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07/20/2016 08:30 AMWhen he walks into buildings, he notices things. It’s usually not just the color of the paint or the interior design details. Instead his eyes and are drawn to—and his ears are tuned to—the bones of the building. What kind of heating and cooling system does it have? Is it working well? Where is the fire protection and security system? What’s the condition of the building’s structure?
These are the details that Dan Moran records in his mind as he walks. And that’s a key reason why the recent appointment by First Selectman Carl Fortuna, Jr., of Dan as the town’s first part-time facilities manager is such a good fit.
Perhaps Dan’s continuing interest in the details of buildings, their systems and equipment stems from the 23 years he worked as associate chief administrative officer at Central Connecticut State University (CCSU). Central to that role, in addition to responsibility for oversight of public safety, was the responsibility for all campus facilities and buildings. This also put him in a lead role for the campus’s long-range capital planning process through which renovation and new building projects were developed and planned to match the university’s programmatic needs.
Attention to detail came naturally to Dan, whose college degree, earned at CCSU, was in accounting. But his first job at CCSU was not in that field—it was as a police officer. For 12 years, he worked in public safety at CCSU, rising from police officer to director of Public Safety. Only then did he shift into a management role in CCSU operations, starting with the job of director of Property and Asset Control and ending as associate chief administrative officer for the campus. When he retired in 2009, Dan had spent more than 39 years working for the university.
His appreciation for details came to the fore in his work for CCSU.
“In the mid 1980s at CCSU, we didn’t have adequate floor plans. It had never been done. We had to identify the assignable floor space for each department, subtracting out from the gross the space for stairwells, hallways, mechanicals rooms. Without that information, the academic departments had no way to compare themselves or their facilities to that of [other universities],” says Dan.
With that in place, the next step was to assign individual fixed and movable assets—chairs, computers, desks—to individual rooms in each campus building in order to account for and track them.
“We were among the first campuses to use bar code tags and bar-code readers to identify and track assets,” says Dan. “We had four people who took inventory with hand-held readers 24/7 every day, going from building to building,” says Dan. “When I left, we had 3.5 million square feet [of buildings] and 100 acres. The job was a challenge. I was constantly thinking about issues about contractors, construction, maintenance.”
Now, after being retired from facilities management for eight years, Dan is re-entering that world. As the town’s first Facilities Manager, he will be responsible for bringing order and organization to the town’s inventory of assets and also, as he did at CCSU, for planning for and overseeing needed town capital maintenance and renovation projects.
The first project assigned is to work with New England Energy Controls on the energy efficiency upgrades planned for The Kate. This work includes installing new controls for heating and air conditioning and a new energy-efficient boiler and lighting system.
After that, “based on the selectmen’s priorities, I will move on to other projects,” says Dan.
His first pilot project for improving the organization and accuracy of the town’s asset inventory. Initially, he will work with Public Works Director Larry Bonin on the listings for the Public Works Department to improve accountability and tracking for vehicles and equipment.
“We’ll be looking at the list and reconciling the existing listing with field tags. If discrepancies are found, we’ll correct them. The goal is to have an accurate listing of inventory currently in use and an accounting for surplused and traded-in items,” says Dan.
This isn’t Dan’s first involvement with town facilities planning and capital projects, though it is his first paid role. Dan served as chairman of the first two Police Department Facilities Planning and then Building Committee as well as serving on the third and last Police Building Committee. These roles, however, were volunteer.
Dan is clearly excited to be back at work solving problems and working with facilities and inventory issues.