Though a student may only see their campus from August to May, there is much to be done to maintain a campus in the summer to prepare for next year’s student body.
University President, Dr. Ramesh Kolluru, announced that the university welcomed more than 3,000 freshmen this school year. This marks the fourth consecutive year where the University has welcomed more than 3,000 freshmen. The Office of Residential Life reported to those volunteering with freshman move-in that more than 2,500 of these freshmen will be living on campus.
With this growing student body, The Vermilion reached out to The Office of Facility Management to see how they handled the corresponding increase in work orders. Scott Hebert, the Director of Facility Management, said current operations are “doing as expected” after just undergoing both a decrease in staff and their busiest month: August.
Hebert noted that there is a large spike in work orders in August due to move-ins, along with a steady amount over the summer due to unused amenities on campus that require maintenance.
Hebert said, “Well, you can imagine for a campus this big, when you leave for three months and the buildings are… kind of very limited usage, when you come back, there’s all kinds of issues that happen.”
This summer, from May 11 to Aug. 19, Facility Management completed 2,242 work orders. Their projects ranged in scale, from paint touch-ups and thermostat replacements throughout Huger Hall, to replacing leaking exhaust ducts and repairing sheetrock in The Heritage at Cajun Village. 559 additional work orders were completed during freshman move-in alone, from Aug. 20-22, totaling 2,801 work orders from May 11 to Aug. 22. This is more than average, as Hebert noted that the total previously was around 2,500.
What makes these numbers more impressive is that all these campus work orders were completed by only 26 technicians.
For the University’s main campus, all maintenance and repairs are currently completed by 26 technicians: four carpenters, two painters, two electricians, two locksmiths, three plumbers, four housing shop technicians, four HVAC technicians, two HVAC control technicians and three trade apprentices.
This is not the normal number of employees that Facility Management usually has on hand. The financial deficit announced in Fall 2025 heavily affected their number of staff. Before, they had about 100 employees between all technicians, supervisors, managers and administrative positions.
Their employees are spread out between the main university campus and many off-campus locations such as research parks, Athletics facilities, and the New Iberia Research Center. In this capacity, they were operating in “efficiency mode,” according to Hebert.
During the staffing reductions the University made in response to their deficit, 17 Facility Management staff members were laid off across all levels. Over the remainder of the school year, another 12 either left their positions or retired.
The remaining staff have felt the weight and stress of the additional workload they had to take on after losing several staff members. Hebert said, “When a person can only get to, call it 10 or 12 things a day, but there are 30 things piled on them, they just feel like they’re never getting to the end.”
Some work orders in this pile, naturally, are more complex than others. Hebert said that elevators are a repair that is especially difficult. He explained, “When the elevators break… there’s not replacement parts for it.”
To repair obsolete equipment, the parts have to be sent off to be specially repaired by the factory it was made in. There is, unfortunately, not a more efficient option. Hebert said that the cost of completely replacing an elevator is over $1 million and there are well over one hundred elevators on campus.
Similarly, HVAC units also have tedious components that become obsolete quickly. In general, any work orders that require ordering new components take longer, up to several weeks, according to Hebert. Many of the parts needed are either obsolete or not readily available; both involve long wait times for shipping.
Prior to the financial deficit and before the reduction of around one third of their staff, Hebert said that they had all work orders looked into within 24 hours of the order’s submission and most were completed in 48 hours. Now, with a large backlog to tackle, Facility Management tries to look at all orders within 48 to 72 hours of submission, but the time each takes to fully complete is up in the air.
Hebert said that they have put in the request with the University to expand their technician staff, but that they also “understand the financial state that the University is in” and they are working through the feasible outlook for the rest of this school year.
“If we have to take a hit in order for the University to succeed in the future, if we have to fix buildings with bubblegum and duct tape, instead of using the correct things just to get us through the year, to be able to provide the type of atmosphere we want for our students and provide the amenities that we’re looking for. We’re willing to do it.”