Allegheny College is home to 190-year old Bentley Hall and to three other buildings built before 1900. In fact, the average age of our buildings is over 50 years. The Physical Plant staff uses hundreds of years of experience, combined with modern technology and a lot of tender loving care to keep our 35 major buildings serving the College needs.
Our department employs 33 full-time staff and administrators, which are divided into two working groups: the Campus Crew and the Maintenance Staff. The four people you are most likely to talk to are Patty Wood, our secretary, who almost always answers our phone and opens work orders; Wayne Schlosser, the roads and grounds foreman; Brian Gillette, the assistant director and myself, the director.
As a department, we are responsible for the day-to-day maintenance and repair of all facilities, set-ups for events, the administration of construction and service contracts, and the administration of the campus safety and environmental compliance programs.
The campus we care for encompasses over 1,300,000 square feet of building space, over 50 acres of lawns and gardens (including flowers, herbs, vegetables, and, thanks to last year’s forward-thinking environmental science students, even an apple tree orchard), five miles of roads, 20 acres of parking and over 10 miles of sidewalks.
Considering that the sidewalks include more than 500 steps, which must be cleared by hand in the winter, you can imagine that we shovel a lot of snow!
Our Maintenance Staff (the boiler mechanic, carpenters, electricians, HVAC mechanic, locksmith, maintenance technicians, painter and plumbers) responds to approximately 2800 work orders each year. These are the guys with the tools that you encounter all over campus.
The campus crew cuts the grass and takes care of flower beds and trees, prepares athletic fields at Robertson for practice and competition, repairs sidewalks and other concrete, runs the compost operation, moves furniture, performs event set-ups, collects trash and makes deliveries around campus.
We also support college research projects at the 282-acre field research facility at Bousson.
You will find us all over campus and can identify us by the navy or grey shirts marked “Allegheny College Physical Plant.”
Our regular hours of operation are Monday through Friday from 7 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.
Reach us by phone at extension 5378. We also have a plumber working every day from 3 p.m. to 11 p.m., on Saturdays from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. and on Sundays from 1 p.m.to 9 p.m. The plumber can be contacted through the Safety and Security Office at extension 3357.