Dave Tompkins is the Director of Facilities for Trinity SF. Under Trinity SF’s wings are commercial divisions, office spaces, and storefront retail, including some of the most hi
gh-end retailers in the city of Union Square. Their specialty, however, is in multifamily real estate, working with their team to develop, own, and operate multifamily buildings throughout San Francisco. Dave has worked in facility management for the last 20 years, with a driven focus towards project and maintenance management.
Here’s a Glimpse of What You’ll Learn:
- How has COVID-19 changed how you do business?
- Dave describes the steps his company has implemented to counter safety concerns
- How will companies transition to using new materials to reduce touch-point exposure?
- COVID-19 and the effect it’s had on Trinity Management’s budget for the year
- The actions Dave’s taking to ensure the residents’ peace of mind with the increased homeless population in the city
- Dave recalls how he got started in building management
- Commercial vs. residential management
- Dave gives his advice on how to get into facility management
In this Episode:
If you were to stand atop a high rise building in San Francisco, you would notice a few things. You would realize how organized the streets are from afar, the vast number of residential areas strategically grouped to provide ease of access to their residents, and the vendors that rely on the business they gain from the residents in the city—a balanced ecosystem. Behind the scenes making sure the ecosystem continues to run are facility and project managers like Dave Tompkins, Director of Facilities at Trinity SF.
Join us as we take a more in-depth look at what it takes to manage a variety of commercial and residential facilities in the heart of San Francisco with host Greg Owens and Dave Tompkins, Director of Facilities at Trinity SF. Dave discusses what steps Trinity has taken to ensure their residents’ safety, and what it means to be a building manager in the face of the current pandemic. He also takes a moment to talk about his path to facility management and what others can do to enter the industry.
Resources Mentioned in this Episode:
- Greg Owens on LinkedIn
- McCarthy Painting
- McCarthy Painting Contact No.: 415-383-2640
- McCarthy Painting Email Address: info@mccarthypainting.com
- Trinity SF
- Trinity SF on LinkedIn
- Yardi
Sponsor for this Episode:
This episode is brought to you by McCarthy Painting, where we serve commercial and residential clients all around the San Francisco Bay area.
We’ve been in business since 1969 and served companies such as Google, Autodesk, Abercrombie & Fitch, FICO, First Bank, SPIN, and many more.
If you have commercial facilities in the San Francisco Bay Area and need dependable painters, visit us on the web at www.mccarthypainting.com or email info@mccarthypainting.com, and you can check out our line of services and schedule a free estimate by clicking here.
Episode Transcript
Intro 0:03
Welcome to the Watching Paint Dry podcast where we feature today’s top facility managers, property managers and property owners talking about the challenges and opportunities of managing hundreds of thousands of square feet of real estate and how to beautify and improve their properties. Now, let’s get started with the show.
Greg Owens 0:33
Hello, this is the Watching Paint Dry podcast. It’s Greg Owens here I am the owner of McCarthy Painting, and the host of this podcast where we are interviewing facilities, managers, property owners, business owners. anybody involved in sort of the building space where people are going to be occupying them, let’s say and today In today’s episode, we’re really been focusing on facilities managers and especially around like this point in time in history, where we are, what is it? It’s July 2, and we’re still have this pandemic which is looters. There’s surges happening and things going on. And the job of a facilities manager has gotten incredibly more complicated. So I’m really excited about today’s episode. Um, first a little message from about my company. It is sponsored by McCarthy Painting. It started by my uncle in 1969. Here in the San Francisco Bay Area, I started working when I was 16 years old, I wasn’t very good at school, dropped out of high school and started painting. And now we are a fairly sized company working throughout the entire Bay Area. We’ve done work for Google, Autodesk, SPIN, FICO. And many, many other companies throughout the Bay Area. If you want to know more about us, you can reach out to info@McCarthypainting.com or find us on the web at McCarthyPainting.com today I’m really excited. We have Dave Tompkins, the director of facilities for Trinity Management Company, which is I think you guys do a tremendous amount of management of apartment complexes, condominium complexes, residential spaces and that kind of thing. Is that correct? Good to have you on the podcast.
Dave Tompkins 2:39
Thanks, Greg. Thanks for having me. We specialize really in multifamily real estate. You know, we develop, we own, we operate multifamily buildings throughout the city of San Francisco. And we also have a smaller commercial division with some properties down off Union Square and mid market. We have some office space, some storefront retail, with some of the most high end retailers here in the city of Union Square and but our bread and butter is residential multifamily. And that’s, that’s what I helped support in my role as the director of facilities.
Greg Owens 3:17
And how have you been doing in this pandemic like you personally and you and your company and your team and that kind of thing? Sure.
Dave Tompkins 3:27
Well, you know, it’s obviously turned our world upside down. And it’s a real tumultuous few months. You know, personally, I’m doing fine. My family’s fine. We’re all healthy. And well, you know, the impact, of course, initially was working from home, you know, doing our leadership calls, you know, remotely every morning, checking with my team, you know, every day and over the last couple of months, I’ve been coming back into the office more and more. I’m in the city today. I’m here about three days a week now. You know, and we’re an essential business. You know, we’re housing providers for thousands of residents here in the city. And as soon as the Shelter in Place Order took effect in mid March, you know, we had to take a step back to kind of, you know, interpret all of the regulations and requirements and digest a little bit about what we could and couldn’t do. But all of our site staff and represents about two thirds of our employees have been showing up at work on the frontlines taking care of our residents taking care of our buildings, and we’ve just been doing everything we can, from a leadership standpoint to support the business and keep everybody safe.
Greg Owens 4:41
Yeah, yeah. And I’m not sure because like, I know for my company, we’ve we’ve already like each week we’ve had close calls, right, where to employees last week we’re working around a carpenter that turned out that Carpenter was positive right and, and we We’ve had to like quarantine and make sure get them tested and find out more information just today, we just just found out right before this podcast that one of one of the people that works in our office, but she’s been working from home has COVID-19 right? And like we’ve been, and we’ve been really, you know, doing what everybody else has been doing is like being really really careful. We’re working from home, we’re not around each other. But like, like you said, we’re in a central business too, and a lot of ways. Early on, we were shelter in place, but we got essential business what click clearance because we were doing, like people moving into an apartment or people moving into a house that became sort of essential, right. And so it’s how have you guys as a company been dealing with this kind of thing? I’m really curious because like this has been impacting us each week.
Dave Tompkins 5:54
Yeah, you know, we’re very fortunate we have a great team, supporting our staff. And we’re following very closely all of the regulations from the San Francisco Department of Public Health, that’s really our blueprint. And you know, things change, as you know, daily, certainly weekly. But we, you know, we have a policy in place, you know, if you’re sick or symptomatic, you know, you stay home, you do not come to work. you report it to our HR team. No, we go through all the various processes. We’ve been fortunate. And you know, I say that hesitantly because I don’t want to jinx the yes or
Dave Tompkins 6:33
cause any issues. But for the most part, our team stayed relatively healthy, but I think that’s a testament to, you know, our strict adherence to all of the guidelines that are out there, you know, wearing all the necessary PPE, physically distancing. Being a little bit lucky to have reports, I mean, it happens probably once a week someone’s sick or not feeling well. And, you know, we go through all the various processes to make sure that doing okay, and testing in the city is now much more readily available. I have not done it personally. But several members of our team had to make an appointment. And someone was telling me just this week, they were in and out in two minutes and had their results emailed to them later that evening. So, a little bit easier for us to navigate that since we are San Francisco based. If there is a question people can get tested for free, and we’ve had several employees do that.
Greg Owens 7:27
Yeah, yeah, that’s what we’ve been doing too is like if there’s any, any need whatsoever, we’ll send them to, you know, to a facility here, either in the city or, or, or we’re located in Marin County. So there’s been facilities here too, although it’s it’s gotten more and more there’s, I’ve noticed there’s more and more of a line these days, like when I first got tested like two weeks ago, and there was no line and just went right through and got the results in 15 minutes, which is amazing. Well, um what’s what’s the Some of the considerations you guys have had to take around your buildings because I mean, everything gets turned turned upside down in this and your job like increased, all of a sudden, like you said, You’ve had to learn about all and stay with us all these new rules and regulations that we’re all trying to, like, decipher what’s been some of those challenges within the apartment complex community.
Dave Tompkins 8:23
I think the biggest challenge is our ability or lack thereof to interact with our residents in the property offices. You know, we’ve closed our offices, we’re open for business, but we’re physically distancing. So we’re asking residents if they have a concern or a work order or, you know, an issue with a payment or something to email or to call. It’s particularly impactful, you know, as we try to continue to rent apartments, you know, it’s a very different approach. It’s a new era. We’re doing a lot of virtual leasing. A lot of self guided tours. You know, a lot of virtual tours, impact on site, you know, hands down, I think from an operational standpoint, from a maintenance standpoint, you know, we initially were only taking on emergency work orders, you know, leaks, you know, power outages, really bad clogs and things like that. We’ve since lightened those restrictions in accordance with the Department of Public Health guidelines, but we approach things very differently. Now everyone’s wearing masks, we’re wearing gloves, we’re asking residents if they, you know, can not be home or schedule an appointment when they’re not around so we can enter the, you know, their units without them being present, or we stay in another room. So our entire approach has changed. We’re still operating and functioning, but everything we do is a little bit different now.
Greg Owens 9:51
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I forgot about like, how do you show an apartment and bring people through and schedule it so you can have You know, the maximum amount of efficiency, right? Like, everything’s got to be much slower now you probably schedule if it’s a, if they’re gonna go look at the apartment, I would think that they have to have a set time they go in, they self guided, like you said, open, you know the door is open or something like that, right.
Dave Tompkins 10:19
And then we have to go in and sanitize the space or at the touch points to make sure it’s safe for anyone else to go in there. So, and we’re still learning, you know, I think every day is a learning opportunity. And every week we’re implementing a new process or strategy to try to be more effective.
Greg Owens 10:37
Yeah, and I’ve been to some of your properties. We’ve actually done some work for you guys. Um, we did some work on the 17th Street property, which I was pretty easy, but then I think of like your mission. The mission street property is a massive complex with sort of with older sort of, you know, it’s an older like 80s building, I guess or something like that. Right? Right mute beautiful space, beautiful apartments. But you know, the elevators and access points are tough. Have you guys had to do things around managing that?
Dave Tompkins 11:11
Yeah, we have quite a diverse portfolio. As you mentioned 17th Avenue, that’s a much smaller site, right, like six units each. And then we have large high rises, where we have 500 plus units in a building and the referring to trying to be placed, you know, we have 1400 units in one development, building 500 more, which will be next year
Greg Owens 11:35
in that same location
Dave Tompkins 11:37
in the same location. It’s the largest multifamily development in San Francisco since World War Two. Oh, wow. Hmm. We’re wrapping up. The fourth and final phase will be open June of next year, but we’ve been in construction since 2007. So it’s, it’s been quite an undertaking, but
Greg Owens 11:55
yeah, especially here in San Francisco. Those kinds of things. Take some serious negotiation. In time,
Dave Tompkins 12:01
it took over 30 years for you know, or or owner to finally get approval through the city hall and the planning department but
Greg Owens 12:10
which is amazing because, you know, the city is always like, what? lacking apartments right, like lacking? And then but then they have all this red tape you have to go through to get something approved. That’s
Dave Tompkins 12:23
That’s correct. You brought up a really good question earlier about elevators and you know, we refer to those as choke points, you know, areas where it’s hard to flee distance and how do we manage that and, you know, I just finished installing a sign package on our main office where we occupy the upper floors, but we lease out the lower floors to tenants here in the city. And, you know, we have occupancy limits in the elevator now and we put decals on the floor, letting people know where they should stand. You know, we’re constantly reminding people through signage to physically distance to wear face coverings to, you know, not come in our building, if you’re feeling sick, it’s different on the residential side, you know, you can’t restrict someone from coming into their own home. And, you know, one of the things that we’ve really tried to avoid is, you know, being the mask police or the face covering police. And you know, we’re hoping that people are really self regulate. You know, there’s a lot of signage improvements, we’re getting into more of a contactless culture just been a change recently at our parking garage here on mission Street, where instead of pushing a button to get your parking ticket, you know, wave your hand over a sensor and automatically dispenses it. You know, there’s things like that, that we’re investing in. And I think it’s not just us and it’s not just our industry. It’s everyone, all over this country and all over the world finding new ways to adjust to this new normal.
Greg Owens 13:54
Right, right. Yeah, same with us. It’s like as a painting company going into this He’s right like and. Right. And I know I was I just recently at your Dolores, um, location which is a beautiful like once you get inside that it’s like an oasis in that area. Right and I’m met with Jonathan over there.
Dave Tompkins 14:16
Yes
Greg Owens 14:16
Yeah.
Dave Tompkins 14:17
Yeah. Dolores is a it is an oasis. It was a beautiful courtyard. It has an outdoor swimming pool that’s heated year round. Of course, that’s closed now unfortunately, as our amenity spaces, you know, we’re still waiting for the guidelines to get those back. Open. But yeah, Dolores is a unique property right there in the Mission District and sometimes when I leave my office, you know, downtown I’ve been market I have a jacket on. And when I submitted I have to take it off because it’s 10 degrees warmer. But yeah, yeah, we’re looking at doing some work over there and making some improvements to that side.
Greg Owens 14:56
Yeah, I have a friend visiting me and we were leaving to go see Were into the city and I said, Oh yeah, bring a jacket. And they’re like, why it’s so hot. And I’m like, bring a jacket. And then as soon as we got like, into the city, you can tell her. It was like so cold. And it’s July 1.
Dave Tompkins 15:16
That’s right.
Greg Owens 15:18
Um, yeah, I was I, you know, I, I think one of the beauties of being a facilities manager is you get to have you get to sort of see the behind the scenes of a building, buildings and structures and that kind of stuff. And even for myself, I really appreciate being able to like Jonathan took me up on the roof because we needed to look at sort of those access points and I was able to look at that hole. Look at the whole property and how it’s situated. Because it’s, you know, from the street, it doesn’t look like that it doesn’t look that massive in that big because it’s block to block really, right, right. Yeah, it does have like an oasis appearance to it looking down at the pool. Any ideas at this moment. I’m About when things like a pool would open because like, I know that San Francisco has, like, they were opening up and then it’s like now they just retreated us back a few more steps. Did you guys get any guidance around that? Or is it still sort of unknown?
Dave Tompkins 16:15
You know, I think in large part, it’s still unknown. Greg, you know, the main many spaces that we offer our swimming pools, fitness centers, and we have an amenity lounge here at Trinity place. It’s an indoor and outdoor rooftop deck. Yeah. We’re in a holding pattern. I think what we understand is, and we have some ideas of what to expect, whether it’s people making appointments, it’s limiting the amount of equipment that we have, or outdoor seating around the pool that we may have. You know, we were thinking that we may be looking at some time here in July, but as you mentioned there, we’ve now taken a couple of steps back just based on some of the numbers that have been reported. Yeah. I can tell you that another change that we’re looking at, and this is on our new construction and existing construction is seating in common areas. You know, there’s a big trend now to hard surface seating. So you can clean it, you know, the idea of, or our, you know, cushions, you know, it’s either going to switch to vinyl or hard shooting services only. And I’ve seen some collateral from some designers like for the Marriott hotel chain, worldwide, making a shift in that direction. So, you know, it’s not just multifamily, it’s, you know, any space or any building that you know, has common areas for the public or for tenants. Just it’s all part of the shifting strategy.
Greg Owens 17:44
Yeah, I didn’t even think about that. Because like there’s been this massive trend in in, like in Google or in Facebook and those companies right to have couch spaces and really, really comfortable sort of like what beanbags and cushions and right Like you just said, How do you clean that surface and really sort of disinfected in an easy way? Right.
Dave Tompkins 18:07
Right. That’s right.
Greg Owens 18:08
Yeah. Um, what else have you come across that’s been unique in in were in the buildings that you’re doing because you’re also managing your boss managing existing structures. And it sounds like you’re doing the new managing somewhat aspects of the new structures that are going up.
Dave Tompkins 18:26
There’s one large new construction project and I’m not as directly involved in that though, I do attend meetings and consult on a few things. When it’s built, I’ll be part of it gets the keys and helps bring bring it to life. But, you know, we’re, everything we’re doing is, you know, impacted by what’s going on around us and, you know, we’re shifting strategies, we’re finding things that you know, we tried that maybe didn’t work as well as we would have wanted and, you know, trying something new on you know, the maintenance It’s side of the facility management side, a lot of the work is the same. It’s just the way that we’re approaching it. Yeah. You know, we’re contending with a lot of people, you know, moving out as they normally would, I think those numbers are largely unchanged, you know, where we’re seeing the impact is people just aren’t moving in at the same rate. There’s just things have slowed down significantly. And I think we’ve seen that in the news and, you know, not just here locally, but you know, nationally, and, you know, our focus really is on you know, keeping touch points, clean, keeping areas safe, making sure we’re responsive to the needs of our of our residents, doing everything we can to help make sure we’re available for people that are interested in finding a home to tour and be able to, you know, sign leases remotely and do all of those various things.
Greg Owens 19:55
Right, right. Yeah, I’ve been referring it to it. It feels like everything. Like on Island time?
Dave Tompkins 20:03
Yeah,
Greg Owens 20:03
right or it’s everything’s just a little bit, it’s slower, things take longer, right? If we’re gonna, if we’re going to Home Depot or even a paint store or things like that, it’s going to take a lot longer and, and then even for us, like access into a building, when there’s multiple trades working there, we’ve had to, to, you know, do things where we stagger the access points, right, like the choke points, as you mentioned, right?
Dave Tompkins 20:30
It’s funny, we, you know, we, every time we do a job or even with a service vendor, you know, we’re we have a very strict uniform policy or safety vest policy so we can identify who’s on site and and, you know, part of our new normal is our face covering policy, you know, and I was at a pre job meeting just last week, and, you know, we’re going over over everything and, you know, we had to have to be very strict on that I had a call earlier today. We’re an elevator modernization project, we’re doing one of our buildings I heard some reports this week, we had some challenges with the mechanics, you know, not wearing face coverings. And, you know, there’s just a zero tolerance policy on that right now. And that’s for their safety, but really also the safety of our residents. You know, one other big impact, Greg, that I’ve seen from my chair is our capital budget. You know, we started out the year with a plan to spend certain amount of money we had a lot of need to have a nice to have projects lined up. And, you know, once we got into mid March, and as the week started doing fold, you know, we had to go back and review and, you know, in an initial draft, you know, I cut 30% out of our capital planned budget this year with another 20% that we’ve pushed to, you know, lower priority items for late third quarter or fourth quarter. So it’s had a significant impact on you know, our capital plan on our improvement plans, which is a big part of that. My team what we do. So we’re still doing work. Obviously, you were out at Dolores, you know, we need to continue to take care of our facilities. And now we’re doing elevator upgrades, access control upgrades, some exterior painting, you know, in areas where it needs to be done. But we’re off we’re doing a lot less this summer than we were expecting at the beginning.
Greg Owens 22:22
Yeah, we’ve had, I’ve had to go through in my company and redo the budget a few times, right? Like, yeah, different scenarios of what this year could look like, based on, you know, massive unknown factors, like our rising numbers right now. Right, which is a major concern, right, we could go back to really super strict sheltering in place, the way things are looking.
Dave Tompkins 22:46
And it’s the middle of July or the middle of summer. We’re starting in summer Excuse me.
Greg Owens 22:51
Yeah.
Dave Tompkins 22:52
I mean, I was talking about this yesterday to a few people. You know, we’re taking a couple of steps back at a time Well, I think we were expecting to be several steps forward. And, you know, if even if things do slow down, or we’re able to get these numbers, you know, to a more manageable level, you know, by then we’ll be kind of pressed against the fall. And you know, as we get into the fall, and then the winter months, I mean, that’s when you have seasonal flus and other things. And it’ll be very interesting to see how things unfold. But, you know, my expectation is, I think we’re going to be in a similar pattern here for for several months to come.
Greg Owens 23:31
Yeah, yeah. And then, on top of being in a pandemic, we’ve had the protest and then civil unrest, you guys are in the heart of it in some ways with some of your properties, any anything that came up around that that like or is still a concern around? Those kinds of things, because I know I go through the city now and it’s unbelievable, like you get on Valencia Street and so many businesses are all bored. it up and they can’t even open now, right? Like they’ve had to like completely board up their facilities because of all of the things that were going on in the city.
Dave Tompkins 24:11
We are we’ve been pretty fortunate. Our headquarters and our main training place development is right here in mid market. And it’s right to the UN Plaza and Civic Center, which always is a hub for protests or march or Yeah, what we didn’t see this year typically is the big Pride Parade that we would have had at the end of June. So we’re accustomed to a lot of things happening in our area. We’ve been relatively fortunate some of our tenants, as you mentioned, the storefronts and misses did board up their shops, and that was early on, you know, just not knowing what was going to happen. And this was even before the protests, I think, just you know, in a concern for looting or things like that. We’ve had, you know, our building spray painted, we’ve had some windows broken. We have extra supplies. on hand here at Trinity plays with plywood and two by fours just in case something happens, we’re able to respond. But, you know, by and large, I think we’ve been pretty fortunate. What we have seen though, and some you don’t hear a lot about is there’s an increase in a lot of petty crime, you know, people breaking into our mail rooms, packages, you know, breaking mailboxes, you know, getting into cars in the garage. Things have always been an issue and a challenge here in the city. But I think you’re seeing a much higher numbers now. Because people aren’t working. There’s, you know, higher sense of desperation. And I think people are just taking advantage of, you know, the situation there’s less people around.
Greg Owens 25:43
Yeah, yeah, we’re seeing the same thing. I’m having to warn my you like we can’t, you can’t take any chances in the city like you can’t, like just leave a piece of equipment for two seconds. It’ll just come back and be like, I thought I put the sprayer right here. That’s right. That’s right, you know, just just gone. Yeah. And I think like you said, I think it’s just people taking advantage of the situation. And it’s incredibly tough times. I mean, I was, as you go through the city, the homeless problem has become even more, it was already a tough, challenging problem before this pandemic. And now it just seems like it’s, it’s growing exponentially in a lot of ways. Or even maybe it’s just more just sort of like right there in front and that kind of stuff, or like where you can see it, right, because people are spreading out. And I think the city has been allowing that to happen. What’s your experience been around that?