
Flood extractors. We'll start with those. They physically remove the standing water. Now extraction is 500 times more effective. Then just letting standing [00:10:00] water evaporate on its own. Then using fans or air movers, you blow across wet surfaces with those, and then it creates air movement, and that air movement draws out the water moisture through evaporation into the air.
And then once that evaporated water evaporates, Moisture is airborne. Then dehumidifiers capture that moisture, pump it out a hose and then goes down the drain. Then you use air scrubbers to control the indoor air quality while doing the work, because you're going to be kicking up lots of dust and debris while you're doing this work and you're blowing across surfaces.
So it really is a protection for all. The occupants, the workers to control that to control the air as well. And then finally, you would use moisture detection equipment to scientifically determine, you know, how wet dry surfaces are, how much moisture is in the air. It's, it's important to use that type of equipment to detect it rather than just taking your hand and sticking it at the wall and going, Oh, that feels wet or that feels dry.
And also realize there's a big difference between [00:11:00] what you can buy at a big box retailer and the commercial equipment available from your favorite MRO distributor. Here, here's one example. So I work with facility toward the end of COVID back when they were occupants were coming back in the structure and they wanted to really provide a safe, you know, breathing environment for everyone.
So they wanted to improve the air quality. So they went out and they purchased the cheapest. Least expensive possible air purifiers from a local store that they could find. And then they, they brought these, these units back in, they set them up in the, in the office building. Turned them on and then started checking the air quality a couple of days later and found that it actually got worse.
These cheap off brand air movers were filtering very little. So basically all they were doing was just blowing air off the floor, up into the air. So it's real important that you use equipment that's tested, designed to do the job at hand. So a couple of suggestions on how to determine what. what kind of equipment you should be using.
First [00:12:00] suggestion is talk to your local water restoration contractors about the equipment they're using. Then consult with your MRO distributor on what they recommend. Just mentioned talking to contractors. Another resource that you should have is have a valued partner, a contractor that, you know, and trust one that you can call in when you have a large scale loss one that you can call and ask for advice or help.
That's what they're there for. And then Something that, that Mike mentioned or Michael, I want to go a little more detail on it is, you know, all our facilities that have this go to person that just knows the procedures when, when a loss happens I'm going to call her Donna, something happens.
There's a pipe break, water's flowing. Oh, let's go call Donna. Donna knows, Oh shoot. Donna's off today. What do we do now? She's on vacation, right? So you need to, to take whatever, whoever the Donna. Is in your facility and harness that knowledge and that training that they have and write it down, incorporate that into your standard operating procedures.
Then when a loss occurs the [00:13:00] team knows they go running. They're not going to say, where's Donna? They're going to go running and go, okay, where's our procedures? Let's open the book and find out what we do, where the water, where the water, pardon me, shutoffs are, you know, do we call the fire department to let them know?
Do we, where's the fans that we have?
Stephanie Skordas: Yeah, excellent point. You know, you want to get that institutional knowledge out of somebody's head and get it down on paper so it can be shared around. So let me ask you this follow up question. You know, what references or other resources are available that facility managers can access for help in assessing and developing their in house capabilities?
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Mike Redd: Well, to state the obvious, IFMA offers fantastic professional training resources. Those that are watching this, obviously, you know about them already. Then I would consider two U. S. Government websites, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention CDC site and the Environmental Protection Agency EPA site.
Both offer fantastic resources and helpful information for water damage, including safety guidelines. So it's as simple as going on and just googling CDC water damage, and then the little AI algorithm kicks in and it pulls up really good information that talks about the steps involved with water damage, the safety precautions and gives you some other valuable resources.
And then another valuable resource is the IICRC. That stands for the Institute of Inspection, Cleaning, and Restoration [00:15:00] Certification. It's an international standards body that came up with guidelines, regulations, and training that all the reputable restoration companies nationwide and worldwide, they use and I can help any of the us on this call can help connect you with those type of resources as well.
Another resource to look at is your own facilities history of water damage events. How are they handled previously? What were the results? You know, who is involved? And that's just another valuable resource that you can have as well.
Stephanie Skordas: Wonderful. Great answers. All right, Michael Haws, I'm coming over to you now.
So, what is the most critical message or takeaway that you would like facility managers to remember when it comes to bringing emergency water response in house?
Michael Haws: I think the most important thing to remember and to take away from this is that whether you are on day one of this journey to bring water response in house, or whether you're a seasoned veteran who's been refining and improving your process for a decade there's going [00:16:00] to come a time when there's too much water for you to handle in house.
And we need to be prepared to make that call. As a facility manager, I would challenge you to go out and figure out what is within scope for your team today. Is it two rooms? Is it 300 square feet? Whatever the metric is, if you know what it is and what your team can take care of, then when you exceed that limit, you can get help coming as soon as possible.
The ultimate goal to save money, to save time is to keep this in house. But at the end of the day, we need to keep our customers and our facilities safe, and sometimes that means making the call. So make sure you know where that line is drawn.
Stephanie Skordas: Good answer. Mike Redd, same to you. What is the most critical message or takeaway?
Mike Redd: First, I just want to thank the IFMA audience watching this or listening to this. Thank you. You know, setting aside time to educate yourselves says a lot about you and your commitment to your work and, and furthering your your FM [00:17:00] craft. I want you to know that bringing emergency water response in house is easier than you might actually think.
With training and practice and the commitment at all levels of your organization, you can make it happen. I'll give you an example. My daughter is attending college right now. She's home for the summer. But back in September, she's living on campus at a dorm. She called me in the middle of the night because water losses for some reason always happened in the middle of the night.
She called me in the middle of the night in a panic because water was pouring in under the roof. Under the door to her dorm room. And she's like, dad, what do I do? Who do I call? So I gave her some quick tips on, on things you can do to start to mitigate that loss. I had her call the call facilities manager to see how they could respond quickly and bless their hearts.
The school did send over a worker with a mop and a box fan. Now this was on carpet by the way. And so my daughter is, Is painfully watching this, this poor gentleman with a mop trying to control the water. And actually [00:18:00] my daughter's the one that said, Hey, let's cut off the source first. And by the way, it took over an hour for that one worker to arrive.
And actually my daughter did a lot of coaching to help that situation and, and help make that loss. Not as severe as it could have been. So based on that experience, I started a conversation with the school. I went in there and helped them develop an SOP. I trained the Provided them equipment and tool recommendations.
It was not a hard process for them to implement some of the stuff, but through their dedication, their time and the effort, the school put forth, it allowed it allowed them to be better prepared for future type water losses, you know, feel free to use me as a resource connected with me through LinkedIn and ask me questions anytime I'm here to help.
Thank you.
Stephanie Skordas: Wonderful. That's a good point. Sometimes you don't know what you don't know, and that little bit of education can make a big difference. Mike Redd, Michael Haws, wonderful talking to you today. Thank you so much for your time and appreciate all the tips you've shared with us for facility managers about [00:19:00] bringing their emergency water response in house.
Michael Haws: Thank you, Stephanie. It was a pleasure.
Host: Thank you so much for listening. I hope you really enjoyed this episode. And as always, please don't forget to rate, review, and subscribe to the podcast for more incredible content.