The variety of roles as a maintenance manager

Diverse skill sets, adaptability and relationships part of the job

August 5, 2011 -- Kristian Partington

There are a few different qualities a maintenance manager brings to the job in an OMNI Health Care home, says Village Green's Brian MacPherson.

Adaptability is crucial, for he is truly a jack-of-all-trades. Creativity and the ability to change plans on the fly based on necessity, and doing so with a positive attitude helps for sure. A third major quality he cites is strong people-skills.

"One of the interesting things is there is variety in the work that I do," he says.

"There are a lot of different things that are expected of maintenance and then sort of the unexpected things that we do."

He points to the strong connections made with many of the residents through the course of his job, many of whom are men. At the Selby home, MacPherson notes there are only a few male staff members, and many of the male residents are often eager to talk shop, so to speak.

"There is some bonding that goes on with some of the male residents," he says. "They like to have a guy to talk to, so at times . . . a couple of us will get together as I'm doing something and you know, it's the guy's day and we talk about guy stuff."

The home has a women's club and a men's club where people gather regularly to share like-minded interests, and MacPherson will sometimes help out with a presentation on topics that may be of interest to male residents.

These relationships are some of the great rewards of the job, he says, but he admits that sometimes those highlights are forgotten in the face of the day-to-day challenges of the job.

He and his fellow maintenance specialists across the organization spend their time fixing problems and when they're doing their job well, those problems disappear, he says.

It's nice to step back from the problems and take stock of the relationships that make the job special, he says, and the variety of work that keeps him busy.

If you have a story about the work of a colleague that makes life at OMNI smooth, please contact 800-294-0051, ext. 24, or e-mail kristian(at)axiomnews.ca.

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