Aaron Benz: How can you remove 25 buildings? Reduce your capital renewal by 154 million and save $6 million of opex every year. On this Bow Tie Tuesday, I am pleased that Gerald Morgan has joined me from the University of Missouri 'cause they've done exactly that over the last several years, and we get to hear a little bit more about that story.
Gerald, welcome. Gerald's, the Director of Space Management and Client Relations at University of Missouri. Welcome to Bow Tie Tuesday.
Gerald Morgan: Aaron, thank you so much for having me. I, I'm really appreciate it and, and really excited to get to to share a little bit more about what we've done here at the University of Missouri, we, we feel like it's a fairly substantial undertaking, and it has been quite successful.
We're, we're not done yet, but, uh, we've, we've made, uh, good inroads on, uh, at least staving the, the increased building, maintenance, repair and capital needs of our facilities. And, uh, we [00:01:00] finally got it headed in, in the right direction. We, we were growing by leaps and bounds in terms of our backlog of maintenance and repair needs, and we realized that was unsustainable.
So, totally excited to, uh, share a little bit of what we've done and kind of what that process looks like with with your audience there.
Aaron Benz: So take me through kind of how we got here. You know, I got, I got some of the numbers, which was, you know, at, at some point, right? The backlog of capital renewal for just the E&G space, right?
So, not even the rest of campus, but just the E&G space is somewhere around a billion dollars. You know, the maintenance budget to support these is well beneath kind of recommended amounts at like a half a percent or so. Right. So when did you all begin to recognize, Hey, we, we have to do business differently?
And then when did you start setting plans? And who was involved in that conversation of going, Hey, how do we change, like what we're doing here at at Missouri to create a more sustainable future?
Gerald Morgan: Sure. Absolutely. Um, [00:02:00] so back around this was the Vice Chancellor of Operations at the University of Missouri.
This was, this was his, uh, this was his brainchild. This was something that, that he realized we needed to undertake and he first started talking to me about this in about 2016. I had just started as Director of Space Planning and Management at that time. And, uh, so I, I think he gave me a year to sort of get my feet under me, and then he, he dropped this bomb on me.
"Hey, Gerald, we wanna eliminate 750,000 to a million gross square foot of space over the next five years to eliminate poor performing building buildings and, and, uh, building area on our campus." And so after I picked my jaw off of the ground, I, I spent a little bit of time over the next week or two sort of thinking about what, what is, what are the implement implications of doing something like this?
Because again, I was fairly new in [00:03:00] space planning, but I, I did recognize that, um, he was talking about almost 10%. Reduction in E&G space because at the time we had about 7 million, uh, gross square foot of space that were educational and general type space. So I was just, I was floored, and then I was okay.
I was excited. I'm like, okay, I, I like this challenge and I get where he is coming from. We, we've tried for years to get, uh, additional funding from state legislatures. We've continued to take more tuition money, which we could not continue to do. And honestly when we started the model back in the eighties of how we funded building maintenance we did it with about 30 percent tuition and 70 percent state appropriations. That model has completely flipped. Yeah. Where we now require about 70% of that to come from tuition because [00:04:00] our, the amount from the state has stayed flat or even gotten less over time. So that's been the problem that we had to address. He realized that no matter how he presented this and we had good data at the time, how we presented this problem, we weren't gonna get more money.
So we had to figure out a different way to do this. And, and in his mind it was obvious, let's reduce square footage. Let's get rid of poor performing buildings, uh, by divesting or demolishing. Let's put that savings towards the buildings that we want to maintain properly and or new square footage. So that's how that hatched.
It, it took longer than we anticipated. Uh, it really was, wasn't until 2022 that we got into the meat of the actual demolition of, uh, numerous buildings on campus and. As you might imagine...
Aaron Benz: How many, how many were you able to like let's say, sell off or reallocate elsewhere versus kind of demo of the...
Gerald Morgan: Right.[00:05:00]
Um, I believe we divested of four of the 25. Okay. So not a lot. You know, the, the ones that were off campus, we could sell. But if it was on campus, we didn't wanna sell that piece of property to somebody that was outside of the University. So those were demolished, had to be demoed.
Aaron Benz: So that's, I mean, 21 buildings demoed since 2022.
Gerald Morgan: Y Yes.
Aaron Benz: Yes. I mean, that's
remarkable. I mean, I'm, I know a lot of institutions that go, if we can just demo one building because we, we, I want get this off my books. That would make my decade, so tell me like the. What was the support like, right, to get that kind of motivation, and then how was it dealing, you know, we're, we're using lots of data to help present to stakeholders.
There's so many stakeholders involved to accomplish what I imagine is lots of lifting and shifting.
Gerald Morgan: Yeah, absolutely. So, to answer your question about the support. I will say this, you absolutely, and we knew we absolutely had to have support from top leadership at the University to (yeah). [00:06:00] undergo such a, a radical transformation of our campus landscape, because, I mean, that's really what it is, and that's what it was.
And we knew, luckily we had a, we had a President a System, and, and University Chancellor, uh, both that fully supported this undertaking because we had provided the data to them that showed, we're headed in the wrong direction here on maintenance and repair needs. Right. And over a billion dollars at this point, and it's just continuing to go up.
That's not sustainable. And they understood that. So they were willing to support us there and, and that's good. So you get leadership on board and, and then the real challenge is going out and, and, uh getting your message out to, uh, the different academic units that, that's really the challenge is so we started meeting with all the deans, with their department chairs and, and key leadership in each of the colleges and schools, and laid it out, "Hey, this is our problem. This is where we are. This is where [00:07:00] we need to be and this is how we're gonna fix it." Now, as you might imagine, not everybody.
Aaron Benz: Little, a little pushback from some people.
Gerald Morgan: Yeah, yeah. You know especially, faculty and staff, I'll be honest, um, they get comfortable in their situation. And when you start telling them that we're gonna move your entire department to another building, and oh, by the way, I can't tell you just now where that's gonna be.
Uh, you, you can imagine there's some trepidation there and, and I totally understood that. And so the approach and how the message is made is, is almost as important as. The message itself. But...
Aaron Benz: Well let me, let me ask you a piece on that, right? 'cause, I mean, part of your job title right? Is client relations, which means, you know, clearly you're really good at having some hard conversations with people and mediating and finding a solution that ultimately happens.
What's either some of the kind of either tips, tricks, or your or piece of the process when you're maybe first having that conversation to getting to a solution that right. Might be a, somebody else in your [00:08:00] shoes would be like, oh, that I didn't think about that. Or, or that, that's a really helpful way of thinking of framing the conversation or, or otherwise.
Gerald Morgan: Yeah, so, so a couple of the, the key things that, that have to happen if you want to be successful in these types of negotiations. I would say that the first thing is. Come in with cold hard facts. Mm-hmm. Okay. Um, and have good data to back that up. And, and we knew we had to have that information and that kind of data.
So we had started. We had reinvigorated our Space Utilization Inventory Survey, uh, process, which previously was done just every three years, and primarily for research space. We made it mandatory annually for all of our space on campus. And that way we really had a good sense of how space was being used based on, people that were assigned to offices.
How classrooms, the classroom information from the registrar and, and so we, we had good data. And the [00:09:00] second thing,
Aaron Benz: Registrar data, HR data. Yes. Like lab research data. Exactly. How do we bring all this together?
Gerald Morgan: So having all of that, putting it in a sort of story format that tells the story of why we need to do what we need to do.
And then honestly going in for the initial meetings and really, maybe 20% was me giving the story. The other 80% was me and my team listening to the concerns and the needs of these people because they, they need to know that we're listening and we do have empathy and we do care about where they land and that they're gonna be able to continue.
To do the quality research or teaching or whatever the case may be. We just needed them to understand, we get it. This is not easy, but we're, we're gonna work with you to make sure you can continue to do what you need to do, um, reasonably well and [00:10:00] in space that, and this was the other thing, what we said many times was, you're gonna do it probably in less space, but in better space.
So that was always our goal. Compact, these units reasonably, uh. Get 'em into this. The receiver buildings, when they were coming out of whatever building they were coming out of, getting 'em into buildings, but doing some renovation that would create nice, at least as nice, if not nicer space than what they had before.
So, you know, that
Aaron Benz: was less is more, in other words. Right. Hey, we're we, we're gonna take you somewhere that's less square footage. Yeah, but it's, it's gonna be better because we're gonna build it for your team, your department, your whatever it is, where it's it's built with purpose and you're giving us some of that feedback of how it should be built, right, or what, what it should include.
Gerald Morgan: So that's really the key, is keeping them plugged in through the process. And I will tell you. There were numerous instances where I had people that would just fight me along the entire way. And, and we dealt with [00:11:00] that and that's okay. I understand. But we, we eventually got 'em into their space and, and I'd, I'd go back six months later for a walkthrough and to kind of find out how the space is working for 'em.
And most of 'em were like, man. I'm sorry I gave you so much trouble. This is so much better. Um, because it's, it was better quality space, right? And actually we tried to create some collaboration spaces that they didn't have as well. So there was more community that that occurred amongst these units, and I think they were enjoying that as well.
Aaron Benz: Very cool. Yeah. I mean, get, getting to a win doesn't mean it's, it's gonna be frictionless. Right, exactly. But it sounds like y'all got some, some real wins and, and they felt it.
I'm loving what you all are doing up there at, at Missouri and can't wait to see what's next. Thanks so much for joining. It's been a real pleasure on this Bow Tie Tuesday and looking forward to, whenever our next chat is.
Gerald Morgan: Yeah. A a again, thank you for having me. And, um, just, uh, for everybody out there, if anybody [00:12:00] has interest or wants more detail, um, they can certainly reach out to me. I, I love to share my story with, uh, anybody who wants to listen, awesome. Thank you so much for having me.
Aaron Benz: Absolutely. My pleasure.
Gerald Morgan: All right.