On April 26, Oregon State University celebrated Arbor Day and Earth Week with a tree planting on the Library Quad. One hundred years ago the class of 1913 planted the majestic elm trees that line the Library Quad. Facilities staff planted the new elm on the west side of the quad. Date: April 26 2013 (photo: Theresa Hogue)

To celebrate Arbor Day and commemorate Earth Week at Oregon State University, students and staff gathered on the west side of the Library Quad April 26 to plant an elm tree. One hundred years ago the Class of 1913 planted the elm trees that still line the quad. Now, Joe Majeski with OSU Facilities Services told the assembled crowd, the new tree can grace the quad for another 100 years.

Majeski said because of careful monitoring, and the culling of any trees with symptoms of the devastating Dutch Elm disease, OSU has one of the biggest collections of elms around.

The new tree replaces a magnolia that had been planted in the spot but wasn’t suited to the location. The magnolia was removed to another campus location and the elm will quickly grow to fill in the vacant space, within sight of its century-old cousins.

A barn owned by the College of Veterinary Medicine is getting a major overhaul as storage is cleaned out. (photo: Theresa Hogue)

Space is tight around the OSU campus, and like a homeowner needing to purge the attic every few years, departments and colleges are being asked to take a serious look at what they’re hanging onto, and whether they really need to keep it.

Hard decisions are being made around campus as storage closets are being emptied and dust is being blown off items that haven’t seen the light of day in years. In the towering barn on Washington Way owned by the College of Veterinary Medicine, Terry Robertson, facilities coordinator for Veterinary Medicine, stood in a cloud of dust as workers dragged boxes past him on the wide barn floor.

“The issue of storage is huge on campus,” Robertson said. “It’s an effort to just keep what we need to keep and get rid of what we don’t.”

Robertson, who used to work for campus surplus, knows that it’s hard for some people to let go of things. In preparation for the cleaning of the vet barn, he sent an email to everyone in the college to find out exactly who had things stored in the barn and what was necessary to keep. Then a team of volunteers from the college as well as staff from business services went about the task of digging, cleaning and purging.

Ryan Gilleese, who works with Business Services, helped decide what discarded items were worth gathering and either selling or recycling to keep a majority of items out of the dumpster.

Ryan Gilleese with Business Services moves storage out of a barn on campus. (photo: Theresa Hogue)

“We try and recycle as much as possible,” he said, and items that can be are sold either through an auction at the surplus store, or on-line. The sales help fund the work Gilleese and other staff members do when cleaning out storage facilities.

Jean Duffett with campus planning is helping oversee much of the clean-up effort. Working alongside Bob Nettles, director of administrative services at OSU, Duffett is helping implement what they are calling the “5S” program at OSU. It’s based on a series of standards first established at Toyota facilities, which focuses companies and organizations on de-cluttering. The 5S philosophy is based on Japanese words beginning with ‘S’ and looks at simplifying your work environment, reducing waste and non-value activity while improving quality, efficiency and safety.

The benefit of the 5S approach is that it maximizes space usage for improved performance. By removing as much unneeded storage as possible, spaces can be freed up for other uses that are in greater demand on campus, such as offices, labs and even classrooms. As OSU continues to grow, getting the core of campus cleaned up becomes even more important.

Of course some storage will always be necessary, Duffett said, but units need to organize and thin down what is being stored, and try to keep long-term storage outside the main campus core.

Zach Heppner with Business Services loads trash into a bag during a clean-up project. (photo: Theresa Hogue)

She said a big focus of the program, in addition to freeing up space that could be used for other purposes, is to find ways to repurpose or sell items that are no longer being used by departments and individuals, which is why the partnership with Business Services is so crucial. Many items can be dismantled and recycled. The last option for unwanted items is to discard them at the dump.

While Facilities Services and the College of Veterinary Medicine have been the first to step up to participate in the project, Duffett hopes to reach out to departments and offices across the campus to help them clean up their spaces.

“This whole project is a way to shine up the campus,” she said. “We’re helping staff remove stuff they don’t need and allowing for more use of the space. We recognize that space is a priority on campus and becoming a more precious commodity every year.”

~ Theresa Hogue

Heat was so intense in the steam tunnel fire that this sign was melted. (photos courtesy of Facilities Services)

An extraordinary effort by more than 100 Oregon State University staff and professional faculty in the wake of a disastrous fire is being honored today by President Ed Ray at a private luncheon.

Early on the morning of Nov. 24, an electrical fire and arc flash explosion turned a portion of the steam tunnels running under the campus into a fireworks show. The result was a mass of melted wires and cables crucial to the phone and network systems of many campus buildings.

The ensuing chaos forced a campus closure by noon the same day, but although for many campus employees that meant an early start to their Thanksgiving holiday, for countless others it was the beginning of more than a week of non-stop work.

“All of us are pretty amazed,” said President Ed Ray, speaking about the tireless work that went into restoring phone and network services to campus. “People just dropped everything to help. These are people who didn’t stop to think about themselves at all.”

From public safety officers to registrar staff, media services to communications staff, the OSU campus community scrambled to respond.

Ray has continued to speak out about the commitment staff has shown to getting the university up and running as quickly as possible, under the most difficult of circumstances.  The appreciation lunch, hosted by Ray and Provost Sabah Randhawa, will honor staff from network services, campus safety, facilities, media services, technology services, Oregon State Police and other areas on campus that pitched in to help during the last week.

Jon Dolan, Associate Director for Network Services, is effusive in his praise for the work that has taken place.

“This outage constitutes the worst possible scenario (short of Kerr collapsing) that we could have envisioned in our disaster planning,” Dolan said, “and the fact that we have been able to restore service so quickly is simply amazing.  I am humbled to work with such dedicated people.”

Dolan said there were a number of people who went so far beyond the call of duty that he wanted to recognize them. Greg Edmaiston, cable plant manager, was on site at 4 a.m. Nov. 24 to assess the scope of the problem, and orchestrated the repairs around the clock.

“He’s been there since the beginning, lining up contractors and ordering materials to get what should have been a month-long project done in a week,” Dolan said.

Dave Barrett, lead telephone technician, was also on-site nearly non-stop leading crews in the demolition and repair of phone cables, as well as getting alarms working in buildings.

“He’s gotten here early and stayed late every day,” Dolan said.

This was the scene that greeted crews after the steam tunnel fire. (photo courtesy of Facilities Services)

Ian Downie, senior wireless engineer, Josh Crowl, operational systems network analyst, and Bill Myers, senior network engineer (retired), also worked tirelessly to install temporary measures to restore building network connectivity, even when that meant throwing copper wire between buildings for a quick temporary fix.

Tom Williams in media services could even be seen in a harness over the weekend, dangling from the sides of buildings in an attempt to get wireless links working.

Thanks to all those efforts, campus is nearly back to normal. The last temporary network fixes will be made secure by Friday afternoon, and over the weekend phone systems should finally be up at full capacity, with tweaking expected over the next few weeks. In all, Dolan said, it’s nothing short of miraculous.

Lois Brooks, Vice Provost for Central Administration Services, said Dolan was essential to the success of the repairs.

“He’s the reason we were able to pull together such a rapid and effective response for the networking outages,” she said.

Vincent Martorello, director of Facilities Services, also witnessed some miracles over the last week. One of the most creative solutions to the problem of phone service loss was the work Rich Brookes and Brandon Wells did when they established a temporary roof top phone wire network, allowing OSU to reestablish elevator emergency phone service and alarm service to buildings.

“In addition, Brookes secured 14,000 linear feet of the necessary wire late Saturday afternoon from a local vendor, thus allowing work to begin early Sunday morning,” Martorello said.

Andy Gray pulled Minority Abatement Contractors, Inc from another OSU project to tackle abatement in the steam tunnel late Wednesday afternoon, which then allowed Facilities Services workers to enter the tunnels and install the steam pipe insulation.

When they discovered that the only available steam pipe insulation was in Portland, Kevin Christman and Pete Schoonover took an emergency trip up to Portland Wednesday afternoon. They arrived back at OSU at 9:30 p.m. and worked until 1 a.m. installing the pipe, along with Andy Gray, to ensure repair efforts could start first thing Thursday morning.

Stuart Larson spent countless hours coordinating the efforts between Pacific Power and Light (PPL) and the OSU electrical team in a manner that kept everyone safe and working efficiently.

Finally, Martorello said Max Archibald from PPL, “Once again demonstrated his dedication and love for OSU by tirelessly working and motivating people around him to progress through the repairs as safely and quickly as possible.”