Case Studies College and University

It was shaping up as a Spring Break like any other at Duke University in March 2020. With most students gone for the week, the facilities staff was preparing to spruce up the popular Wilson Recreation Center, readying it for the end of the semester. As Chris Policastro recalls, the plan was for a detailed […]

It would be a typical day on the job for Michelle Swanitz, one that had her responding to one situation after another before the sun set on the Central California coast. Director of facilities for the College of Agriculture, Food and Environmental Sciences at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, Swanitz was handling […]

Imagine you’re pulling an all-nighter for a crucial exam at the University of North Dakota, downing enough Red Bulls to fill a bathtub, when you’re suddenly overcome by a craving for a Chick-fil-A sandwich. What do you do? Drive to the fast-food alley in Grand Forks, of course. Before long, though, that late-night run won’t […]

There’s only one Leonardo da Vinci, one Picasso and one Michelangelo. But that didn’t stop a seven-year-old Virginia Howard from pursuing her passion as an artist. From summers spent on Cape Cod painting watercolors with her grandfather to working on her craft for hours each night after school, she was hooked. Her dreams of being […]

Thomas Polansky has loved The Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens since he was a child. Often when he visited his grandparents in Pasadena, they brought him to these places at the San Marino, California, institution. The trips influenced Polansky’s early interest in art and architecture, and he eventually went on to receive his […]

MacEwan University may be in Western Canada, but the people who comprise the facilities department speak at least one word in Japanese: muda. That, explains Stephen Luyendyk, translates as waste or uselessness, terms that were anathema to him and his crew even before 2019, when an outside speaker put a catchy name to the many […]

Glance at a map of the Philadelphia metro area and one thing you’ll notice are the colleges and universities. There’s Villanova, the University of Pennsylvania, Temple, La Salle and Saint Joseph’s—known as the Big Five. There’s also Drexel, Bryn Mawr, Swarthmore and others. That’s meant, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, administrators could pool their […]

Students are often attracted to community colleges for the practical programs they offer. But Monica Davis knows that it’s also where the programs are taught—facilities that are comfortable, well-equipped and modern—that keeps students enrolling. That’s the gamble being made by the community college where she’s senior director of construction and facilities planning. As with other […]

Municipal zoning questions about construction projects rarely make for exciting conversations, even as they determine what will be built and where. Kyle Hardie’s work as director of design and construction for Indiana University Health involves zoning, but it’s often the spatial zoning—what’s inside those facilities—that occupy him, particularly as he assists the system enter a […]

For Alabama native Kevin Hudson, instilling value in every encounter with his team has become a hallmark of his career in construction—a way of giving southern hospitality a new meaning. After graduating from Auburn University in 2008, Hudson got his start working with a small contractor out of Nashville, Tennessee, before pursuing opportunities back in […]