Fix It Forward - Episode 1

 Hey everyone. The time is finally here. We're shooting the first docu-series that the multifamily industry has experienced ever. We are gonna highlight the best of the best and the brightest of the maintenance profession. And then we're shooting in Atlanta, so you are going to see 12 episodes back to back of this docu-series right here, my hometown in Atlanta.

This is gonna be an amazing project. I'm super excited to kick it off. And also I want to thank our friends from. The maintenance Academy for supporting and believing in us, believing in a project, believing in an industry, believing in the maintenance trade that it hasn't been talked about enough. See guys.

Excited to see Sabrina. She's our first stop. I talked to her on the phone yesterday and she's incredibly excited. Her entire family knows that she's gonna be on camera. She's gonna be part of a documentary, like the start of a documentary docuseries, and they keep asking her when is it gonna be released?

I love this type of excitement from people and I love to actually be in a position to put them in a spotlight to actually give them the credit for the heroes that they are for the industry and for the world in general. Uh, I think trades are like underplayed and underestimated. There are amazing careers in multifamily and in trades in general.

Uh, and we as a industry. Had to do a better job elevating the benefits of doing a career in trades, making a living in trades. I personally have started as a groundskeeper myself, so this is where most of my passion comes from. We, maintenance professions, were a extremely important part of the whole entire business.

Uh, we're the people that could make or break a property, so super excited. Looking forward to be. Seeing Sabrina, I think we're like 10 minutes away, so can't wait.

Super excited for our first stop in the morning. Sabrina, 

nice to meet you. Welcome to the 

show. Very nice to meet you. Same. Tell us a little bit about yourself, your background in multifamily. 

Uh, well I've been doing this for about, about 25 years. Um, started in it, um, really young. Um, my grandfather was a building maintenance manager and my dad did construction.

And so that right there fueled the fire for me to get into this industry to jump into it. Um, helping my grandfather around the buildings, learning the tools and just getting my hands into it. Got in it at the age of 37, so I've been doing it for about 25 years now and it's been amazing ride. It is definitely been amazing Ride.

I started off going through a, a maintenance training school in the DC area. I'm from the Maryland, DC area, and going through that training school, they lost a technician that was hurt at work and asked me if I would just step in and fill in, even during my training time and later got employed, and that was the start of my career in it.

So much to unpack here. Did you ever think that you're gonna end up doing maintenance growing up? 

Never did. IN 

never did. What were you dreaming about when you grew up? 

Um, I actually was supposed to be going into the military in communications. I'm a single mom. I was a single mom with five kids. And just going through that process, I didn't want to leave my children.

And so I found the second best thing that I enjoyed doing, which was maintenance. Yes. 

How did you end up working at this property, by the way? What's your property name? Let's, uh, let's give a shout out to your property. 

This is my house. Um, definitely Overline Residence New City has been an amazing company to work for.

They're the owners of this building, and I got here in August 16th, 2022. I moved to Atlanta in October, 2022 with bto. Um, for another property that we had out here called the Hatley. Um, I opened up that property, started there, and transitioned over to here with this property as a takeover we did. Um, and coming into this building, it's been amazing.

The team is amazing. The ownership group is really hands on, but just an amazing ownership group to work with. I dig into a lot of the problems with new construction. I love finding. Items that we can get resolved prior to us getting out of the warranties to make sure that the asset is running efficiency as it can.

How many apartment homes do you have here? 

359 

units here. Staff. What size 

staff? Uh, right now my staff is consistent of myself and one technician later getting ready to interview an assistant row. This property is a three phase property, so what that means is, um, we built this building first. And then we have a second phase that'll be starting, um, 2026 to open up another phase of the building, and then we'll go later on into the third phase.

So it'll be a property of three apartment buildings. Right now we're on one of the amenity spaces. This is our terrace area. It's located on the third floor here, and this is where a lot of the residents come at when they're doing their office work on the inside lounge area. It's a rentable space that residents can use it to have parties, um, family events and things of that nature.

We have fire pits outside for the residents, um, and a total of three grills and a smoker. It's a very utilized space. Um, my maintenance team is very great with our property walks. We do a daily property walk to make sure it's in pristine condition for the residents when they want to come out to utilize the spaces.

What would you say is interesting here in a building? What other areas that, uh, you could show us. 

Um, we're gonna go to our second floor area, um, and on the second floor level we have a rec room. And then that rec room, it consists of a pool table and there form another area for them of work spaces. And then there are also a beer tap that they have for the residents where each residents get a beer tap card and allow expenses of two beers a day.

Also, on that level, we have a golf simulating room for the residents that's also can transformed into a movie room. And then we have a fitness center there. It 

is quite impressive. Let's go. Let's walk and talk. All right.

Where are we going now? 

Right now we're getting ready to head up, head downstairs to the second floor lounge area. We have three amenities in that area. So we're gonna go down and see the rec room, the glove simulate, golf, simulating room, and the um, gym. 

How did you get your first job? You know, understand what was it, what was the position?

As I was saying, you know, the training school that I went to, um, that was the first part for me to get into the industry. Just doing that training with them and them asking me to fill in for a technician that they had that actually got me hired with that company. So I ended up working with them and that was my first foot in the door into maintenance in 99.

What was the first experience for you? How did you feel? 

Uh, it was amazing just to get that opportunity. Um, and then I had an amazing supervisor. He taught me rekey and locks. He was a master locksmith, so that was the first trade that I got under my belt outside of just the basic maintenance skills. 

Um, okay.

Rick King, tell me about what you did before maintenance. Before maintenance. I was a security 

officer. 

A security officer. Yes. That's a big shift, right? Security officer. I get that trade from that to maintenance. There's a significant shift, like, you know, starting to work with your hands now using your abilities to kind of like, you know, learn.

Yeah. Uh, 'cause it's not just school, it's a lot of hands-on, right? 

Correct. Correct. Um, but just, um, growing up as a teenager with my grandfather, that's where I had got the basic hands-on skills. Um, knowing tubes and how to use tubes, what was things, and I did a lot of work on like taking things apart in the house, just like opening up things to see how it works on the inside.

Those things just really intrigued me. I would take a VCR apart just to put it back together and see if it operated, and when I seen I can do that, that just showed me this was the path that I was supposed to be in. 

When it comes to your first job. I'm sure that, you know, had certain expectations like, hey, my job is gonna be like this.

Yeah. What was that you learned first that you learned it wasn't so like you were thinking 

at, at any moment, your days can be different. Like things could change at the drop of the dime, you can have a smooth soft day and then in an emergency can pop up. And you're on a run and you gotta be able to stay focused to be able to attack those raw emergencies like within the drop of a dime and not freak out and make it more of a issue.

But for me, learning that I had to pay attention to my supervisors and my other team members that more seasoned, that showed me how to attack situations like those to be a better person at it. 

Tell me about how you learn, like how you learned the trade. Of course you had a base, 'cause you know, you, you worked in a family with a family and you kind of knew the basics as you were saying.

You know, you also study, but then there's a lot that, you know, you couldn't study. Yeah. You didn't know. I'm a very 

visual learner, a visual learner. I'm very visual. Um, you could show me how to do something one or two times back then, and I could just pick it up and go with it. As I got later in my career, I, I knew that some certifications I needed to go to school and have.

In 2013, I went to school for HVAC. That was the big shift in my career right there. Um, I went to Lincoln Tech, graduated top of the class, and also received a, um. Training mentor certificate for just being that person to step in to help the other students out so no one was left behind. You know, to help people understand the processes of the systems and things like, even though I knew how to do the work, I needed that certification to get me to the next level.

After graduating, um, Lincoln Tech, I actually ended up joining, uh, Washington DC Metropolitan, um, transit Authority. So I was working on trains. For about three years while I did that job, I actually went to school and got my business management degree. So I worked full time and then I also did a business management degree to balance the two in this apartment ministry.

'cause in multifamily, you can't just be a maintenance worker, you just can't load no maintenance. So I had to learn budgets. I had to learn how to do proposals and service agreements, and I had to learn how to. Know when my building is at a age where something needs to be taken care of. So I had to learn a five year, 10 year evaluations.

Where to next? So we are gonna go into the gym here. This is a residential, this is how boutique gym we have. It's very utilized. Um, and the residents really enjoy because it's quaint, it's small, it's not overcrowded.

This gym access is for 24 hours for the residents. So they don't have to, um, have a set time to come in here, which makes it more convenient for them. 'cause they can come in at two in the morning, they can come at four in the afternoon, they can come when they get off of work. But this is a space that residents truly love and enjoy.

What is the first major challenge that you remember in your maintenance career? Apartment, maintenance career? 

Oh my, um. I would have to say it was the hbs. Um, I had to go in, I was working with Southern Management back in 2 0 0 2 and working with them, they do everything in house and I worked at a property that they had in Virginia.

What I loved about it is they had a training academy, so they taught you everything the way they do it on the property, but my biggest thing was h vs. With them. I wasn't certified. Um, and I was getting service requests. I need to go fix this resident's ac, and I'm on call, so I'm on Google, I'm on YouTube and trying to find ways to fix this ac and that's what really made me say that this is something I have to learn.

This is something that's going to hinder my career from moving forward because this is a major thing a resident has to have. And the rec room we have over here is where our residents have their sitting areas. Um, it's also an area that sits outside the rec room where they can lounge and read books. So throughout the building you'll see a lot of the natural tones.

So tell us a little bit about this particular room that we're in. I see that a lot of brick. That looks like vintage. Yeah, that looks like very old. 

Yeah. And so that's the lot of things, um, with the ownership. Loves to do, they love to use older model. Like historic looking things. They have very natural tone.

You'll never see bright colors within this building. Um, because one of the things with him is a saw. Elegant tone in the building, the lighting and everything. We have a dimmer lighting setting in here just to give you a more homey, uh, warm feeling when you come into the building and the spaces.

Yeah, this room here, just to let you know, is one of the resident's favorites. We've had party events here. Um, they use it for movies, a lot of golfers in the building, so definitely it's get used a lot for their practicing before going out onto the field. So this is the favorite room of the building, the golf syndrome.

When did you make the decision that this is gonna be my career going forward, like. I wanna stick to apartment maintenance. 

2006 

two 2006. Decided 2006. 

Was it seven years in the industry? Um, I knew I loved it. I enjoyed just to see the residents, the experience that I get with the residents, the relationships I built with them, just knowing every day that I'm doing something to make their sanctuary, their space of living, just peaceful for 'em.

So I knew in 2006 that this was the career that I was not gonna change from. 

A lot more than just, uh, turning the wrench, right? Yes. It's, 

it's way more than turning the wrench. It's, it's, it's just giving back training. Um, I love teaching technicians the skillset. I love taking people that has no knowledge whatsoever about it and giving them insight into it.

Um, when I work in a residence apartment, I explain the processes of what I'm doing with them and just to get them to see the understanding of it. But this right here has been like, it's not even work for me. It's like I'm coming to a playground to have fun. 

That's amazing. Yeah. That, that's a great way to put it.

Yeah. What is another misconception of someone looking in from outside looking in about apartment maintenance? 'cause. I just mentioned like turning the wrench all day. Yeah. Like, you know, you fix things. 

I think what a lot of people, um, misconceive about us is that we are just tool turners When we're actually consultants to the residents, you know, we solve problems, you know.

Um, we help out. It's not always about fixing something for a resident. We could have a resident that just may need us to show them some things or processes of where they can get things done, and it's just knowing everything about where you work at. To be able to better assist and help the people that live in the building to make everything smooth for them.

By the way, we're entering the main shop here. 

Yeah. We're entering our sanctuary. Um, this is my technician, Isaiah. Um, Isaiah joined me. How you doing? February 20, 24. In 2006, I was living in Annapolis, Maryland and they have a property there. The marina and I walked in that property and just looking at the way they operated in there, the pristine of the building, I asked did they do paper application still?

Um, and from that day, just meeting that team and their way of telling me, no, go online. Try this right here. Reach out to the hr, try going on the LinkedIn and making friends and things within the company there. For 10 years, I did that. I built relationships, uh, with Robs. She's the recruiter that actually hired me into the company in took 2002, but I never gave up because this, this company, it embodies what I feel about the, uh, business.

It aligns with what I feel the way a property should operate. A company should treat their employees. And it's been opening, welcoming on since I've been here. I started in 2000 at Zuto. Started in DC in Virginia, uh, properties, uh, 1919 in the beacon clarinet, and I worked there for two years. That was a takeover property.

I was managing two properties at that time. Um, the opportunity came up when I seen Atlanta was posted for a new physician for a lease up, and I threw my hat in the ring, and that's my transition over here to Atlanta. The teams are great out here. We've grown from 2022 from one, two properties now to a total of 10 properties.

The teams we build out here, the people are passionate about what we do, and I, I couldn't ask for a better company to work for. 

Walk us through the, the rest of the maintenance shop. Show us around. And, uh, let's talk a little bit about what a day in the life of, uh, Sabrina looks like at work. 

Well, this is the maintenance shop.

Um, I probably spend the least amount of time in here 'cause we are grabbing and going. But, um, if you look at the maintenance shop, I try to make it a simple, easy setup. I've been doing this, um, since 2004. When I started with Archstone. Archstone had a way of setting up their shops. Where they would paint the walls, the color of the sections.

Um, and it makes it easy for any team member from any property to come to your property and be able to function and operate when they're helping you out. Zuto does it. Um, and a lot of the shops, they have their shelves painted, but it's something about me having that wall. It's bright, it's right there in your face, and the team members will know, like where they can go and grab what they need for those properties off of the shelves.

HVAC is my big thing. So as you can see, we keep all our HVAC equipment and stuff on shelves. We make sure we're stocked with refrigerant to do charges if we need to. 

Tell me, uh, a little bit about the most exciting thing for you on a daily basis. Like what gets you up in the morning, what gets you excited to say, Hey, I want to go back there 

another day in his office?

Yeah. Uh, just the residents, the team, um, the team we have here. Um, my gm, Alexis. Um, she's like, oh my gosh, she's built my. Managerial skill in a way that I rarely had an a GM to do. I've, I've gotten tit sips from everybody I've worked under, but with her, she's given me softwares to put in place, apps to put in place to make me a more effective operating person to do my managerial side of my job, as well as the maintenance side of my job.

The front office staff, um, Lenny Cartier is a great team. We are like a family. And so leaving home to come here is just like coming to hang out with your family members. And that's the plus side of it. 

That's super cool. Uh, where to next?

If you're thinking about a situation that you had a really, really rough day. 

Yeah. 

But then when you got home, you know, you look behind and you said. Man, I did it. Yeah, I did this. Can can you uh, can you remember that particular instance? 

Um, it's so funny 'cause we had just recently had one big issue that came in on the property where we had this major rainstorm out here.

Um, back in February and in that rainstorm, we had eight units that got flooded. I, I got a call from a resident about five 30 in the morning that their apartment was flooded when they woke up. So when I got on site, the first thing I do is start walking apartments above them and then I go to the next apartment above and that apartment's flooded.

When I go to the one above that one, I realized that apartment I just left was my location of the leak. Just going through it and checking everything. I had to open the wall up, found a four inch storm drain, just flooding in the building. Um, was able to get the water stopped by blocking the drain upstairs, um, and start going down and remedi starting remediation.

You know, that was one of the biggest things. Most times remediations can take anybody. From anywhere to a month, month and a half to get everything back together. But the due diligence, the quick responses of myself, getting my team members on site, getting the remediation team on site, we were able to get these people back in their apartments within two weeks.

And so that was just an amazing feeling and that was a total of eight apartments we were able to give back. So if you get home and just to say, at the end of the day, look, I got that leak repaired on site within a couple of hours to get these residents. Just back in a nice, safe place was like really, it was like warming to know that we were able to do this with them.

Fantastic. Yeah. Let's check out the pump room. Let's 

check out the pump room.

In here. We have a. Uh, electric fire pump. We run this fire pump monthly for monthly testing to make sure it's stay in operational condition. Um, we do monthly greasing of all our ports to make sure no gears or anything rusted out or get damaged or bad. And then the fire pump system, you know, it consists of your air compressor for your dry pipe system.

You have the fire pump for your water system. The jockey pumps. If you lose air fresher, it'll pick that air fresher back up for you to make sure you're not going into a bad situation. So this here is just called our wet system. So this is filled with water. It's at a holding spot in case a sprinkler head breaks.

That sprinkler head breaks, this pump will kick on and kick 265 psis of fresher water throughout the building to make sure we're putting that fire out. If there's a fire, 

Sabrina, you should, uh, you should actually do like an educational video to walk us through, uh, the complexity of high rise. Okay. And the mechanics.

Uh, I. I never had the opportunity to work for expensive periods of time on high rises. Sure. But I'm sure that I could learn from you. I could be a great student. 

Yeah. I love this. Like one of my things when I got to, um, Zuto in 2020, um, the fire company that I was working with really gave me a lot, lot of hands on knowledge of the system.

Dry pipe systems, wet systems, and the big part that I learned from them was working on a dry system. A lot of people don't realize it's air and water, and in that dry pipe system, you have a clapper that's closed with air pressure to keep that water from moving. But if you break a sprinkler head, that flapper pops open because that air pressure's gone and it runs the system to shut the water, to fill out the building to dry.

Wherever the fire will issue is every floor has a zone. So it's all set up in zones and from every floor you have a, a shut off, a control valve, a drain system. What that do is help you, let's say you have a issue with a sprinkler head on the 18th floor. Well, that floor alone can be isolated. You can take that floor out of the system.

And every rest of your building is still in service, but that one floor you have to do like a fire watch on just to make sure that fire, that floor doesn't have any issues in case there's a problem with the system getting back online. 

It's, it's actually quite amazing 'cause working on a garden style when a building is down, a building is down that they thought about, like isolating various areas.

So you, you only had to focus or like, you know, do a fire watch on like. A, a small area at the time. Correct. Versus the entire building. So that's, uh, that's quite remarkable. 

Your water pressure can only go up so high in the building. So you need to have these pumps to be able to push that water up to the higher floor.

Um, the water comes in at 80 PSI, but you need that pump to push it up to 130 psis to get it to the top floor to make sure everybody gets the same pressure in the water and a part of it. That's really interesting. Interesting is even though I'm sending 130 psis to every floor, every apartment have a PSI to regulate it back down to that low pressure that they need to be able to utilize the water.

It actually works the same as electricity works, correct? Water flow and electricity work. You know you have from the transformer in the street. Goes up tight and then when he hits the house, he regulates back down to one 20. That's correct. Or two 20. There you go. Or two 20. There you go. So electricity, I, I try to teach, you know, uh, my students, I try to teach him and tell him, like, think about, uh, electricity as water.

I, I make the parallel 'cause that he was the same thing. I, it like that 

analogy. It's the same 

fault. I, I wouldn't really touch electricity like I touched water though, that's for sure. Yeah, 

that's for sure. I really, I, I like that analogy. I'm gonna start using that one. That's great.

So this here is the generator room. Uh, I'm running a cat 1000. Um, for the HO Hotel building and the office building, like we're a joint community and this generator maintains the emergency system for both of the two buildings together. What that generator does, it, it controls our elevators. If the power goes out, it brings the emergency lights on if the building goes out.

Um, this right here operates and exercise weekly, every Wednesday, um, for 15 minutes. So this is our big baby to keep us. Still running when we don't have power. 

That's a big boy. It looks like, uh, right outta a box. They could make a box that big. 

Yeah. Very pri sustain to, to, 

to help this baby. Yeah. 

It, it definitely is very pristine.

I love it. 

It's a lot of art. I think it's more than just technology, like an art, state of art type of, uh, stuff. When you're talking about running a, uh, high rise. Out of all, like one location. Like this is like, and this, 

you, you gotta have something of this nature to wanna percent, 

same with hvac, like, you know, uh, can't live without it.

Right. System. Yeah. Sabrina, uh, as we're about to wrap up our visit with you today, I wanna go and send a message to folks that don't know what multifamily is. Don't understand multifamily, don't even know that multifamily exists as an industry. And especially to the young generation. What is the message that you have for someone young that hasn't made a decision about their career?

Why should they consider multifamily maintenance? 

They're always gonna need maintenance. It's, this is a career path, a, a skill set that no machine can do for us. This is always going to be a lifelong process that you'll have. It's a skillset that you can use when you purchase a home. When you have family members, you, you can always utilize this skillset.

I tell anybody coming into the multifamily industry, yes, it's a rigorous, challenging job, but it's also a rewarding, fun job. You ultimately, it's something that a resident or a person living in your building is always going to need to utilize. You're never gonna go away. 

Fantastic. If you were to give advice.

One or two pieces of advice to your younger self, what would you tell her? 

Always learn. Never stop taking any knowledge someone can give you. Give back the knowledge. Always share, share, share, because a lot of people nowadays need that to know that they have that support of somebody that's willing to teach 'em.

I also think that there's a maybe misunderstanding about. What you do, the value of what you do at times. Yeah. So I want to give you the opportunity to share a message for multifamily executives. What would be one thing that, you know, you wish they, they would know? Mm-hmm. More in detail, where they'll know differently than you think they do.

I think they should understand that we're not just maintenance workers, we're not just a service manager operating the mechanics of the building, but we're also the office side of the building. Um, we're also the concierge at times. We're also the cleaners at times. There's a lot that we put into learning every aspect of the job to help and support wherever there's help needed.

We don't just wanna be known as the maintenance supervisor. We do want to be known as that team player that helps the office staff when they need some help to know we out there to help the residents when they need the help, and we're also looking to grow and learn and teach. 

What excites you about the future, Sabrina?

All the opportunities that, um, I've yet to experience, you know, there's a lot more left in me in this industry. I have a lot more to give to this industry. Um, and I'm gonna continue this and give back to the community to bring more younger people. I love training. The ones that don't know. I want everyone to understand that this is a skill set that every individual really need to know.

Some of. 

Let's go. 

Thank you. I appreciate it. 

I appreciate you too. Thank you. I'm gonna be back. I promise you all.