There is a chiller acting up in Peltier Hall, a resident in Ellender Residence Hall has noticed a leak in her faucet and some tables need to be moved to the union.

Whom are you going to call? Nicholls maintenance department!

The 76 people who work in this department take care of these things daily.

“The main job is to maintain buildings on campus by making minor repairs so that the facilities are in shape for us to have class on campus,” Glenn Froisy, facility maintenance manager three, said.

These workers help in small projects like building walls for office spaces, and also other minor projects, he said.

Workers are on an on call rotating schedule, 24 hours a day, every month for seven days.

The maintenance department has a skilled trades force that includes carpenters, plumbers, painters, and electrical and heating/air-conditioning skilled labor workers, to name a few.

“Each of these groups has a foreman, and the foreman has his own staff for the specific trade, Froisy said.

“There are maintenance repairmen who do odds and end jobs like repairing locks and windows,” he said.

Laborers, who handle freight and also deal with small service charges, are also part of the maintenance staff.

“Day to day duties for the staff workers include service calls that come in, emergency calls and different little projects. However, nothing takes precedence over an emergency like a water leak or a gas leak, Froisy said.

“Everything is dropped when there is an emergency, that takes top priority, and we will use even some of our other skilled labor from other trades if the need is there for help,” Froisy said.

Although the new buildings on campus did allow for new workers to be hired, the buildings are not causing the maintenance department to be overworked.

“What kind of got us behind was the flooding; that really put us in a bind,” Froisy said.

When the Saints required a lot of remodeling to be done, the maintenance department helped out by tearing down all of the old things that were in the dormitories.

“Because of the time frame, we went ahead of the contractor and just started tearing everything out and left them with bare walls, Froisy said.

“We were the demolition crew.”

Froisy has been working for the Nicholls maintenance department since September of 1980. During this time he has not noticed many changes.

“We have kind of modernized with computers, the work force has changed, but besides that nothing. It is pretty much basically the same. There is not really much you can change because of the routine we have, as far as what needs to be done,” he said.

As far as heating and air-conditioning is concerned, Chris Clement, heating and ventilation refrigeration foreman, takes care of all the buildings to keep them comfortable for everyone.

“I make sure that the air-conditioning and heating is working correctly, and if we have any problems they call me and let me know, and I will straighten it out,” Clement said.

“The HVAC department is not being overworked because of the Saints’ stay or the new buildings, but they are keeping busy, he said.

“Whenever the Saints needed something, we had to stop and take care of the Saints, but we always pulled together more or less to take care of the problems,” Clement said.

“It was a little load on us but nothing we could not handle.”

Though there are small kinks and bugs to work out, the new buildings are not posing any problems for the HVAC staff.

In his 12 years of being at Nicholls, Clement has noticed only one major change.

“We are becoming more automated with the computer. We always had it, but now we are controlling a lot of things with the computer,” he said.

Froisy has seen the way other universities run their maintenance departments.

“I think we have one of the better maintenance departments in the state. I think that they do one great job over here keeping up the buildings compared to seeing some of the other buildings at some of the other universities in the state,” Froisy said.

“I am real proud of the guys that we have working back here. They are an exceptional crew. When it comes down to the nitty gritty to get things done, it does not matter what their job title is. If other people need help they are always willing to help.”