Greg Owens 25:34
that’s a complicated, that’s complicated, how many windows open and close?
Scott Lewis Judkins 25:38
It’s, it’s over 200 windows. So it’s a lot. And all the building Windows, typically, in the in the beginning, at least, you would always have one or two that when you close them, you started getting alarms and alerts. But now, they’ve you know, everything’s been really dialed in. We have independent commissioning agents flown in from around the world, basically to ensure that the success of the building and yeah, it’s it’s an incredible building with lots of technology. But with that technology comes, you know, pains, growing pains as well, because the tech is only as good as the user, if the users not the user needs to be trained on how to operate the building, and then all the technology so you’ve got, you know, lighting air, the radiant flooring, and that’s what keeps the building cool is the radiant tubing and the flooring and the ceiling. And just that could cool the building itself, the radiant flooring, so, but we do have a 300 ton chiller on the roof. So
Greg Owens 26:48
right, right, yeah, that’s that’s a great way to cool it down to you don’t see, I haven’t seen that kind of. I’ve seen it in Europe, but not not necessarily here as much. That’s great.
Scott Lewis Judkins 26:58
Yeah, it’s a it’s very interesting. It’s the first building I’ve seen that has this level of different technology built into it. But just that in itself, the radiant. The Radiant flooring is one of the reasons why it became a LEED Gold building, because it’s so it’s a very green, it’s very energy efficient.
Greg Owens 27:23
Ya know what, we just had a safety meeting this morning about air quality in sort of, we’ve been lucky this year, as far as the smoke. This, you know, being here in California, we’ve we used to have a fire season that would start and say October and now it seems like it’s starts, you know, in early spring. And but luckily this year, the Bay Area hasn’t suffered greatly from really bad smoky days that much right? There’s still been fires, but for some reason that smoke hasn’t been done in our neck of the woods. How have you guys had to consider that with the windows opening and closing? And? And does it measure air quality too? Or is that something that somebody has to say, Oh, well, today’s not a good day to have these windows open?
Scott Lewis Judkins 28:11
Absolutely the I don’t want to destroy the name, but the building has an air sensor on the on the building. It also has a light emitter or sun detector on the position of the sun, the blinds will open and close. And if you’re getting, you know sunlight through the blinds close, and then maybe the fans turn on if it’s above a certain degree, the fans are there to cool the occupants not to cool the space. That’s the difference because the radiant cooling is pulling the heat out of the occupants, which was a learning curve for me. I didn’t know about that. And so I learned all about that. But I would say the that’s just one of the interesting functions. To your point. Yes, there is a air sensor inside every single conference room and any thermostat that you have have a carbon or sorry, carbon monoxide sensor. So depending on how much occupants you have, it could increase the airflow. So that way you can get more airflow to the room or space. And if you only have a couple occupants, it’s not going to raise the meter up. So that’s that’s one of the benefits of having this new technology in your space. So
Greg Owens 29:38
that’s, I learned a lot about that on a podcast. I’m blanking on his name, but he is the he’s head of the high school the sky high schools in San Jose. And he was a big proponent for for getting those carbon monoxide detectors in each and every classroom. So The HVAC is connected to them. And, and in his original This is before COVID, he discovered this is that people, teachers and kids were suffering from headaches, right. And then he started reading up on it and found out it was more and more due to, if you have a whole bunch of people in a room and not enough ventilation, that you know, that’s a good cause for headaches and fatigue and that kind of thing. And, and so he changed it all up and and now it’s become more and more and more a standard for all schools to do companies buildings already were doing it, but to get it into the schools was a big deal, and also save tremendous amounts of money. And that’s how he got the money to is that he went after money does a lot of grants for money in saving energy. And so he got these grants to pay for it all. And they saved energy. Because if there’s only like you said, there’s only two people in the office, then there’s no need to click on the air conditioning quite as much and have the vent ventilation goes if there’s 30 or 40. People.
Scott Lewis Judkins 31:05
Absolutely. That’s why there’s so many different sensors throughout the building, and then you’ve got the individuals. So aside from the conference rooms, if they’re in the occupants, or the the employees are at their desk, and there’s one zone that’s got more occupants and they’re using a lot of oxygen, then the sensors are going to need to know that and it’s going to want to it’s going to call for fresh air to be flown in. So that’s to be pumped in. So that’s one of the good aspects you’re not, it’s not going to affect the entire floor, it’s not even gonna affect the entire side of the building, you’re in it just as your particular zone. So it can be very energy efficient. In that sense, you’re not like turning on the entire floor to cool the space anymore. And that’s one of the hardest parts to teach a employee that’s used to maybe a standard office is basically you bury that thermostat, the building gets cold or the space gets cold. With this new technology, you can’t do that? Well, you can still vary the thermostat, but it’s not going to it’s not going to work to what you think it’s going to it’s only going to go plus or minus two degrees. And then I’ve been told from the individuals that design the building, it’s going to take technically 24 hours to bring the building down one a couple of degrees. So it takes overnight to make these changes. It’s not going to you can call for air now, but to cool the entire space, it’s going to take a period of time.
Greg Owens 32:41
Interesting. Yeah, I can see how that can lead to a lot of complaints. Because, yes, yeah, if there’s an office person, that’s I mean, I even for me, if it’s too hot or too cold, it’s hard to sit down and do office work, right? Absolutely. If I’m doing if I’m doing construction work, no problem, I like to call right like Oh, or if it’s hot, you just you have no choice you deal with it. But But office work, you’re a little bit more, I find them a bit quite a bit more sensitive.
Scott Lewis Judkins 33:10
Yeah. And the hard part too is I got a crash course from an individual named Lynn gums. And she is the MVP. She was the MEP specialists on the build for this building through DPR. Construction. Yeah, yeah, I think she taught me quite a bit as far as the users and occupants and all the technology in the building and things like that. But everyone could have a different comfort level. And the standards were built a long time ago when men wore suits. And so when you’re wearing a three piece suit, it’s going to be a lot, you’re going to want it cooler than in than a woman next to you that’s not in a three piece suit. So everyone’s user comfort could be different, potentially. And that’s the hard part. And that’s why I think it’s better just to cool, the space a little bit cooler, and then handle, you know, tell everyone to bring maybe a sweater or a jacket if it gets too cool. But typically 70 What is like 72 to 74 is the ideal temperature for an office setting. So you try to keep it in that that sweet range. So
Greg Owens 34:28
yeah, and that’s that’s true for the whole San Francisco Bay area. I mean, I don’t know how you are in Sunnyvale, you probably can know that. You can leave your house and go out in the evening and it’s gonna stay the same temperature if you drive five minutes away but me living here and Moran I I think I constantly constantly have extra jackets in my truck right? And then and then have a pair of shorts in case it gets like wow, this is unbearably too hot.
Scott Lewis Judkins 34:58
So one of my Uh, my my previous company, I was the the, kind of like the regional facility manager for the Golden Gate National Parks concern. So I managed 16 properties and one of the properties was at Muir Woods. Right,
Greg Owens 35:15
right. That’s right here. And I’m in Mill Valley. So that’s right over the hill from me.
Scott Lewis Judkins 35:18
Oh, nice. Yeah, I will say that. Yeah, you in San Francisco, you got to do like a three to one or whatever it is the, you know, the three layers in the morning, and then the two after
Greg Owens 35:31
three layers this morning.
Scott Lewis Judkins 35:35
Yeah, it’s just, you never know if San Francisco of especially in the summer, it could be a beautiful day out or it could be really cold. So yeah, it’s such a gamble. But yeah, working in those spaces was a pleasure as well, working on the historic landmarks side brings in a whole bunch of different challenges. And you’re working with not just your agency or NPS, but you’re working with like five different agencies, it seems like especially at the Golden Gate Bridge, welcome center. We were working with literally five or six different agencies to do facility management. The one building that they’ve since turned over to equator coffee, it was called the Roundhouse, or it is called the Roundhouse. So I know it well. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So to do some of the maintenance, we would have to shut down a lane on the Golden Gate Bridge to access some of the plumbing for the, for the Roundhouse because it’s a over 100 year old building. So it’s, it’s got things that were built into the bridge that were going on for quite quite a while. So
Greg Owens 36:46
that’s, that’s tricky, because that’s getting Caltrans traffic, all that stuff involved, right.
Scott Lewis Judkins 36:51
thority the federal government, the potentially city and county, the state of California. And then if you go a little bit further to the left North, right, you’re in the Presidio Trust. So the trust is a huge entity in itself. So yeah, your that was that was definitely an interesting role because you’re constantly working with those different agencies to get your, your work done and get your facility maintenance done. So but there was said,
Greg Owens 37:23
we’ve done some painting for both of those entities, Presidio Trust and for the Golden Gate National Parks and, boy, it’s tough. Yes, it’s a lot of it’s a lot of paperwork and a lot of rules to follow when we’re involved.
Scott Lewis Judkins 37:39
Yeah, especially if the historic preservation side it’s there’s so many rules and regs for that. And
Greg Owens 37:47
yeah, and there’s a lot of Yeah, like even just getting the colors right, because the colors are all historical colors for Presidio Trust. Anyway, probably Golden Gate. National Parks too. But the Presidio Trust, we have to get those colors, confirmed by a few different people before doing any that painting. Oh, wow.
Scott Lewis Judkins 38:07
I believe it. Yeah, I’ve done some we did while I was there, complete remodel of the Crissy Field Welcome Center. And it’s a it’s a historic barn that was converted to a bookstore. And then it had a cafe in it. And then we, I, head of the facilities team and the architects, the team, we did a complete remodel of that space, right at the beginning of COVID. This was to be I think, a six month remodel. I went over a year because of that. Yeah. And everything was literally shut down and couldn’t even work in the beginning. Just like everyone was working from home, and you were told not to go to work and things like that. And then we got kind of like a all access pass to to visit the sites when nobody was in. Um, it’s kind of cool, but the space looks amazing. Now. It’s got a lot of the old pictures on the wall from 100 plus years ago and things like that. So that
Greg Owens 39:12
whole that entire construction project, all of the stuff they’ve done around Crissy Field, you know, the whole new park sort of landscaping and all that is phenomenal. It’s just unbelievably beautiful.
Scott Lewis Judkins 39:24
Absolutely. That was actually the that was one of the projects that conservancy LED. I’m not sure exactly when but I know that was one of the projects that they managed or before my time before my time but yeah, it’s it’s quite interesting some of the projects that they get involved with and yeah, I heard a little bit about a couple big ones as I was transitioning out during COVID. So yeah, it’s it’s a great organization and they’ve got the I managed also including the Alcatraz bookstore so got To do my Wednesday operations meetings out on Alcatraz, which was kind of a dream and going out to a work meeting on the ferry and on the bay is it’s a pretty good way to start your day.
Greg Owens 40:16
It’s very novel. We’ve done work on Alcatraz. Okay. used to clean up released to clean buildings. We haven’t done it in a while. I don’t know. We don’t know the new facilities manager. But we used to clean the gutters on barracks building, which is the first building you see when you get off the very first big one right above the bookstore, actually, all that whole building? Yeah. And at first it was super novel. And then I started to like it. I mean, every time I was out there, I really appreciated it. But you have to you know, you have to you have to catch the ferry. And the ferries going to leave at a very specific time it all our equipment on that very, and it’s the it’s the maintenance ferry that leaves before all the other ferries, right. So you want to be on that maintenance very, you don’t want to be on the ferry with the tourists. Because that’s just another whole challenge. And and then you need all your equipment. And if you forgot something, you’re there’s there’s no easy way. There’s not you Yeah, either, though. And then whether is just a major mean they’ve had, we’re out there once. And they had the night before they had 100 mile per hour winds. And it’s a steel roof. It’s a corrugated galvanized steel roof on top of that building and the roof appealed like a tin can. It was big, gaping holes in it that they didn’t even know about. So we get out there to clean gutters. We’re like, whoa, wait a minute. You guys have a bigger problem here than gutter cleaning.
Scott Lewis Judkins 41:44
Back being backed up. Wow. Yeah, whole site is like a tetanus shot waiting to happen. There’s so much rust and things like that.
Greg Owens 41:55
It’s such it’s such a harsh environment for very harsh environment right.
Scott Lewis Judkins 42:01
Many years ago 2018 I did the Alcatraz triathlon Escape from Alcatraz. Oh, wow. Nicely jump off the ferry. I think it’s the the San Francisco San Francisco bell with the paddle paddle wheel. You jumped the bell into the bay at Alcatraz and then the race begins. So it was
Greg Owens 42:26
incredibly hard, hard to swim in that. Yes.
Scott Lewis Judkins 42:29
And I’m weird myself at weird currents, right? They have cross currents. So depending on where you’re swimming, you could get pulled to the bridge or you get pulled out to pass the Alcatraz to the Bay Bridge. So you have to swim directly through the cross currents. And it’s, it’s not for the faint of heart.
Greg Owens 42:51
No, not at all I’ve done. I haven’t died. That’s amazing, right like and that’s a lot of swimming. But I have done where with a bunch of entrepreneurs and Entrepreneurs’ Organization I’m involved in we as a team building exercise, go out underneath the Golden Gate Bridge, like 300 yards, jump in, and then let the tide take us and kind of swim up together. But let it mostly the tide is taking us to the right underneath the Golden Gate Bridge. And you get to experience the Golden Gate Bridge from borrowing from below, right and there’s a swim that you can swim the length of the current Gate Bridge too, which is a friend of mine did which is incredibly, but we I think I swam for like, when I jumped in. I had gotten cold so I swam away from the group. I think I swam for about five minutes, then I was gonna swim back to the group. And it took all my energy to swim back to the group. We’re talking like, maybe 50 feet or a shirt or something. And then the current grabbed me and just I just got ripped away from everybody by like 100 yards, right? Like it was unbelievable how fast and then we all came together again and then the currents grabbed us all again and spread us all out immediately. It was it was crazy. We had chased boats to catch her anybody that because we didn’t have life jackets. We did have wet suits. Right but
Scott Lewis Judkins 44:18
not depending on the flood or the the tide depending Yeah, if it’s they call it the flood if it’s like flooding in or going out that depends though doing flooding
Greg Owens 44:30
in Yeah, cuz we want to we wanted to get sucked in. Yeah, so but it was it was it was it was an eye opener of how unbelievably treacherous that water is. Right? Yeah. For swimming that that’s great. Yeah, it’s
Scott Lewis Judkins 44:46
definitely I give you props too. Because I always think when you’re in that water you can’t see but two feet in front of you. So if you ever get attacked by something here, you know, it’s better just not to see it. It’s better just not to Yeah, but I
Greg Owens 45:01
it’s pretty funny because like, I was thinking about that when I jumped in because you’re, you’re underneath the Golden Gate Bridge and it’s, it’s sort of part of the Golden Triangle for great white sharks, right? And you’re like, Man, I’m just like, there’s nothing I can do if a shark comes right. But then that was the first sort of like thoughts, but then I was like well there’s nothing I can do about it so I can’t worry about that. But then the next thought was like, Oh, what am I doing with this current? This is this is crazy hard to deal with.
Scott Lewis Judkins 45:29
Yeah, even the advanced swimmers can get thrown you know, they had many many Chase boats, like probably 100 and even kayakers and canoers there to guide swimmers in for the race because you have a couple of 1000 racers but yeah, some some swimmers we’re almost to the bridge and that’s way past Crissy Field where we’re kind of coming back into even myself with lots of swims, aquatic Park, I still off shot the exit, because it’s just the current current so strong.
Greg Owens 46:07
Yeah, I remember like, there was one friend of mine that was struggling. He’s probably like, 20 feet away from me. And I was so wiped out. I was just like, good luck. I hope that chase boat gets cheap in time because like it’s so a meanie, everybody was safe. We had Chase boats. We were good. But there was, you know, there was a moment there was like, wow, if we didn’t have that there’s, there’s nothing I can do to help you, right?
Scott Lewis Judkins 46:35
Oh, yeah. The cheese bolts or kayakers are critical for those reasons alone. And yeah, it’s it’s very, because you never know what can happen. Somebody can cramp. And that’s the Aquatics specialist specialists than me that because I started many, many years ago, my journey started with the city and county of San Francisco as an aquatics facilities manager. Oh, wow. That was a facility I was the I was one of the managers sent out to camp me there and Yosemite for the summer. And that’s how I got my start in the city of San Francisco. RPD.
Greg Owens 47:14
This is great. I always like to hear more about origin stories. Right. So what city you started off working for the aquatic parks?
Scott Lewis Judkins 47:23
Yeah. Well, specifically, I went out to the summer and manage their family camp camp, either in Yosemite and then I came back and I got a program I managed at Hamilton, Garfield in the mission. I got assigned to mission poor mission porn playground for a season. And then that’s how I got my start, though, into facility management. And
Greg Owens 47:52
is that something did how did that? How did that come to be? Did you? Did you stumble upon it? Or is it something you wanted?
Scott Lewis Judkins 48:02
To the recreation, working, working with teens and youth was always my passion. I always enjoy doing, I still enjoy doing that. It’s a big passion of mine and giving back to the community. Worked with YMCA since I was out of high school. So going on decades of volunteering and doing work for them. And yeah, I think the facility side came out of, you know, my first job out of high school as a contractor was a I was a framer, my dad was in the industry my entire life. So I graduated high school with like a technical theater degree. So I, I used to build light and sound, the stages and things like that. So that gave me a little bit of experience. And then I was able to walk on to a job site and be a framer. And that’s how I got some of my technical experience and background. And then those two kind of morphed when I was the in aquatics facilities because you’re doing state required sampling for water sampling, you’re managing all sorts of different pool saltwater, saline equipment, chemicals. So there’s a lot of chemical management that you have to do. A lot of people don’t know what the engineers do in the back rooms, but it’s quite a quite a lot. And it’s all regulated, especially in San Francisco by the Health Department. Right? And you get audited once a quarter usually, and they just come by randomly. So you have to make sure that all of your logs and everything are accurate and that it’s you’re keeping a clean environment. But um, yeah, that’s that’s really what got me interested in it. And then I was basically FM from that point on, so we’re going on over 10 years, so probably 11 years now. Oh, nice.
Greg Owens 49:56
Yeah, that’s a lot of different things to consider. to consider and you’re still finding your passion working with kids or doing other things. In your free time, then?
Scott Lewis Judkins 50:08
Absolutely, yeah, it’s something that I would, I would think I’ll probably do for the rest of my life is coaching or teaching children learning to swim or mentoring and things like that. I think that’s something that, although I’m not doing it professionally, I can definitely do it on a volunteer basis. It’s something I’ll always do. My dad was a big advocate for being a coach and a mentor and things like that. And even after we were long out of, you know, competitive sports, he was still coaching at the YMCA, and so many different youth grew up and new new him and just very empowering, I think, to to know how many people that he touched and stuff like that. So,
Greg Owens 50:55
yeah, yeah, no, I, I find, I mean, I like what my work is fulfilling. But I also find a lot of different types of filament in the volunteer work and things that they do in that nature. And working with kids is always a lot of fun, because there’s so much potential in them.
Scott Lewis Judkins 51:13
Absolutely, yeah. Yeah, the the San Francisco Rec and Park, they do a great program, they have a great, awesome program, even for social social programs, you know, kids that may have gotten in trouble at some point in their lives, and they’re trying to get back into more of a direct route to get a job, go to college, I was involved in a couple of those programs where we actually did a jail, from juvenile detention with the police and the probation officers and some rival gangs. And, you know, we took them out to the woods and taught them how to swim and how to be teenagers and have fun. And it was it was the two that I was involved in the two weeks that I was involved in as credible, very impactful work. And it’s not a fun, and you know, they’re they’re just kids, they have had very difficult cards dealt to them. But ultimately, it’s, you know, the ones that make it to that program, they’re there because they want to be it’s not because they were forced to be there. They’re like, they’re awesome. And I actually, if you complete the program, then you’re offered a job with the recreation parks department. I ended up managing one of the kids that I mentored in the program.
Greg Owens 52:33
Oh, that’s, that’s, that’s an that’s great. That’s
Scott Lewis Judkins 52:37
so full, full circle.
Greg Owens 52:41
And so as we come to a close with this podcast, what would you recommend to people that are thinking about transitioning or thinking about, you know, a job in facilities management, what would you recommend and get started? Or are our ideas around that?
Scott Lewis Judkins 52:58
Sure. I would always recommend reaching, you know, researching your local if my chapter, whatever is the closest IFMA? Yeah. Yeah, international facility manager Association. Um, I didn’t plug the San Francisco chapter, but I am a board member on the San Francisco chapter for the sponsorship chair. And the end of the month, I’m going to be going to the world workplace event in Nashville, Tennessee. So that was nice. Yeah. And end of September. So I’m very excited. This is my first world workplace event that, yeah, that’s great. So I would say, for anyone that’s interested, the best thing you could do is to reach out to somebody in the field through LinkedIn. That’s probably the best. And there’s a lot of internships now that are evolving. I know that the Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley Chapter has a whole internship program. Oh, that’s great to know about. Yeah, yes. And then if you can connect to potentially with other resources, and it’s just such a wealth of information. I wish I knew about it earlier in my career, but now that I do, it is it’s a huge advantage. And even for recruitment for staff in different cities, if we’ve got a facility that is going with Fortinet has sites all over the US that you can reach out to for resources in Chicago, New York, Florida, even though I don’t know people there, I know if my and I know they’re the kind of like the the highest category of information and resources. So I always just can field questions through them and for recruitment. So that’s my long winded answer. And that’s what I’ve read.
Greg Owens 54:51
That’s great. Yeah, no, that’s great to hear about Silicon Valley having internships too. So I think that’s a really wonderful plug for that. Did you did you know my I had two employees that were working for if my last year Katrina and so Sophia, they, they have moved on to newer, newer, greener pastures than my companies. But yeah, we’ve been we have been a sponsor in the past and try to get people involved more and more. And I used to be involved more myself, but I’ve run out of time for that. Yeah.
Scott Lewis Judkins 55:25
That’s always the clincher is the time.
Greg Owens 55:28
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. But it’s a great organization. I, we refer a lot of people to it, and it’s come up on this podcast quite a bit. So awesome. Yeah. Well, thank you. Um, how can people find out more about you? Would it be connecting through LinkedIn is the best way?
Scott Lewis Judkins 55:44
Yes, absolutely. Besides a Google search, which does come up with some interesting of my past life of it, coaching and things like that, but I would say LinkedIn is the best best route. That way I can connect with you and I’ve got a pretty good base. So if anyone’s ever looking for referral, or anything, just please feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn, I’d be happy to help.
Greg Owens 56:11
Oh, that’s great. Thank you. And thank you for being on the Watching Paint Dry podcast
Scott Lewis Judkins 56:16
here. Absolutely. Thank you, Greg. Thanks for that.
Outro 56:23
Thanks for listening to the Watching Paint Dry podcast. We’ll see you again next time. And be sure to click Subscribe to get future episodes.