How long have you been with the University?

I’ve been with the University going on 11 years in September of 2025.

What department and/or unit are you in?

Facilities Services, West and South Campus Utility Plants

What is your education or training?

I was an intern in 2013 and 2014, during my junior and senior years, and that qualified me to have the minimum two years of experience to be hired straight out of high school.

How does your job relate to sustainability?

I’m one of two maintenance mechanics here at the utility plants that are on-call 24/7 to maintain the campus pressures and setpoints on the outside of the utility plants. Our number one job is to maintain and sustain high-pressure steam pressure throughout campus. Persistent maintenance keeps systems efficient and supports our sustainability goals.

Our steam is used for different reasons — to keep a building warm, to sterilize hospital equipment and tools, and for research labs that conduct experiments that require certain rooms to stay at a certain temperature. Our number one consumer would be the University’s medical hospital, followed by multiple research labs, dorms, and other iconic buildings on campus.

We also play a huge role in keeping buildings well-ventilated/cooled with our chilled water system. My direct job is to maintain the utility plants’ underground tunnels, which are where both plants connect to each other. Our tunnels feed every building that uses our steam from east of campus (60th St. and Blackstone Ave.) all the way to the west end of campus — to Ellis Street underground, where our steam lines punch into each individual building. 

We rebuild the PRV’s (pressure regulating valves) that reduce the high-pressure steam from the boilers at the plants into a user-friendly amount of pressure once it reaches the internal buildings — so that the occupants can use it safely to their discretion. 

We re-use our chemically treated steam once it cools off and turns into condensate by pumping it back to both plants via condensate pumps from each and every building that uses our steam. We rebuild the internals of these different condensate pumps when they leak/fail because most of them run all year round. Our job is also to troubleshoot /report any steam leaks that occur on campus that could be a potential danger and/or disrupt our closed loop system of sustaining high-pressure steam to the numerous buildings on campus. By doing all of these things, we’ve been able to maintain a highly efficient running system that’s been serving The University of Chicago since 1901.