Masters of Maintenance: Special Episode

[Jedd McDaniel] (0:00 - 0:07) This and go hey maintenance yeah pull out of that unit there's a piece of garbage over by building B. Pick it up! We're on the same team here you know.

[Adrian Danila] (0:07 - 0:12) How are we getting young people into this industry? We have a skills gap that we're trying to solve.

[Jedd McDaniel] (0:12 - 0:23) How do you deliver training for those team members right there? Okay here's some maintenance supervisor classes that I can knock out now and have that under my belt for when I have the opportunity to move into that position.

[Juan Carlos Islas] (0:24 - 0:34) You guys talking to talk because you're also walking and walk by saying hey we are promoting from within and you can come and be part of this growth. First off hats off to you guys for being here.

[Jedd McDaniel] (0:34 - 0:43) You don't need to have 10 years in this. Come on board we will train you for this. It almost I think opens the door wider to be able to have people apply for those positions.

[Mike Mulloy] (0:43 - 1:29) Hello everybody and we are live again. Well we're live for the first time with Maintenance X podcast Masters of Maintenance. I should say super excited to have not one not two but three guests today.

I'm Adrian Daniela your host. We have Jack McDaniel, Juan Lara Islas and then Mike Malloy here with us in the studio. We're going to have an amazing conversation about all things maintenance and some specific topics on training apprenticeships and so on and so forth.

I don't want to let any more of that out yet but I want to go around our virtual studio around the table and just start introducing our guests. Jed you go first sir. Tell us a little bit about yourself your current position and what brings you to this conversation.

What made you interested in being part of this conversation?

[Jedd McDaniel] (1:29 - 2:09) Right great. Thank you Adrian. I appreciate it.

I'm Jed McDaniel. I am the Director of Maintenance and Safety for Allied Residential. A third-party property management company based in Washington state.

We have 153 communities right now. A little over 15,000 total units. This I'm coming up on my 26th year in this industry.

I love what I do. I love my role here and I really just appreciate you putting this together for us Adrian to get our minds together and to pow wow and centralize this part of maintenance training and the mentorships and everything that we're going to talk about as far as trainings go. Thank you for this opportunity and look forward to it.

Absolutely. Mike Malloy, welcome to the show sir.

[Adrian Danila] (2:10 - 2:41) Thank you Adrian. I'm Mike Malloy. I'm the Vice President of Facilities for the NRP Group.

We're a developer, builder and manager of multifamily both market rate and LIHTC tax credit properties. I appreciate the opportunity to join. This conversation was born out of a larger conversation that we have and I appreciate the opportunity to connect with like-minded individuals who are in the industry working together and glad to be here.

Thank you.

[Mike Mulloy] (2:42 - 2:58) Mike, I wanted to say that you were basically the initiator of this entire conversation. Tell us a little bit about like what has driven you towards starting this conversation and what are you trying to get out of this roundtable here.

[Adrian Danila] (2:58 - 4:32) To really explain, I mean Adrian you put together this platform, this opportunity to bring all of all of us together and I think the most beneficial part, the purpose of this is to really connect with peers or other individuals who are within the industry and learn from one another and so as part of one of our regular conversations, we were talking and frankly our group has continued to grow. Every other call we have, the group gets larger and larger and as we go through, we're having introductions and we have an opportunity to talk a little bit about certain topics. I was really interested in some of the feedback that Jed had given and so I reached out and said, hey, like I asked some questions and follow-up questions.

I think the real, really the benefit of this group is to learn from what other people are doing and this has provided me that opportunity. So in me reaching out, Adrian, I copied you just to kind of keep you in the loop of what's, you know, what kind of subset conversations are happening. It was your idea to, hey, let's make another call out of it and which I think is great.

So I think this is the greatest benefit is the opportunity to talk with other people who are in similar roles at similar companies or with even different companies but within the industry. We're all trying to solve the same problems in a lot of ways. I think it's important that we are open and receptive to helping others, asking for feedback, be willing to give feedback and I think that's really how we move our industry forward.

[Mike Mulloy] (4:32 - 4:44) Thanks, Mike. Again, it's great to have you here. Juan, tell us a little bit about yourself.

Welcome, first of all. Tell us a little bit about yourself and what brought you, what determined you to, you know, to join our group, to join the conversation today.

[Juan Carlos Islas] (4:44 - 5:45) Definitely, definitely. So my name is Juan Laizles. I'm a Senior Director, National Multifamily Facilities for Southern Land Company.

You know, owner-operator. We build our own product, very high-end, almost resort-style living. So it's really next, kind of next step in multifamily, I think.

It's really amazing but, you know, why I joined this group is for the community, right? I think all of us here in this group, we've come up in this industry and sometimes the facilities communities, the maintenance communities, doesn't really seem like there's much of it, right? And then everybody, you know, has great ideas but there's no real platform to share and really empower our colleagues to be able to, you know, make themselves better.

So I think this is a great group. You know, the topics are going to be amazing. I'm really excited to be here with Mike, you know, Jed and yourself, Adrian.

[Mike Mulloy] (5:45 - 7:02) So I just want to say that a couple of you mentioned like the group, right? What you've been referring to was actually the group that we created like seven, eight months ago. We started with a couple of dozen of people.

We're approaching 80 members and we're calling it right now the Multifamily Facilities Leadership Council because I think it's more than just a group of people getting together and like, you know, chatting every other week. There's so much brain power, so much experience. There are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years of important experience between all of us like, you know, the so many members we have that we want to take and we can and we should take things to the next level.

And this could be, you know, one of the like the main, the number one think tank for the industry to harvest the best ideas when it comes to facilities and be like an incubator for new ideas. Jed, I want to start by giving you the opportunity to tell us a little bit about your apprenticeship program. This is kind of like, you know, one of the things that sparked the entire conversation and the reason for us to be here.

So take all the time that you, you know, that you need to kind of describe it in as much detail as you can. And we would like, we'd like to maybe follow up with some questions. I know we'll have lots of questions to ask after that.

[Jedd McDaniel] (7:02 - 12:07) Please. Absolutely. My pleasure.

We're really proud of this program actually. Myself and our director of our maintenance response team, his name is Brendan, came up with this program. Again, I feel like this really works best for Allied because we are, you know, centralized, if you will, around the greater Seattle area.

All of our properties are in Western Washington. So that makes it easier for us because, you know, we only have a three hour drive at the longest from one property extreme to the other. But right now we have 14, we call them our maintenance response team techs that work for us that any of our 153 properties can schedule in four hour increments.

So whether it's a four hour job or whether it's three, four, five days doesn't matter. They can schedule a maintenance response team person to help them on their property for whatever that might be. Maybe it's, you know, you have a bunch of turns that you need an extra hand for.

Maybe it's outside pressure washing. Maybe your maintenance supervisor is on vacation for a week and you just need someone to cover that property in that emergency phone for a week so that that maintenance person is not coming back to a pile that they have to catch up on. It's a great program.

That's really worked well for us. It started out with only three MRT members, and now we've grown to 14 because it's just been so successful in filling those gaps, whether it's with, you know, as we all know, the hiring issues that we have right now with maintenance, it's pretty universal. So it fills those gaps as well as just taking that extra load off the maintenance teams.

Because if me being on site, I know I would just always try to do everything on my own. And we don't necessarily want that, you know, we want it to be the best job that can be done and the safest that it can be done, not always the quickest. And I think that a maintenance mentality is to have that quickest thing in their head.

But what's really worked well with our maintenance response team, again, is when we're hiring right now, we can hire for drive and grit and customer service, and the importance of understanding how our residents and the ownership groups that we represent, how important they are to us. So you can come into this job not knowing any maintenance at all, and just wanting to learn. I'm just actually wanting to go out and learn some techniques about maintenance in the multifamily industry.

And we will start you as a tier one mentee. So what that does is basically as a mentee with our maintenance response team, you're going to shadow one of our maintenance response team members that has become a tier three level, which makes them a mentor. And then basically, they can shadow them to learn all of our basic maintenance skills to learn all of our techniques, our policies, our procedures, our safety precautions, everything like that in our industry before we set them out on their own, if you will.

So tier one for our maintenance response team would be starting out with basically no experience. You're learning everything from the get go. And we have basically a 30 to 60 day plan.

It's always a little bit different depending on what's happening and depending on the person as far as how quick they learn. But they're going to learn the basics of everything. At that point, when they have completed that, they can move up to tier two, which basically means you have proven that you know all of your basic maintenance skills, you have all of our safety policy and procedures down and you're working on certifications, whether that is a CAMT, whether that's your certified pool operator, your electrical certification, your asbestos certification, you're on your way to earning those certifications. That brings you to level or to tier two of our mentor mentee program. And it usually comes with a couple of dollar an hour raise.

And then at that point, when you get to tier three, that means you have completed your certifications, you've gone through, you have your electrical 07B license for the state of Washington, you have your certified pool operator certification, your asbestos class three certification, all of those basics down, and then you're ready to become a mentor and help guide the next mentee up through that. The nice thing too, about our maintenance response team is that what we tell them is, is their ultimate goal is to find their happy place, if you will find their home. So although they travel, and they get scheduled at any of our 153 communities, if there is a particular property that you know, pays more is closer to home or is a step up for them in their skill level that they want to take, they would always have that opportunity to then be the maintenance supervisor on that community before we're going to hire outside of the company.

And then we would hire outside of the company at that mentee level and started over again, with with the whole process. So it really has been successful. And again, I know it's partly because we are so compact with our properties, we do that by design, we know this market, we're good at it.

So we stay here. So I know it would be a little more difficult as far as a more spread out platform. But it really has proven to be successful not only for, you know, our site teams to take the load off the maintenance teams, but also for again, the ownership groups that we represent, that that work and stuff is not sitting anymore, it can actually be taken care of.

And those residents are getting faster, better service, and in turn, which makes the owners happy. So I feel like it's been a win, win, win situation for us. And we just keep advancing from it.

[Mike Mulloy] (12:07 - 12:45) No, no, please, please, Mike, I only wanted to say this, Jed, you just kind of open the can of worms, we could spend the next, you know, the next like four to six hours to just scratch the surface here. Before, Mike, I'm going to turn it over to you. Before I do that, I wanted to thank all of you that are watching us live in the audience.

And I want to just read Jay Apne's comments saying great to see so many of my great start team listening in today. I wanted to thank you all. If you have questions, drop them in the comments, in the comment box, we will ask, we will try to ask them as many of them on your behalf.

And Mike, please take it away, sir.

[Adrian Danila] (12:45 - 13:24) Yes, that's a great point. You know, I would also encourage anyone who's listening in to post questions. I always value feedback.

And, you know, your question could be our next topic for conversation. So thank you. Jed, thank you for sharing.

I think it's what you're doing is really a great program. And I think I'm sure others and myself included, are trying to do something similar. My initial question was, are these people that are on this MRT team, are they all new hires coming to the company starting on this team?

They're not people who came off of property and joined this team, correct?

[Jedd McDaniel] (13:25 - 13:45) Three quarters, I would say are new. We do have a few that have been on properties before that actually prefer the traveling aspect of our maintenance response team and experiencing different properties and different types of jobs every day that they are doing. But yes, most of our MRT hired on as an MRT member from the beginning, yes.

[Adrian Danila] (13:46 - 14:24) So I guess when you're recruiting for these positions, and I've seen it both ways, I would definitely say that I've seen people who would appreciate or would prefer the flexibility and kind of change of scenery of floating between other properties. But then there's others who just want to have a home base and know where they're going every day. So I guess in terms of recruiting, how does it differ?

Like the maintenance tech position, essentially the same position, but obviously you're floating between different properties. Is it more challenging, I guess, to recruit for that position or do you have to incentivize in any special way?

[Jedd McDaniel] (14:26 - 15:38) You know, no. Incentivize, no. I would say if anything, I think it incentivizes itself to almost advertise it as, you don't need to have 10 years in this.

Come on board. We will train for this. It almost, I think, opens the door wider to be able to have people apply for those positions because we can show them every step of the way.

But you're right. Not everybody is the same and we never will be, right? That's kind of the great thing about this industry.

So I'd like to say always that we have the opportunity for those people that want to ride the merry-go-round or those that want to ride the rollercoaster. Because you're right, Mike, some people just want to have that one position in that one place and they just want to run that thing perfectly for 20 years. Great.

We're all ready for that. We have that path for you. And there's those people that want to try every different position and every different property and style until they get settled into something.

Great. We have that platform for you available also. That's why it really works out well, I feel like, in both aspects.

But no, as far as extra incentives or anything towards that, no. I feel like they're coming to us more so. So it's advertised as a Tier 1 MRT employee.

But you're right, it is basically just a beginning maintenance tech job description.

[Voice Over] (15:38 - 15:42) And now a word from Sean Landsberg, co-founder Appwork.

[Mike Mulloy] (15:42 - 15:53) What you can measure, you can improve. You did mention an average completion time or tracking completion time for maintenance technicians. What other very important KPIs is Appwork capable of tracking?

[Sean Landsberg] (15:54 - 16:32) All the data can also be broken down. All those KPIs can be broken down, like we said, on a property level, technician level, or back up to a portfolio level. But even within a technician, you could break that down based off of the categories.

You can see, how is this technician doing with HVAC work orders, with plumbing work orders? We also took the concept of KPIs. A lot of companies use a KPI to say, well, how is somebody doing?

And let's look at his KPIs. But another thing that we actually did is we took that a step further, where we actually translated those KPIs into sentence based comment. The system would actually automatically spit out an actual actionable sentence, whether it's positive or negative, based on the technician's performance.

[Mike Mulloy] (16:32 - 17:04) I'd like to give Juan the opportunity to ask a couple of questions, and we could alternate and get back to you, Mike. I'm going to try to be the least involved that I typically am, because again, like I said, this is not about me. This is about you, gentlemen, and your curiosity, and also what you have to share, your feedback.

Again, I'm not trying to make this podcast about me, so this is the perfect opportunity to allow you to have as much time as possible. So Juan, go ahead with your first question, and then we'll get back to Mike.

[Juan Carlos Islas] (17:05 - 18:08) Definitely. First and foremost, I think what you guys have been able to create with Allied is kind of the holy grail, right? Because I think as we transition over to this new style of maintenance, and just this new workforce, you really have to take that people that want to learn and grow and develop them.

And so that's the question is, how do you do that? Especially with a lot of these bigger, some organizations that are more widely spread, where they only have two to three properties in a state or a region. But what you guys have done, I think, is great, because you guys are investing in your teams, and you guys are really creating that culture.

You guys are also walking the walk by saying, hey, we are promoting from within, and you can come and be part of this growth. First off, hats off to you guys for doing that. My first question is, to joining the service side, is it only through that program, or can you get hired?

Do you guys also hire on people off the street or community?

[Jedd McDaniel] (18:08 - 21:14) We still actually do regular hiring as well. I mean, yeah, absolutely. So it's not just I mean, we still advertise for properties, because there are a lot of maintenance people that don't even want that traveling aspect of every single day going to somewhere new.

So no, we're absolutely still, you know, utilizing, you know, LinkedIn, zip recruiter, as far as normal job postings for that goes. But this opens up another window, if you will, to have that person that doesn't necessarily they really want the drive, they really want to learn maintenance, they really want that first step and they have the go get them attitude. But they see these, you know, open job postings saying four years experience, five years experience must have an electrician's license, whatever it is, they're going to shy away from those.

So again, I just I feel like this gives both avenues and open doorway for people to walk through depending on what they're looking for. But you're right one, not not everybody wants to learn. I mean, I'll say we also have I feel like one of the best electrical programs in the entire state of Washington, you know, for for electrical to truly be doing it legally and correctly and safely, you are required to have your O7B trainee card or O7B electrician's license.

For that, we have every maintenance tech and maintenance supervisor that is in our company is automatically enrolled in our electrical program. They're learning that stuff, whether they actually want to take those steps or not. But now here's where the break point comes in is that when they do their logs, because they're required to, anytime they do an electrical work order and are working with an O7B electrician, they have to log their hours so that we can report those to labor and industries.

Now, there's some people that are logging every work order that they do, they want to get those 2000 hours as soon as possible and move forward and take that test, which when they pass the test, they get a 5% raise immediately from me for passing the test. But there's some people that don't even fill out their logs. Anytime they do it, they just okay, I complete this work order and it's fine.

And they just don't fill out their logs. We will continue to renew their trainee card for electrical, and they'll continue to go through all of our training classes with our instructor, but they don't have that personal drive to become an O7B electrician. And that's okay.

Again, we have the opportunity to give them that path. They have to still be the ones to take it. So it is Allied's goal to make sure that they have that path to know that this is a career, not a job and to give them those opportunities.

But for the people that are out there that are just waiting for it to fall in their lap, it's not going to happen quickly, if at all. You need to go get it. You know, when I was on site for so many years, you know, I took every opportunity that I could for every training class, whether it was my job or not, just to say that I knew what it was.

Now, that's not the case with a lot of people. So those ones that really want to enhance their career, they'll show you, they'll step out and they'll say, hey, I want this next opportunity. And we want to be able to give that to them.

But again, even the ones that don't, and they just want to be able to do their job, we still want that path to make sure they can do it correctly, safely, and to the best of their ability for their current role.

[Juan Carlos Islas] (21:15 - 21:40) No, definitely. And I think that's amazing. And I think, you know, testament to what I didn't have a follow-up to that.

It's obviously from inception to the program being now, what are some of the humps that you guys had to cross? And how were you guys able to essentially convince your owners to buy into this program and fund it essentially?

[Jedd McDaniel] (21:40 - 24:15) Great. Two really good questions. As far as the humps go, when this started, again, this was just three people that were only working under one portfolio manager's portfolio.

So it was only three people that maybe roamed around 12 to 15 properties total. And, you know, after that started and everybody kind of started realizing, wow, this is working out well, right? We need to branch this out past one portfolio manager's portfolio and let's make this a company thing.

And that's kind of how it just broke out from that mold was making it a We're not really advertising the growth of it. It's just been so successful that it continues to kind of grow on its own. And again, we have people that are hiring on specifically wanting to be on the maintenance response team now, because it is a really great team.

It is a really great program that we have. So as far as ownerships go, you know, it depends on the ownership. But again, I feel like it almost proves itself in its worth in the cost almost immediately.

I have some ownership groups where I do have what I've created called a maintenance rate comparison sheet, because some ownership groups need to see that number right in front of their face and say, look, you are saving money by having this person here. You know, even if because, you know, maintenance response team usually gets a couple more dollars an hour because they are, you know, it's travel and everything that goes with it. But again, if you go back to hi, here's the, you know, maintenance response team member making X amount of dollars on your property today.

Yeah, you paid a couple of dollars more. But if you had to call an electrician for what he just fixed, it's still going to be four times what you are paying that person. Same thing with everything else.

I literally have a rundown to say, here's what you're paying this person. Here's what you'd pay a painter. Here's what you're paying this person.

Here's what you'd be paying if it was a plumber. Every single aspect of everything that we do can be broken down as a bargain for our ownership groups when it really breaks down to it. So again, it's just, I think, finding how that ownership groups understand that it is a true bargain and making sure that they are aware of that because, hey, we all know one call to an electrical contractor and that's a year's worth of trainings on one of our, you know, employees for maintenance training.

It's unbelievable. But so all it really is, is about figuring out how that ownership learns or understands and show that to them because it really is. It's right there.

It's factual. We're not blowing smoke here. We really do save every single ownership group.

I don't care what property management company, you're saving money compared to calling contractors for every aspect of this.

[Adrian Danila] (24:17 - 24:37) Two follow-up questions to that. So first, as they go through this plan, is there a curriculum that they're following as well, or is it mostly on the job? I mean, they're shadowing, a tier one is shadowing a tier two or tier three, or is there actual, like a built out training curriculum that they're going through as well?

[Jedd McDaniel] (24:38 - 26:26) We have a built out training framework, I would say. So basically we have it broken down as far as what their job summary is as a mentee, what their job summary is as a mentor, what skills are needed or that you should be trying to gain from this, whether that's patience, teamwork, problem solving, leadership. We talk about what should be achieved by this program.

As far as by the time that you're done with this tier program, this is what you should know from everything for, you know, appliance repairs all the way down to professional behavior patterns. But we have it broke down kind of as a calendar framework. And I say framework, because again, not everybody is the same in how they learn.

And not every time are we going to get in the first 30 days to be able to repair every type of appliance or learn a certain technique all the way throughout. But again, it's that framework. So we have, you know, on day two, it's knowing the names of all your maintenance tools.

And day four is learning the key machine. Day five, knowing the difference between how to cut out a patch and mud a patch. Day seven is understanding bathroom plumbing.

Day 10 is kitchen plumbing. Day 12 is pre-test questions, just to make sure you have the basics down of basic maintenance. It kind of runs through a 30-day breakdown, if you will, so that it gives us that framework to go back to that tech and kind of evaluate where they're at at that point and see, okay, they've accomplished this, this, this.

They still need this, this, and this. And we can kind of check through that and be able to move them up again, because our goal is to go from tier one to tier two to tier three, so that they can actually become another mentor for up and coming mentees. So yeah, I would say, yes, it is broken down and it does have actual tests, if you will, but not necessarily a locked in day one, this happens.

Day five, this happens. It's a framework based on that.

[Adrian Danila] (26:28 - 26:50) Got it. That's great info. Good feedback.

One other question. So you said that you are offering these associates a couple of dollars more an hour. So just, I'm thinking logistics, like, do you cover their travel or anything, or is it just all kind of wrapped up under that additional wage that they're getting?

[Jedd McDaniel] (26:51 - 27:31) Right. So right now, it's not a mileage compensation, but yes, it's a couple dollar an hour wage compensation. And then it's also based on travel.

We try to schedule our maintenance response team members, not only to try to be as close to home as possible, so they don't have to travel hours necessarily, but it's also about what they want to do. You know, we have some MRT members that hate pressure washing, but love painting. Well then let's give them the painting roles if possible, right?

Why not be doing what they enjoy doing versus what they hate doing whenever possible. But we also have as a time allotment. So if they are going to a property that is more than 30 minutes from their home, their time starts from when they leave their house.

So that basically they're getting compensated for that time.

[Adrian Danila] (27:32 - 27:56) Got it. That makes sense. And does the property or like a regional say, Hey, I need help, or I'm requesting the service of this team.

And then they can essentially request the schedule. And there's someone who's managing the MRT team who is then scheduling those guys out. And I guess billing that property or billing it back somehow.

Correct.

[Jedd McDaniel] (27:56 - 29:45) That's exactly what happened. So we have a, we have a request form, a maintenance response team request form. We have an internal intranet that we use that we call Ari, which is the allied residential intranet that we use.

And on there, any employee can go on and make the request. It doesn't have to be a portfolio manager, but they do need portfolio manager approval for the request, because that is correct. If they choose to have an eight hour time period for MRT, that eight hours gets billed to that property as if that was your maintenance tech for the day.

But so anybody can go on and actually look and see where our 14 members are scheduled for the entire month. And actually even through next month at this point for us as well. And then they also have a request form that they can go on and request and say, Hey, these are the date frames that I'm looking for.

Sometimes it's immediately. Sometimes it might be in a, in a month and a half from now, when they know their maintenance supervisor just put in for two weeks vacation. It just depends, but they can put in for that request right then they can say what they actually need to do.

Cause that's important also. It really does depend on who you're going to get and why, depending on do you need, you know, appliances moved up to the third floor. Are you doing pressure washing?

Are you doing unit turns? Whatever the case may be so that we can prepare the right person or people to be there for that. And then basically, yeah, the breakdown of what they're looking for.

And then that goes to our maintenance response team lead and scheduler. And they basically schedule it out accordingly, but it's kind of nice too, because some properties want the same person back. They're like, Oh, we love, you know, the attitude that this person has, or this person did a great job.

Can we have them back? Well, they can go on and look and see when that person is available next. If that's the case and be able to say, Oh, I see Zach is available on Thursday.

Can I have him in my property on Thursday to do some painting? It's a great feedback, you know, back and forth for, with the information from our teams to the, to the MRT and from the MRT to the teams. So it really does work well.

[Mike Mulloy] (29:45 - 30:21) I'm curious about the structure, like, you know, out of the entire number of positions that you have, like just paint us the entire picture, you know, from manager all the way down and the titles as well. I'm learning and I've seen it, you know, working in my past. I've seen it working to where the more positions we create, that didn't mean that, you know, they're like what I say in a hierarchy, like the more this type of trajectory, they could be like lateral positions, like floating service technician, floating service manager.

So I'm trying to understand the entire picture from the manager down, just run it, run it down for us. Give us a rundown of what does that look like? What does that picture look like?

[Jedd McDaniel] (30:22 - 32:45) And we don't have that many levels. Honestly, I think we're, we're pretty broken down like most of the property management companies, but our upper level would be your portfolio manager, which oversees a portfolio of properties. Then you're going to have your site managers below that the actual property managers that are there on site is going to be your maintenance teams, depending on how many units like normal you would have, you're going to have a maintenance supervisor and then a maintenance tech below that, if the property is big enough.

And then we also have some properties that have the quarter positions or a groundskeeper position, depending on what is needed with MRT specifically, that's just the three tiers of MRT. Otherwise we're pretty basic. So, you know, tier one, tier two of MRT is going to be like a maintenance tech that is learning their way through tier three of our MRT is a strong maintenance supervisor.

Now, what we have, if you're a maintenance supervisor on a site, the next step up for us in your career with Allied would be becoming a project manager. And that means you're going to be handling the capital items. Basically, you know, if you're going to need new decks, new roofs, new seal coding for your properties, every portfolio manager is assigned a project manager with us for those jobs.

Now it's not because our onsite maintenance supervisors can't do that work, or don't have the skill to do that work. It's that we want them to still be able to focus on the everyday aspects of that curb appeal and those turns and not follow or not fall away from those because you have this big project going on. So our project managers come on site and they work with the maintenance teams.

They're going to be the ones to get the bids for those capital projects. We're going to put those bids on a bid analysis and comparison form for the portfolio manager and the ownership group to review. And then based on once that vendor is chosen for the job, the project manager is going to be on site as quality control, if you will, throughout that process, he's going to be communicating with the maintenance supervisor and the maintenance team and the office the entire time of what's going on and progress.

But that way, the site doesn't suffer as far as its maintenance or just the main routine. A lot of the times maintenance teams just want their routine, right? We want to just be able to know that this is our plan in the morning, I'm doing this in the afternoon, I'm doing this in the afternoon, you know, whatever it's gonna be.

And by whether it's, you know, emergencies that come up, or just the office, you know, needing something from maintenance, it throws your time off, it's a time killer. So a lot of the times that it helps just to keep that flow going throughout the day for the onsite teams to have a project manager oversee those bigger jobs.

[Juan Carlos Islas] (32:45 - 33:36) And just to, you know, piggyback off of that, I think it's important for us to voice that, right? Because nowadays people, you know, companies just want to try to cram as much, as many responsibilities on a service manager and a service team, but then they come back and ask why the grounds aren't done, ask why, you know, these terms are behind. As a whole, I think this is the perfect time to really go back to basics.

Because at the end of the day, when you think of maintenance, you're curb appeal, servicing residents, and you're turning homes. And those three things help with retention and help with generating revenue, you know, the whole of the night, everything else is extra, and yet it helps. But I think we need to go back to basics.

And I think I really like that sentiment in that thought process.

[Jedd McDaniel] (33:37 - 35:15) I can't agree with you more, Juan. I really feel like that is, it's great to expand, and it's great to get into this AI stuff that we're getting into and all that. But without a basic platform, without a basic infrastructure, you're going to crumble.

What I think is one of the keys to this also is communication between the two. You know, there's sometimes where I can see a manager and a maintenance supervisor that don't even hardly talk. They're in two completely separate worlds, even though their worlds pass every five minutes of what is going on.

That's a problem for me. What exactly you're talking about is a true time killer. I help with our new hire trainings, and I talk about this all the time, we're on the same team.

If you're a leasing agent or a manager, and you're walking your property, and you know, you see a piece of garbage on the ground, don't walk right by it and then go to the office and go, hey, maintenance, yeah, pull out of that unit, there's a piece of garbage over by building B, pick it up. We're on the same team here, you know, maintenance does a lot of stuff to help the office. But what I really think it comes down to, though, is communication so that maintenance knows the office's role, and the office knows maintenance's role and understands that, how much time this truly does take the back and forth of all that for maintenance that goes on.

I think that we forget that we're sometimes that we're all on the same team, we all have the same goal on that property. And the best way to get there is to communicate, if anything, over communicate. But if you can understand from a maintenance standpoint, why that manager doesn't have an immediate half an hour for you, because they have to get that report done or whatever.

And that manager can understand why suddenly you don't have the time to get these turns done, because you've been bothered every 15 minutes for the entire day. If you can put that understanding together, you're going to increase your productivity tenfold as a property.

[Juan Carlos Islas] (35:15 - 35:18) Yes, yes. Couldn't agree more. Mike?

[Adrian Danila] (35:18 - 35:22) I have other questions about other things that we talked about. So if you don't mind, you know, I...

[Mike Mulloy] (35:22 - 35:31) Absolutely. Just try to go around the room. I'll try to be the least intrusive.

I have my own questions. So I let you guys like go at it.

[Adrian Danila] (35:32 - 36:23) So, you know, during our previous conversation, another interesting point that you had mentioned which Allied is doing is the training that you're offering and just basically open book, hey, any kind of training you want to take, we will pay for and encourage you to take. And I just had some questions in terms of, which is, I think it's an excellent, excellent step in the right direction. I was just, I had some follow up questions with regards to that.

And you had said, hey, if someone comes and says, I want to be an electrician, you've got a path for him to do that. When they come and they have training, are you, do you have partners who's offering that training? I just have a lot of questions on the details on the type of training.

Is it very consistent in who's providing it? Is it in person? Is it virtual?

And along those lines. So if you have any follow up to that, it would be helpful.

[Jedd McDaniel] (36:24 - 43:17) Yeah. And it is a little bit all over the board. I would say it depends on the training.

So again, with maintenance for us, if you're a maintenance tech or a maintenance supervisor, you're automatically in our electrical program. We have an in-house electrical instructor that is L&I approved. He's an electrical administrator.

I'm an electrical administrator. And we have 1107B electricians with Ally that have completed the program and 179 trainees that are going through it. So, you know, again, how fast you go through that program, again, depends on how many electrical work orders you're doing, how your logs are, but that training is done completely in-house.

So we have a property actually that every single month we do about four to five electrical classes and we have a property that these classes take place at. It has a huge clubhouse that we can use for the classes. We usually keep class size to maybe 20 tops just so that it can still kind of have a good hands-on feel.

But it makes it nice because not only is it at an Allied property, you're with all Allied employees. These are your coworkers. These are your teammates.

These are your friends, right? So it gives a little more of a relaxed atmosphere and a better ability to learn, I feel like, because you just have that more of a comfortable level to sit at. You know, they're going to go through, they're going to get there.

I will send it out by a calendar invite, inviting them to a class. Maybe it's a wiring class, maybe it's electrical procedures class, whatever it might be. And then they get invited to those and we basically mark them off.

Every two years they need to have 48 hours of continued education class with us in order to renew their 07B trainee card. So basically that 48 hours is six eight-hour classes in a two-year period. So we invite them to the classes.

If there is something going on on their property, maybe they have a bunch of turns and they're like, man, I can't be gone for eight hours from my property next week. That's fine. They just let John or myself know and we reschedule them for the next time that we do a wiring class.

They only need six every two years. So that's all that's required. We do have some people that have gone through each of the classes two or three or four times even, just because they really want to get that information down and really know it, you know, as best as they can.

But that again, in that instance, I keep all of the records for everything and John Dunahoe, our instructor, keeps all of the records. He's been doing this for Allied for 27 years, you guys. So he's got it down.

He was, he was doing this before the 07B electrician exam even began with us. But, but so that in that instance, though, we keep all of those records and we know where they're at, which classes they've taken, which classes they haven't taken. But yes, then when they're eligible, they will go and do that test and take the test.

And again, when they pass the 07B test, they get an automatic 5% raise as a congratulations for completing the program. Everything is a little different though, if you go to like, I think we do asbestos certifications every single year also, because we do have some properties that do have asbestos. So that wouldn't be an automatic, every employee automatically gets a full asbestos certification training.

That usually would be all of the properties that have a tech or a supervisor working on them that do have asbestos, or could possibly be going to a property that has asbestos. So again, this is where our maintenance response team steps up because maintenance response team has every certification because they might be going to any property. So that's kind of another step that, that makes them outstanding.

I feel like for what they do. But so asbestos, we have a company that comes in the initial it's called PBS and they do an initial 16 hour asbestos class three certification for us. And then after you're certified, all you need to do is a four hour webinar every year after that, to be able to recertify yourself.

Another thing that we do is fit testing for half mask respirators. This is something that we kind of stepped up onto for asbestos. You have to have a fit test to show that you should be wearing a respirator, but we do this anyway, just to, for the safety of our employees.

We have had people find out that they have a lung condition or a heart condition or a reason that they shouldn't be wearing a respirator, even to paint or anything with. We want to find that out before they put the respirator on, not because we find somebody passed out in an apartment that was working by themselves that shouldn't have one on. Right.

So that's, that's why we take these precautions. I want to say besides those certifications, though, we utilize our vendors and we utilize our associations really well. We have, of course, HD supply is our main supplier.

We also have Lowe's pro supply, but HD supply has a training program called accelerate. That is amazing for all employees that you can go on. They have classes I have here.

They have classes for appliance repair, electrical, general industry, HVAC, plumbing, safety pools, make ready, preventative maintenance. There's all kinds of classes and certifications through that, that a lot of them are free. The certifications usually cost something, but just the training classes are usually free.

Same thing through Lowe's pro supply. They have a great training program as well. And so look outside the box.

You know, we also have a lot of vendors. We utilize Servpro a lot. They do great training classes, you know, whether it's mold and moisture and anything like that.

Also the associations. So again, we're in Washington. But so we utilize our affiliate of National Apartment Association, which is WUMFA, the Washington Multifamily Housing Association.

I'm a member of their supplier council as well, just to feed information back and forth from suppliers and myself of what, what I can do to make their lives better and what they can do to make my life better. But WUMFA offers all kinds of certified pool operator, CAMT, CAM certifications. If the ownership for some reason wouldn't want to pay for that, then sometimes Allied has stepped in, but also there's scholarship opportunities.

I've gotten scholarship opportunities from some of my teams for CAMTs simply because no one else applied for the scholarship. Great. I win, right?

Like there's some great opportunities out there that just aren't even being taken advantage of because some people don't know that they're just sitting there waiting to be taken advantage of. But we also have, we have a large affordable portfolio also. So we use AMA, which is the Affordable Housing Management Association.

Same thing with them. They have great training, CPO, CAM, CAMT, all kinds of training opportunities and also IRUM, the Institute of Real Estate Management. So between, you know, the suppliers that we have, the associations that we have, and the vendors that we have, as well as we have, we have a learning management system called Edge2Learn.

That's where we house all of our records. And they have, I think, over 300 different maintenance training classes in Edge2Learn as well. So between that pool, we've got a great variety of options to choose from.

It's really great.

[Dean Fung-A-Wing] (43:21 - 44:22) We take that personal touch of showing up to the property, meeting with the building engineers, meeting with the site maintenance team, and saying, you tell us where you see the most problems. We're not going to assume that we know where your particular problems are, right? And when they start telling us like, dishwashers aren't a problem, but water heaters are a big problem, right?

Or last year we had a fire suppression system that froze and it leaked down into eight apartments, cost $300,000 worth of damage, right? Those conversations are invaluable because now I've got a historical marker where I have a quantitative problem. I have now not just said, oh, water is a problem, or fire is a problem, or freeze is a problem.

I've now told you how much that problem cost me last year. And I say, okay, if this year I can prevent a pipe freeze, if this year I can prevent another water heater from destroying and getting out of control, I can't stop the water heater from leaking. But I can tell you about it early enough because the name of the game with water is get to it as fast as possible.

[Juan Carlos Islas] (44:23 - 44:32) Just to come in, kind of piggyback off of that, Mike, and I'm not sure how your portfolio is spread out. Are you more centrally located or are you spread out throughout the country?

[Adrian Danila] (44:33 - 44:35) We're spread out throughout the country. We're in 14 states.

[Juan Carlos Islas] (44:37 - 46:25) And that's where I've had the experience with. I think you can't take away being able to be local and being able to have it hands-on, but I think with us, we had to teach based off a theory. So, we did partner up with HC Supply and Lowe's and the Housing Association, but we actually brought in a training platform that was very inexpensive called Interplay Learning.

And you could actually tailor, you come in, you have them take a test, and it basically tells them what they're proficient in and what skills they need to improve, and it creates a curriculum for them where it's training videos, virtual reality classes where you're actually having a tool bag and you're having to pull a meter up to certain different prongs or whatnot to be able to troubleshoot an issue.

Of course, it's virtual reality and it's virtual training, but at least we're arming our teams with that theory so that when they actually do come in and have to be hands-on, they don't go into it blindly. Of course, we did sprinkle the regional service director coming in once a quarter and helping them with whatever they're needing or whatever they're lacking or what they're asking for, but it's an alternative to being able to be spread out. I think that's that's the goal, and I think the end goal would be to how to take the programs that Jet and other companies have created and try to streamline them to a more national approach.

And I think if we can find that answer, we can solve 90% of the training issues that I think there's a company, you know, have.

[Mike Mulloy] (46:25 - 47:15) You're making an amazing point out here about the scalability. Within our council, we discussed this a whole lot, right? It's great that we have some programs that could like get 10 or 20 or 50 graduates, but if the number needed is a half a million graduates, you know, that's a little bit of a gap right there.

We've got to figure out how to do it. It's not to beat down on those that are trying, they're starting, right? We encourage them.

I just want to keep bringing this conversation up like you just did, that yeah, it's great, but are we thinking scalability? What would that look like? And I want to take a question from our audience.

I'm going to put it up on the screen too. It comes from Jay, and it's addressed to you, Jet. For certified asbestos team members, do they perform any remediation on site or do you train them for awareness and use a third party to perform the work?

[Jedd McDaniel] (47:16 - 48:55) Great question. The answer is both, actually. So every single member of Allied goes through asbestos awareness, no matter what, just because we want everybody to be aware of what asbestos is and how to stay safe around it, right?

But we do have a limit. Actually, with Allied, we say one square foot is actually the limit of what we actually work on. So the asbestos class three certification that we get is overkill, actually, compared to the work that we will do on site.

But what we want is for all of those technicians, though, to truly be certified in this, to know every aspect of it. So what this really is, is for maybe you need to replace a light fixture on a popcorn ceiling that has asbestos in it, or a towel bar in a bathroom where the wall has asbestos in it. You have to pull a toilet, let's say, where the mastic underneath some old vinyl has asbestos in it.

We want to make sure that our employees and our residents and the ownership that owns that building, that this is done safely and correctly. At the same time, we're not abatement professionals in any way, shape or form and don't want to be. So if this is something where it's huge, it's over one square foot area, maybe you've got a huge leak and your whole ceiling is collapsed in from that popcorn ceiling.

We're going to step away and we're going to call in the pros at that time and inform them, hi, we know that this is hot for asbestos, handle accordingly, and we're going to step out. So yeah, so the question is both. Yes, we do remediation to a level, and then we're going to also step out because we realize that, hey, sometimes it's best left to the pros in these situations and make sure that every step is handled correctly.

But great question. Mike?

[Adrian Danila] (48:56 - 49:14) With regards to the pay training or kind of no restrictions on training, promoting a wide opportunity to learn, do you use that in your job postings or do you promote that? Does it help you recruit associates? I'm curious.

[Jedd McDaniel] (49:15 - 50:07) I would say yes and no. I mean, we talk about what we would like you to have as far as the knowledge or the skills that you have, but we do talk about some of our platforms for training. Yes.

So I do feel like it does bring an extra level as far as people knowing that this isn't just a job. This is a career. But we don't go into near the depth of what we could as far as that goes because with our Edge to Learn platform, on a maintenance tech, they can take classes that they're not required to take.

Of course, everybody's going to be required to take fair housing, sexual harassment, whatever that might be, but they can go on right then and say, hey, what do I need to do next? Okay, here's some maintenance supervisor classes that I can knock out now and have that under my belt for when I have the opportunity to move into that position. So yes, we do talk about some of them, but not near as many of the training opportunities as we actually have.

So a little bit of both.

[Mike Mulloy] (50:08 - 50:36) We agree. We try to open, I like to make this like a series to where we meet with various members of our council to attack a series of topics or a topic, and then we could expand. I would love for Mike to do the next question, and then the remaining time are like for us to go around the table and just like pick one topic that you're very passionate about that we should make our next live event about.

So Mike, your next question, please.

[Adrian Danila] (50:37 - 51:31) I think he's answered a lot of my questions. I would say that I'm very familiar with Interplay, which Juan had mentioned. I do agree with Jed.

The HD Accelerate platform, I think, is great. I just want to encourage others to join the conversation or join our bi-monthly calls. I think that a lot of good feedback comes from this, and as we try and we've all kind of raised the question, how do we scale this?

How do we reach all of our associates in every different market? There's an opportunity, and I think bringing people together can help solve that and also put the pressure on our suppliers, right, and in our apartment associations to help us bring this level of training. There's a need within the industry, you know, bringing people together to push for this type of resources.

We'll get there. So I don't have any other questions, but I just wanted to thank you all for the opportunity.

[Mike Mulloy] (51:32 - 51:41) Mike, any thoughts for future topics for live events? What would be your number one topic that you'd like to have another live conversation?

[Adrian Danila] (51:41 - 52:05) I like hearing from others on just different things that we're doing to attract and retain. We've partnered with workforce housing groups and trade schools, and I'd love to hear how others are, what they're doing about that, how they're navigating that. How are we getting young people into this industry?

We have a skills gap that we're trying to solve, so I think that's a good topic conversation.

[Mike Mulloy] (52:06 - 52:10) Juan, you're next. Your question and your proposed topic for the next live.

[Juan Carlos Islas] (52:11 - 53:03) Definitely. So I think, you know, this is a great initial segment, Adrian and team, I think, looking forward to many more to come. I think we really need to focus on how do we scale the training program?

And I think that's really, that should really be the focus, right? I think we look at some of these bigger cities, New York City, they have massive facilities training programs. Jed, you know, he's got his training program within the Washington area, but how do we scale it for everybody, right?

Small, you know, mom and pop, property management companies, big national companies, how do we make something and how can we provide that solution for them? And I really think that topic alone can be an ongoing topic for, you know, a lot of different podcasts, but I really think that's the topic we should be tackling.

[Mike Mulloy] (53:03 - 53:18) Thanks, Juan. Jed, so I'm going to start with a question. Please explain to us, please share with us how the training is delivered, and then once you answer that, I'd like for you to propose a topic for our next live conversation with a panel like we have today.

[Jedd McDaniel] (53:19 - 55:24) Well, that actually was going to be my topic of conversation is I'd love to dive more into on-the-job trainings of, you know, on-the-job versus virtual trainings. And the short answer is we have both right now. And so it really depends on what the training is, you know, electrical trainings, I feel like they have to be in person to really get some comprehension there.

You can do a little online, but I feel like there's certain things that you're just going to get a better comprehension and understanding in person versus virtual. But, you know, we have a safety committee that meets every single month for all of our teams. It's just open for any allied residential team member to come and join and learn what's going on, not just safety on your property, but safety in our entire area and what's going on.

And before COVID, those were only live. After COVID for the last couple of years, those were only virtual. Now they are hybrid.

And last month being a hybrid class where they could attend in person if they wanted to or attend virtually. And it was our largest turnout for a safety committee meeting that we've ever had. I feel like this is another good topic to delve into of, yes, we have both.

Certain topics are better in person. Certain topics are better virtually. I feel like I get better feedback and participation from people when it is live, when they're in person and they are there and engaged in what's really happening.

Sometimes through a screen, yeah, people can nod their heads or whatever and different things, but are they really grasping what you're trying to train here? There's other things that are better virtually, you know, just depending. Maybe you're not going to be able to get to that certain class to update how the Yardi turn board works in Yardi or whatever it is.

But I feel like now that we're doing these hybrid meetings, I feel like it is somewhere in the middle because that way you can have that aspect of still getting the training even if you can't make it in person. But if you can make it in person, great, let's grab that more comprehension also out of it. It's kind of a waving platform.

It's not set in stone yet, but I feel like we can dive into that a little more on what's good in person versus what's good virtually. But that's really what I'm kind of working on right now too. But the short answer is it's both with Allied.

[Mike Mulloy] (55:26 - 56:57) Gentlemen, as we're approaching the end of the conversation, we're at the top of the hour. My favorite topic would be for our next slide to bring someone that actually develops technology with technology that's using artificial intelligence. I'm actually at Optech, it's kind of the largest conference we have in the industry right here in Maryland.

I'm sitting right outside of the conference. I want to bring a person that actually has their hands in creating this technology using AI and with us asking them questions, trying to understand. Because in my personal opinion, this is not something that's going away.

We just ignore, we look the other way and it's just kind of disappearing. It's becoming more prevalent in our daily lives and therefore in facilities maintenance as well. So I think we would rather start a conversation now and just kind of like learn what's coming our way versus like, you know, head in the sand and hope, you know, everything is just passing.

I don't think this thing is going to be here to pass. It's going to be here to stay. Thank you so much for joining me today.

Thank you to all of our listeners and all of you that, you know, watched us virtually today. We promise to be back soon within a few weeks with another topic. We will determine which topic that is and please, if you're a maintenance leader, someone that is in facilities maintenance and you are considering yourself a leader, reach out to me so we could have you join the council.

There's conversations, there are tremendous conversations on the council every other Wednesday at 1 p.m. Eastern time that we would love for you to be a part of. Have an amazing afternoon and take care.