Get to Know: Damian Bess

Damian Bess became director of Maintenance Operations in Facilities Management (FM) in July of 2021, and has since made a great impact both at UNC Charlotte and with his teammates. Learn more about what Maintenance Operations does for campus, and why he enjoys working in facilities.

How would you describe the work Maintenance Operations (MO) does for the campus community?

Maintenance Operations operates, maintains and repairs all of the building systems at the University including the Dubois Center and the North Carolina Research Center at Kannapolis. Building systems include the building structures, heating ventilation and air conditioning, plumbing, electrical systems and the major utility plants that supply heating and cooling. We also maintain dining services equipment, all of the locks, keys and doors (except HRL), elevators, fire alarm and sprinkler systems, sewers, water distribution and electrical distribution equipment. We get help from several departments like Athletics, Student Affairs and Research who maintain many of their own areas with assistance from us. Additionally, the building liaisons are a critical component as they are the departments’ advocates to ensure that buildings and systems perform optimally for all occupants. The thing that amazes me is that we are able to do this for more than 10 million square feet of facilities with only 117 staff.

How does your role support MO? What are your specific responsibilities?

As the director, it is my responsibility to lead this fantastic team and optimize our capabilities so that the University gets the very best facilities maintenance and operations to ensure its strategic goals. This is a big responsibility that I am thrilled to have. Luckily, I inherited a top-notch team when I started this job last July which makes it easy to do the things mentioned previously, but to also develop advanced techniques for maintenance and operations at Charlotte.

What does your typical workday look like?

A typical workday starts with checking emails and work orders to make sure we have all of the highest priorities in progress. I have a number of meetings throughout the day to coordinate major projects and some of our new programs like reliability-centered maintenance, which is a set of techniques for identifying critical systems and prioritizing their maintenance. I talk with my supervisors and managers throughout the day to help solve problems of all types and help them get the resources they need to be successful.

What drew you to this field of work?

I love the technical nature of facilities work that I first learned about as a United States Marine Corps engineer. I was drawn to UNC Charlotte in particular because it was obvious that the Facilities Management and Maintenance Operations teams were exceptional and in the process of becoming more exceptional. Also, my teammates exuded a certain level of professionalism and camaraderie that caught my attention and has made the last seven months a real pleasure.

What is the most challenging part of your job?

The most challenging part of my job is working with aging infrastructure. It isn’t obvious when you first look at our campus, but we have a spectrum of conditions across the campus. This isn’t unique to Charlotte and is true in most places, but there are roofs, pipes and machinery that are brand new in some places and aged and deteriorated in others. This deterioration of condition often materializes as a sudden outage or failure that causes water leaks or loss of cooling and heating. As I said previously, FM is a great team that is managing these conditions through constant lifecycle renovations but we can’t solve every problem and occasionally we have unplanned outages that create emergency situations that we respond to.

What is the most rewarding part of your job?

The most rewarding part of my job is leading the people at Maintenance Operations and working with people across the campus. It can sometimes be very difficult to work through the problems we create for ourselves, but that is exactly what makes it rewarding. I love the feeling we all get when we unlock a bit of greatness for a minute or an hour.

What kind of hobbies do you have outside of work?

I dabble at a few hobbies like golf and orienteering but my favorite is doing anything with my family. I have a daughter who is a chemical engineer here in Charlotte and I have a daughter who recently graduated from Virginia Tech and analyzes environmental conditions in GIS with a civil engineering firm in Mississippi. We attend a lot of shows, plays, concerts, athletics and other events that Charlotte provides in abundance.

What is something people may not know about you?

I just officiated my sister-in-law’s wedding in Arizona and had a fantastic time doing it. It was the first time I’ve ever done that and it’s not the hardest thing in the world, but it’s not the easiest, either. There was a lot of love at the wedding and a lot of fun!