|
How a Complaint is Processed Through Facilities
by Andrew Chapman
The system will handle it
|
| Student Housing |
| Dorm | Built | Ren. | Capacity |
Turner
Brown
Edna Moore
Jarvis House
Stroup
Huffman
Myers
Fox
Gibson
Townhouses
Apts. A
Apts. B & C
Bailey Mt.
|
1924
1925
1938
1940
1941
1947
1955
1963
1969
1972
1974
1976
2006
|
2002
2002
1988
2005
1989
|
58 Men
42 Women
100W
20M&W
130W
128M
146M
118W
65M
48M&W
24M&W
40M&W
105M&W
|
|
The heat in your room just went out. Your hall light died. When you notify your
resident assistant, your complaint begins a trip through the nerve system
of the Mars Hill College Facilities Department.
This is how the process works:
The RA calls Cindy Whitt at the Student Life Office, Extension 1253. She types
your complaint onto an Excel spreadsheet and emails it to the secretaries at
facilities, Marie Brown and Diane Coffey.
This is an upgrade. Last year, Whitt would have called the secretaries and
read the complaints, using “transport numbers” that were assigned
to each one. “This could be confusing," she says, "and sometimes I would
mispronounce transport numbers, and the odd complaint might be lost in the confusion.”
In a typical week Whitt says she might hear about two or three stopped-up toilets
(recently a cell phone got flushed), five to six backed-up sinks, several burned-out lights, a shower head or two, and a request for a box of toilet paper.
Once the orders get to Brown and Coffey, they fill out work orders and place
them in the right supervisor’s mailbox. If it happens to be an emergency,
such as a leaking toilet, the secretaries at facilities will call the plumbers
directly and let them know the situation, as well as put a work order in the
corresponding supervisor’s mailbox.
If it is not an emergency, which it usually is not, the supervisor
will then get the work order out of his mailbox. According to Coffey, “There
is no big lapse of time during which supervisors are away from their mailboxes.”
Once the supervisor has the work order, he distributes it to his employees
who then complete the job. After they have done the job, the employee signs
it, the supervisor signs it, and then it is filed.
“If parts are needed, Donald Edwards, who is a supervisor, orders
them, or the individual employee does,” says Coffey. The amount of time needed
to process those orders and get the parts could be a possible explanation of why some students have to complain two or even three times.
If a student complains to Cindy Whitt a second time about the same problem,
she sends another Excel spreadsheet to facilities, but this time she makes a note
that it is the second time that the problem is being reported. Whitt also copies it to
Residence Life Director Todd Oldenburg and sometimes Dean Craig Goforth, noting that
this is the second time, so that they will see what the problem is and see if
they can be of any assistance.
“There is no way to track a complaint once it gets to facilities,”
says Oldenburg. “We never know the status of anything and how many days
it is going to take, or if there is a back order on a needed part without actually
calling facilities and asking.”
Once he asks facilities, it takes a while because the people at facilities
have to ask around before they give Oldenburg an answer.
Student Life has been able to document complaints now with the implementation
of the new e-mail system. “In the past, a phone call was made and that
was it. There was no documentation,” says Oldenburg.
“Now we can at least go back and look at previous e-mails and see when they were sent.”
He is also trying to get students to submit their complaints through the Student
Life office instead of calling facilities directly.
On a positive note, Oldenburg has been told that facilities is making an effort
to fix the holes in the complaint process. They have software on order for processing
maintenance requests.
‘This might take more work on behalf of facilities” says Oldenburg,
“but it would improve the system.” He hopes this new system has
the capability for both Student Life and students themselves to track their
complaints instantly.
On a side note, Cindy Whitt reminds students that cable problems are not the
responsibility of the college. “Call in cable television problems to the cable
company at 800-993-9313,” she says. “Computer network and telephone
problems should be reported to the IT help desk at extension 1444.”
Give us your feedback. We value your opinions.
The Hilltop reserves the right not to post anonymous comments or any that
could be judged slanderous, that make unverifiable allegations of fact, or use
language we consider in bad taste.
All fields must be filled in.
HOME
| 
