How to Speak Maintenance: The Work that Residents Never See

In today's episode of How to Speak Maintenance, we’re diving into the work residents never see and why it matters more than you think. 
Joining Jason Fein and Becca Ramati is Angel Davila CAMT, CPOI, NAAEI Faculty, National Service Trainer & Performance Manager, Gables Residential. We unpack what it really takes to keep a community running behind the scenes and how to build stronger respect and understanding across your teams. If you work in the office, support operations, or lead a team, this is a conversation you don’t want to miss.

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

SPEAKER_02 0:02

Hello, everybody. Welcome to How to Speak Maintenance. If you're new to our podcast, welcome. We are sponsored by the Texas Apartment Association Education Foundation. We bring guests on onto our show to talk through the maintenance side of property management and how we can help support our maintenance teams. My name is Jason Fine, and I'm the Vice President of Maintenance at Dominium. And I'm here with Becca Romati, who's the Vice President of the Texas Apartment Association Education Foundation. Thank you for putting this together, Becca.

SPEAKER_00 0:33

Sure, no problem, Jason.

SPEAKER_02 0:35

Is there anything you'd like to share with the listeners about TAAEF and anything that's uh upcoming?

SPEAKER_00 0:42

Well, just a reminder for everyone watching about the TAA One conference coming up in Fort Worth uh April 14th through 16th. And for those of you in the DFW area or close enough to drive, we have a great one-day pass as well. And I will put a link in the chat to um of where you can find that. The other thing I wanted to briefly mention is that the TAA Education Foundation, TAAEF, we recently completed a research survey of 1,500 Texans to really understand what their attitudes were about careers in the apartment industry. And we've got some pretty surprising and interesting results. And really what is creating for us is a data-driven roadmap of how employers can better recruit, retain, and advance their people. So I'll also add a link to that report, um, to that executive summary, and we'll have a uh webinar coming up soon, April 29th, with Jason Dorsey, who helped us to complete the research. So check those two things out.

SPEAKER_02 1:49

That sounds like some pretty good information if you're trying to figure out how to close the back door and keep your employees.

SPEAKER_00 1:55

So that's right. And find them too.

SPEAKER_02 1:58

Yes, definitely. Well, our special guest today is Angel De Villa from Gables. He's the National Service Trainer and Performance Manager. And I know that uh you're gonna bring a wealth of knowledge to our call today. So um, would you mind talking to the audience about you know what what drives you, what motivates you, and and what you love about the maintenance industry?

SPEAKER_01 2:20

Yeah, definitely. Well, well, thank you, Jason and Becca, for having me here today. It's really an honor. I've been in the industry for about 20 years now and started off as a groundskeeper, kind of worked my way up through the ranks, uh, make ready, maintenance technician, maintenance supervisor, regional maintenance. Uh, for the past about seven and a half years, I've I've been a national maintenance trainer formerly. I was doing a lot of stuff for apartment associations, um, particularly the Austin Apartment Association. I've traveled the country, I've been to the lower 48, just kind of training different associations, uh certification courses. And what really drives me is when I first started off in the industry as a groundskeeper, I saw everybody around me, my supervisors, they were doing air conditioning installs, they were doing water heater repairs, and it was just really motivating and inspired me to learn as much as I could about the industry. And I was like, well, that looks pretty fun. I'm cleaning the pool, but this other guy's over here with some torches. And so um, training is really near and dear to my heart, and just seeing the light bulb go off in somebody's head whenever they can understand a you know complex subject matter. So that's what really drives me and motivates me to be a trainer, and that's why I love what I do. I wake up every day and I'm excited.

SPEAKER_02 3:34

So that's great. Yeah, you've been a trainer for quite some time. I think it was Monarch before, correct? Yes, sir, correct. That's awesome. Yep. No, without training, what these our maintenance teams aren't gonna advance and grow and be able to service our residents. So you're you're doing the God's work right there. So nice job. Thank you. Well, today's topic is about the work that residents don't see. So, what work or services do our maintenance employees provide, and the residents may not even recognize are happening behind the scenes that keeps the property operational and or ensures the residents are well taken care of? So I wanted to start off talking about preventative maintenance. Uh, preventative maintenance is is important, and I I think that a lot of times the residents don't see that because it's not a ticket that they put in or it's not uh an issue that they had with their apartment. So can you talk about like preventative maintenance and what your thoughts are behind it and the importance behind it?

SPEAKER_01 4:34

Yeah, definitely. I mean, I think preventative maintenance is is really paramount in our industry. It's better to be proactive than reactive. And so when we could catch something ahead of time, whether that's going to be that boiler that's about to fail, that's you know, coming up on 25 years, uh maybe it's a high rise that has a chiller, strainer baskets haven't been cleaned out. But more on the on the garden style communities, it's really about maintaining our capital equipment, you know, taking a look at our HVAC, so cleaning the condenser coils, you know, taking a look at our evaporator coils. I always tell people when it comes to air conditioning, there's three main components of it, right? You have your electrical, you have your refrigerant, and then I always say airflow, airflow, airflow. So it's not just about swapping out filters, it's when it's possible getting in there, you know, cleaning out those return air grills, getting underneath there, um, getting a shot back, uh, but really just checking for everything, you know, your water heaters, your plumbing fixtures, any of the wet areas, and identifying issues before they arise. Um, same thing if we're talking about external inspections, you know, taking a look at gutters and downspouts. Do we have any areas where we could potentially have water intrusions? I think all too often, as maintenance, we kind of focus on the inside of the apartment home and we kind of forget about the exterior where we could have some other uh potential issues arise. So preventative maintenance, it's it's gonna save money. You know, it's gonna decrease our after hours emergency calls. And I think a lot of the times, like you said, Jason, uh residents they don't really see that aspect.

SPEAKER_02 6:08

So definitely. I mean, I'm a big fan of it's it's raining outside, you got a torrential downpour, maybe putting on some some booties and uh a rain jacket and walking around the property and seeing how the water's flowing around your buildings, right?

SPEAKER_01 6:21

Yes, sir. Absolutely, Jason.

SPEAKER_02 6:23

Yeah. For you know, our listeners, if you're a community manager, it's important that you're you're knowing about these things because as community managers are walking around the property, they can be able to help identify opportunities. I mean, what are your thoughts on you know the bushes around the condensing units and how you know community manager, you know, the impact they could have by calling the landscapers and saying, hey, the bushes are getting too close to the condensing units. Like you said, airflow, right? We're not getting that heat out of there. Like, what are your thoughts on that?

SPEAKER_01 6:54

Yeah, I I think it's really important, you know, um, to inspect what we expect. We have a lot of expectations as community managers, as regional maintenance supervisors. So, what I used to do whenever I was a regional maintenance supervisor, and I'd go out for my quarterly audits or my monthly visits, I would not only ask the maintenance supervisor to come with me and walk the property, I would ask the community manager. And so, just as you're stating, we would take a look at the bushes on the outside. Um, again, any kind of drainage issues, any kind of like problems that may arise ahead of time. Um, so they would come with me to go walk at least three of the vacant units, take a look at the curb appeal. And it was so much easier doing it that way than just sending this long list of, you know, a honey-to-do list. It was better to have both people with me. So definitely being proactive and taking a look at your contracts is going to help out as a community manager.

SPEAKER_00 7:46

Well, and and Angel, you know, a lot of this we don't want, you know, we want the residents to never know about any of these in some ways because that means it didn't affect them and it didn't interrupt their lives and their days. But, you know, this kind of boils down to a communications issue more than anything else. So do you have any sort of, you know, um things that have been really successful in sharing this, what this work looks like and and why we want why it's so important with both the residents but also the office teams?

SPEAKER_01 8:19

Yeah, definitely. I mean, I think communication is is key when it comes to that. Um, getting kind of back to some of the curb appeal, I used to implement at many of the communities what's called patio partners. And with patio partners, it was really great because you would take one office associate and one maintenance team member. They were given a set of buildings that they would walk maybe once a week, once a month, depending upon the size of the property. Um, so let's say the lease in agent one and maintenance tech one had buildings one through five. The next two had buildings six through ten. So you're getting as many eyes and ears out there, uh, but also pertaining to your question about the residents, we would send out really nice letters in advance letting them know hey, this is to improve the overall curb appeal. It's to make the community safer. And it really took about probably a couple of months, maybe six to eight weeks. And before we knew it, the residents no longer had those barbecue pits on their patios, no more trash left by the front door. Uh, you know, so it was much better for the whole community as a whole, um, keeping it safe for office and maintenance alike. So definitely sending out that communication to the residents. And after a while, we started getting thank you notes. You know, hey, thank you so much. The property looks a lot better. We appreciate what you've done to the landscaping, um, and just really build that cohesion amongst the all three parties maintenance, office, and residents.

SPEAKER_02 9:42

Great. What do you what are your thoughts on the office team allocating time, helping the maintenance teams allocate time for preventative maintenance? Like, I don't have you seen any situations where the the office team helped facilitate preventative maintenance programs?

SPEAKER_01 9:57

I mean, I would say to an extent, yes. Uh, definitely sending out, you know, email correspondents ahead of time, letting them know. Um, I know earlier before the call, we talked about you know leaving filters by the door. So that could be something that could be a little bit more if the maintenance team is struggling on their workload, and let's say the office might not have as much to do, it would really help us as maintenance if they did put the filters by the door, we'll go in there and install them. Um, you know, same thing. I know a lot of the communities these days, they're the locks are taking batteries, you know, leaving the batteries right by the front door, uh, leaving a filter right there. Uh, I used to use the blue dye tablets to make sure that the toilets were not leaking from the tank to the bowl. So anything that could help us out would would be extremely uh we'd be extremely grateful. So yeah.

SPEAKER_02 10:44

Well the maintenance teams are definitely very busy, so it's important to to make sure that we we make time for these things versus just firefighting all the time. Yes. We kind of talked about inspections before we we got we jumped on the call. You know, if we're not walking these mechanical rooms and inspecting the systems, not just doing the provo the preventative maintenance, but also just inspecting to make sure it's operating you know the right way. Like what are your thoughts on inspections and maintenance teams and and how how to make sure that those get done?

SPEAKER_01 11:15

Yeah, definitely. So I I think ideally in the perfect world on a quarterly basis, we're doing these inspections, right? We're going taking a look at our mechanical systems, you know, whether that's a boiler, a chiller. Um, but I think that one of the best ways that we could accomplish that is by having sister properties help out. If you're in an area where you have, let's say, eight to ten communities, having that sister property come and help out and kind of blitz on that, because I know that a lot of the times we get really busy, right? We're over inundated with work orders, with emergencies, we have our make readies. So there's so many things that are going on. What I've done in the past is either utilize sister properties, or if the organization's long uh large enough, using roving teams that come out and help out. Uh back at Monarch, we used to have dedicated national rovers, and they would come help out with our annual inspections. So we would have our annual fire inspection where we're putting in the fire stops, we're checking the smoke detectors, we're taking a look at the combination, the CO detectors. Um, we would even be in there with CO readers, you know, just to make sure that we didn't have X amount of part per million. And with these crews, they would come in and be able to help us out. So even if that's not possible, you you really have to squeeze it in. If you don't have sister properties, it could be, you know, there's a saying, you know, how do you eat an elephant? It's one bite at a time.

SPEAKER_02 12:38

So well, definitely. I mean, if if you don't have the ability to partner with the sister community or have a roving team come take care of it for you, making sure that the on-site team com has time to uh complete those inspections is important, right? Because they might, if they don't have a lot of time and they have a lot of tickets and turns, we get we run into the issue of somebody just just checking the boxes and saying that they completed it, and we don't want that either.

SPEAKER_01 13:04

So yes, sir. And and one thing I want to add to that is um you could also stagger out your schedule. So you could consider having somebody come in Tuesday through Saturday, you know, and somebody else may be able to do Sunday through Thursday. So that way, at least during that preventative maintenance time, they you you're creating that time to make sure that you could accommodate everything. So again, if you don't have sister properties where there's a will, there's a way, we just have to get it completed.

SPEAKER_02 13:30

So I think as an organization, it's just important to set the standard and say preventative maintenance is going to happen. Completing inspections is going to happen. We can do it together as a team, we can allocate time for it, just like you said, you know, but one bite at a time, we can get through it. So it's important. What are your thoughts on after hours work, after hours emergencies?

SPEAKER_01 13:53

So, after hours emergencies, again, what I used to do a while back, I was a service manager for a thousand seventy-two unit property. Wow. And it was really, it was really quite the undertaking. Uh, there was a lot to do. We had a lot of after-hours emergencies. So, once again, I kind of staggered my shift out to make it to where I had an early shift team and a late shift team. So basically, I would have certain groups that would come in from eight to five. I would have other people come in at 10 to 6 or 10 to 7, and that really helped distribute the workload. Uh, every single day at the end of the day, uh, I learned this from being in the military, being in the Marines, we would have a daily debriefing. And so in the Marine Corps, you'd go on a mission. Whenever you got done with it, you talked about what went well, what we could have done better. Because I had such a large group and so many work orders and make readies and turns, the last 15 minutes of the shop every day, um, I would be there about 10 minutes before then, check all the emergencies, look for everything, the fire, flood, blood, whatever we couldn't get to that day. My two late shift team members, I'd say, hey, late shift, let's go ahead and handle these emergencies. Um, another way that we could prevent things, like you said, preventative maintenance, uh taking a look at things before they go down, but also really setting that expectation with the resident. So during move-in, you know, hey, I mean, I know a lot of the times we're signing all these addendums, right? Whenever they're first moving in. But one of the things that we should really be doing is talking to them about what constitutes an emergency and what does not, you know, so um, and really just resident education. You know, I know that sometimes we want instant gratification, it's 100 degrees outside. Somebody's left that AC off the whole day because they heard on YouTube that it saves energy. No, you know, we could let them know, hey, let's let's keep the AC at about 76, 78 degrees. As you know, air conditioners don't cool, they displace heat. So it's going to take much longer for that AC to cool down. So the more resident education that we could give, whether that's the flyers, maybe it's a monthly, quarterly meetup, hey, come meet our maintenance team, and we could talk to them about ways, tips, and tricks to uh to prevent these emergencies.

SPEAKER_02 16:03

Yeah. I like what you talked about when you said uh you had the staggered staff. I think it it one of the struggles that a lot of maintenance teams run into is a resident comes home at six o'clock and then they say, Oh, I forgot to put that service request in, or oh, I just found an emergency. So having that that staff member that's still there after six possibly could stop an emergency call to the on-call employee, so which helps with morale, right?

SPEAKER_01 16:30

Absolutely. Yeah, that's crazy. It's always Friday at five o'clock that the AC stops working.

SPEAKER_02 16:37

You're not wrong. So let's talk about turnovers and preparing for turns and your experience. You know, like can you walk through some of the best practices that you've encountered when uh preparing for turns and um getting apartments ready?

SPEAKER_01 16:53

Yes, sir, certainly. So, one of the best ways that I like to do it, um, a lot of companies do this, but doing a pre-move out inspection, each organization is a little bit different. Um, back at Monarch, we did it 60 days ahead of time, which seems like a lot. Um, or you know, you could do it two weeks out, one month out. But doing that pre-move out inspection is going to help you indicate the major components that need to be done, right? Carpet replacement, is it a full paint? Is this going to be a touch-up? Do we have to do some resurfacing? And as you know, Jason, it's it's far easier to cancel a service in the middle of the summer than just to schedule. All of our vendors are extremely busy, they have a lot going on. Uh, I worked at another place way back in the day called Rainier Properties, and we had these special dishwashers. I don't know why, you just, you know, this wasn't a regular dishwasher, it wasn't shaped like a cube, but it had this little uh this little indention in it. And for whatever reason, there was a long lead time to get those. So it's gonna help you to be able to order those really unique items uh that might take quite a bit of time. Uh, we even used to use these stainless steel blinds, or at least that's what they look like, and it would take like six weeks to fabricate. So that's a really, really important reason to get that done. Uh, doing the pre-moveout inspections and really walking with the resident, letting them know, like, hey, we're not here to try to make a million dollars off you. We're just really trying to pinpoint items that need to be ordered in advance, things that need to get done, and make that community home ready for the next person. Um, another thing is again, really inspecting it. So I've always followed what's called the rule of right. You know, um, I do that as as far as when I came up as a make ready technician, that's how I was trained. I would walk in that unit, write down my list of parts. This is what I needed. I'll get my 55-gallon trash bag, put all my parts in there, I'd come back. Okay, door stop needed here, light bulb right here. And that's how I did the turn. And as I grew through my positions, um, that's how I inspect my turns, also. Rule of right. If you want to be crazy, you can take it on the left. But um, that's just a really good way. Have as many eyes on it as possible. What I've done in the past is I've had the maintenance supervisor walk it first. After the supervisor has walked it, the property manager, and even the leasing agent that leased it. When they're doing their little sparkle bucket clean, making sure everything's solid, have the leasing team go in there as well. Have as many eyes as possible, and definitely a checklist for the maintenance team to really go by.

SPEAKER_02 19:27

Yeah. No, I I like what you talked about. Get the trash bag, get the list, put a big pile of parts in the bit in the middle of the apartment and just go to town, right? I I think uh I had a manager one time that said, you know, if each trip to the maintenance shop takes ten minutes, you know, to get on your golf cart and drive down and pick something up. If you if you go get six parts, that's an hour. You know, so it's important to kind of be able to allocate your time out and make sure you're as successful as possible.

SPEAKER_01 19:55

So Yes, sir. I mean, there's there's a lot of windshield time. Whether you're in a golf cart or if you're multi-site and you're having to drive property to property, that's a lot of windshield time that you're wasting. So another good thing you could do is if you are multi-site, have little sub shops. Have little small sub shops. Use that little garage that nobody's using. Put the parts that you know are going to be needed for that particular property, and uh it's gonna make it so much easier than having to run around.

SPEAKER_02 20:22

But yeah, I like that. Well, one other thing I wanted to bring up too is the longer you're at a property, you're you're a maintenance employee at a community, you kind of learn what are the things that we kind of keep running into with service requests, right? Whether it's tubs leaking or it's backups or it's you know, whatever, that that during that turn, that's your opportunity to be able to kind of address some of those larger scale issues that you've been having, you know, throughout the property. So have you seen any success with that in the past? You know, adding some preventative maintenance to the actual turn, not just taking care of door stops and knobs and things.

SPEAKER_01 20:58

Oh, absolutely. Um, you know, a while back when I was working new construction, um, you know, you get that rotten egg smell on the on the water heaters, right? Uh so that was one of the preventative things that we would do in every single turn is we would actually purge those faucets, let everything run, you know, down into the shower, every single faucet. And uh, as you mentioned, just really collecting that analytical information. Um, and you could even do that during the PM, during the terms, kind of rate the condition of you know what that appliance is. Right now we're starting to transition into Sweet Spot. Uh it's a platform that we're utilizing, and it really helps us to keep up with all of the tracking, the inventory so we could catch items, like you said, uh before they before they start going down on us.

SPEAKER_02 21:42

Oh, great. Well, Becca, have you seen any questions or anything coming up in the chat at all?

SPEAKER_00 21:47

No real questions, but as we're sort of getting ready to wrap up, Angel, you talked before we went live about sort of the importance of modeling respect from leadership down. And I think that's real relevant. For both the residents and the office staff, if you want to touch on that for a sec.

SPEAKER_01 22:04

Yeah, definitely. So modeling respect is just very important, you know, when it comes to the way that our residents perceive us. So really working cohesively. You know, I know a lot of the times, whenever it comes in between office and maintenance, sometimes it's like, let's say a resident's in the office complaining. And, you know, typically we call people by their titles. Hey, our service manager is going to go fix that today. Or, hey, this technician's going to come. You know, it's it's really great to address somebody by their name, you know, that kind of puts a face to the name. Uh, I was in this leadership course many years ago called the Dell Carnegie Leadership Experience. And one of the things they told us in there was that one of the things that stuck out to me in the Golden Rules is um a person's name to them is the sweetest sound in any language. And so by just talking to people, you know, how many times do we want to be somewhere, you know, we don't want to be told, hey you? It's like, hey, Becca or hey, Jason, I understand. So really just displaying that with our residents and everybody from the CEO to the investors to the to the groundskeeper, you know, this is all an equal contribution and should be treated with equal respect. So um definitely that's one of the ways that we could do that and just being inclusive. So, you know, having daily huddles, uh, maybe having the mainten supervisor um conduct a safety meeting, right? So really working cohesively as a team is uh is paramount to make sure that everybody sees that we respect one another.

SPEAKER_02 23:34

So that's great. Uh you know, last month we talked about recognition. Uh, you know, in your notes that you sent us and you know, before we got on this call, you have some pretty cool things about celebrating wins. And you mind hitting on some of those bullets that you wrote us?

SPEAKER_01 23:49

Yes, sir. Yeah. So celebrating wins, um, you know, that could be as simple as you know, sending out a newsletter, right? Um, you know, let's say, hey, this is our maintenance hero, our maintenance legend of the quarter. You know, I know that you know NAA has something like that. So if your team is doing something and you know that that they've won an award, whatever, you know, display that with the residents, let them know what's going on. It's the small victories. Um, that's one of the ways that we could do that. It could even be newsletters. You know, hey, meet our maintenance tech of the month and they could talk about not just their experience in multifamily, maybe some of the hobbies, maybe some of the things that they like to do. Um, you know, and also incorporating maintenance into events as well. So, you know, if you've been to Home Depot, you've seen those little workshops where you know you build a birdhouse or build a car. You know, set setting that up. So uh community events are are really important as well, and that helps out. It's it's again showing that we're working together.

SPEAKER_02 24:46

So that's great. Well, that's a wrap for today's episode. Uh huge thank you to you, Angel, for sharing your your insights and your your experiences. I know that the listeners are are gonna gain a ton of knowledge from it and some new ideas possibly about how to be able to work with their maintenance teams and help support them. So um, if you or anybody that you know is interested in any of our previous conversations, you can find us on the go as a podcast wherever you download podcasts, as well as on Facebook and LinkedIn. So thank you, Becca, for once again putting this together.

SPEAKER_00 25:21

Sure, on YouTube and anywhere you listen to your podcast content, you can find us there as well.

SPEAKER_01 25:28

Awesome.

SPEAKER_00 25:29

And we'll be back next month, April twenty second, uh, for another episode of How to Speak Maintenance. Thanks everyone.

SPEAKER_01 25:37

Thank you.