Western’s Facilities Management Customer Service Center has created an email account that students can text or email maintenance issues to.
Jamie Granger, the Supervisor for the Customer Service Center at Facilities Management, played a part in creating the email and wants to get the word out through faculty and staff partners, as well as partnering with housing, she said.
“A great example for a student would be you are in a classroom and part of the chair you are sitting in broke off. A quick text to us and we can dispatch someone to take care of that problem right away,” Granger said.
Maintenance covers plumbers, carpenters, custodians, grounds, roofing, maintenance and basically anyone involved with fixing the campus, Granger said.
Workers on campus do not know what is broken, so the email is convenient and helps maintenance to do their jobs, junior Savannah Gromling said.
“We wanted to keep it as open as possible to as many avenues of communication as we could,” Granger said.
There was no app available, so this was the quickest and easiest way to get input, said Elizabeth Goplerud, the fiscal lead technician of facilities management.
“We love getting pictures along with a text,” Goplerud said.
If students do not know what the problem is, they can send a picture to the email for maintenance to investigate, she said.
Students and faculty can text the email and maintenance will reply and dispatch accordingly based on the issue, Granger said.
Maintenance is looking for a better way to get input from all of campus, faculty, staff and students, Goplerud said.
There are over 150 employees who work in facilities who can take care of maintenance issues, Granger said.
There are multiple posters that the Facilities Management has made to try to spread the word about this email. Posters that read, “Keep Calm and Text fixit@wwu.edu.”
“We tried to keep it directed toward everybody by keeping it fun and simple,” Granger said.
The use of technology to access every part of the campus community will help to keep campus in good shape, Granger said.
