Host: Ben Long Co-host: Jeff Weisbeck Guest: Bill Chapman Description: As Facilities Manager, Bill Chapman oversees his team as they maintain the buildings and grounds of Fort Larned NHS. In this episode we take a look at the challenges that come with being Facilities Manager as well as the challenges of keeping what's here at Fort Larned, here.

[Footsteps intro music plays]

Ben Long: Welcome to Footsteps: The Fort Larned Historic Site Podcast. This season we're taking a look at Fort Larned's past, present, and future. Today we're looking at part one of Fort Larned's present. I'm your host Ranger Ben and I'm joined by our volunteer Jeff. How's it going today?

Jeff Weisbeck: It's good. How you doing Ben?

Ben: Doing well! So as we get started why don't you to tell us a little bit about yourself, what drew you to Fort Larned, that kind of thing.

Jeff: Yeah so my name is Jeff Weisbeck my wife and I are long-term residents living on site in our RV. And this is, you know, we've always been National Park enthusiasts and, you know, like many people we visit the park and, you know, we feel great if we have the ability to spend a day and blessed if we have the ability to spend two. And we looked at this volunteering for a few months is a way to really dig deeper and really get to understand a site that was very new to us. We're from Buffalo, New York. Kansas is very new somehow I missed a whole bunch about the 1860s to the 1880s when I went to school. We certainly covered a ton on the Civil War, but nothing relevant to the Santa Fe Trail or what was truly going on out here. So it's been fascinating to live on site, see all the beauty that Kansas has to offer, and really have the opportunity to dig deeper into what makes Fort Larned so special. And that includes not only, you know, the history of the fort but also the people who work here.

Ben: Absolutely! I mean we are a National Park so there was, I know some of the reasons, but there's obviously a reason that Congress says this is important for us to preserve -- use federal monies to preserve. So it is fun to be able to dig deeper and to find that reason and sometimes it does take a little bit of time to get that.

Jeff: Absolutely! And I tell you, we've done a lot of learning from the staff on site, but it seems like daily a visitor comes in that's going to talk about why the fort is special to them. And they will be focusing on maybe one of the rifled muskets that will be used or some people will come in and they'll be a fan of a TV show and they've have always loved the reference to Fort Larned in that TV show and they'll come in explaining how important that is. Every day is something different and we learn something with the visitors each time.

Ben: Yeah, and that's a wonderful part of working here and like you said learning a lot from the staff and today we're interviewing Facilities Manager Bill Chapman. So he oversees the day-to-day operations, be it mowing, historic preservation, you name it. So it's really cool to hear from him and hear just really all that goes into his job. I know he's always busy, so it's kind of cool to get a window into just the nitty-gritty of what he's busy with and the challenges and the unique challenges that come with his position and his team.

Jeff: Yeah, to me I did not have an appreciation how he prioritized his work and it was really interesting to learn that it all started with the mission statement of the park and then the prioritization of the different buildings and structures on the park. And that helped guide his decision of where to make his daily and his monthly-- like where to put his resources. So makes complete sense I just had no idea that it was it was structured that way so that was that was really interesting to learn about.

Ben: Yeah, no it was a lot of fun interviewing him and we hope you enjoy taking a listen. So here you go!

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Ben: Alright so welcome! How's it going today?

Bill Chapman: Going well.

Ben: All right so as we get started as with all of our interviews here, go ahead and get started with your name, title, and then we'll kick it off from there.

Bill: Bill Chapman, Supervisory Facility Operation Specialist is the new title for Facility Manager.

Ben: Alright and so you sort of handle what could be called the maintenance side of things?

Bill: Yeah. The facility operational side-- maintenance.

Ben: When did your career in the Park service start? Because I know it's--

Bill: April of 90. 1990, yeah.

Ben: And that started at Cape Hatteras National Seashore, didn't it?

Bill: Yes it did.

Ben: Alright, what was your job there?

Bill: Preservation Carpenter on the Bodie Island Restoration Project-- Rehabilitation Project, excuse me.

Ben: That was one thing that was kind of funny coming here from Cape Hatteras myself, finding out that you worked there and worked at the light station that I worked at too that was kind of funny. Why don't you tell us a little bit about your journey through the Park Service what other parks you might have worked at and all that.

Bill: Well I was with the Cape Hatteras there I also did Hurricane Recovery for Hugo and St Crois Christian Haven National Historic Site, rebuilt the housing for the government there. Then I went on detail down in for Dry Tortugas or Fort Jefferson when Andrew came through then spent the next seven months rebuilding the three South Florida Park Units before becoming an employee of the flamingo District of Everglades National Park. Then worked that till '96 when I got permanent went from a Maintenance Mechanic to a boat operator servicing the backcountry camping sites. Then in the winter time when it was our-- excuse me summertime it was a tractor operator job mowing the roadside around the 55 miles from Flamingo to the Homestead turn around and drive back mowing grass. Alot of windshield time. From there to Historic Preservation Training out of Frederick Maryland-- actually out of Williamsport the last people to work in Williamsport when it was called Williamsport Training Center versus Historic Preservation Training Center. Then we became Historic Preservation Training Center out of Frederick, Maryland out of Monocacy Battlefield. Worked for them for 5 and half years, traveled the country doing different projects for different not just park service but Forest Service, local county governments, historic societies, and stuff like that.

Ben: Do you have a count on how many different parks and sites you worked at when you were with preservation there?

Bill: Seven Parks, three Forest, one agricultural research service, and two private-- and two county owned sites.

Ben: Wow, that's awesome. Now we have-- as we're recording this we have a Historic Preservation Training Center working on one of our buildings here too.

Bill: They're under Historic Preservation Training Center. They're actually referred to as a Maintenance Action Team. A MAT team. They're GOA funded, they were set up just to handle GOA projects. And that's the Great American Outdoor Act is abbreviated as GOA and that's what they're doing, they're trying to do a project in every Midwest Region Park, we just happen to have three of them-- four of them excuse me. We did one last year, but we have four projects with them.

Ben: Yeah it's good to see that getting done. Now after what was Williamsport Preservation Center, now Historic

Bill: Preservation Training Center

Ben: Where did you go after that?

Bill: Here to Fort Larned back in '02 and been here since.

Ben: What I guess encouraged you to make the switch from Historic Preservation to Facilities Manager.

Bill: Simple: income. Originally started out as is just trying to you know advance the career. Stayed here longer than I wanted, but--

Ben: We're glad to have you and have you here and have you overseeing the everything that goes on here on the Facility side of things.

Jeff: Bill one of the things that I've seen is that the people work here are skilled in so many different ways and clearly there's many options of what you could be doing. So I'm curious to learn a bit about why you started working for the Parks when there were so many options out there.

Bill: I actually was building hotels and condominiums on the Outer Banks. We had a market dry up in the late 80s-- '88/'89 range. I was self-employed and the only thing I can do is go apply for a job and the only job open at the time was a carpenter position at Cape Hatteras which I ended up with and thought it was pretty cool getting paid on rainy days versus not being paid on rainy days.

Jeff: Perfect!

Bill: Stayed with it.

Jeff: One of the things that that I've noticed here is the weather is very extreme and there's times when the wind is blowing for days on end, then it'll get very cold, and then it'll get very hot. I was kind of wondering how Mother Nature makes your job here at Fort Larned harder.

Bill: We are experiencing more damage due to heavier extreme events. We are suffering, one year we had had over 175 window panes broken out with a hail storm. Our delineation handrail out front of the Officers' Quarters is a replacement item that was a reconstructed item that has already been replaced once because of so much hell damage that it was the wood would no longer hold the paint. As soon as you painted it start popping. Constant wind damage damaging the fences, pushing on them, leaning on them, a lot of wind load on things. Just increased maintenance on things.

Jeff: Yeah and I also noticed that you know one of the very unique and nice things about this fort is so many of the buildings are open. People can go in and take a look around, but that also means that whatever is out on the Prairie is going to blow into the--

Bill: The operational side of Maintenance too, the cleaning and stuff is constantly it's hard to keep it up.

Jeff: Yeah it's definitely a challenge. I look at I look around the fort and I see the buildings, but purposely what's hidden is all the things that go into maintaining and operating the fort and those are things that support the visitor experience but they want to be hidden from view in certain ways so it doesn't distract from the historic nature of the fort. Could you tell us uh what type of services you and your team provide for the Fort?

Bill: Starting off with the operational safety side of things we provide three potable water systems, drinkable water for two different locations for public transit. We do have a third water system that is Park Service only that is guest and employees or employees basically, but we maintain those Water Systems we have infrastructure of Waste Systems in seven different septic systems in the park, Electrical distribution and Electrical Transformer Vaults hidden inside buildings. Water Treatment Plants are hidden inside some of the historic structures as well. Storage. Then we have Ground Maintenance as operational, Custodial Operational, then regular Building Maintenance just trying to keep things, corrective maintenance along with seeking soft funding for projects for roofing, item items big ticket that our regular annual budget cannot handle.

Jeff: Yeah, that's perfect. Yeah, it's amazing. I had to start thinking about it, of all the things that are here to make it very comfortable for the visitor that we're not here back in the 1860s to 1880s, so that's amazing. Also the work that you and your team are doing on the reconstructions is really something, right? This this Fort is amazing. Can you tell us about perhaps some of the funny or surprising things you may have found as you're doing some of the work here?

Bill: Probably the most interesting thing is when we were doing the rehabilitation on the North Officers' Quarters we did expose foundation for tuck pointing the foundation stem wall and finding the builder's marks for each window location on the stones that are below grade.

Jeff: Wow, okay!

Bill: It's probably one of the nicest things finding so far. One of the other projects we were doing with the Historic Preservation Training back in '05-- 2005 range was the-- we found a stone signed pre stone Fort time-frame. The Juan de Jesus stone signed in 1859 I believe and we didn't start construction till 1865 on the stone buildings.

Jeff: Wow! Okay, so maybe perhaps one of the first stone cut?

Bill: Some were graffiti, probably somewhere and then just picked up off the field stone and put in place or an earlier mason-- the story is unknown there.

Jeff: Oh wow!

Ben: And that that was on the work to rehabilitate the north side of the Old Commissary, right? HS-5?

Bill: Putting-- the entire building has a new foundation under it not just the north side so yeah. It was in one of the tear down panels of the stone walls on the north that we found that stone.

Ben: And that was one of the first sandstone buildings to be constructed.

Bill: Up to the gun belt and we pulled off construction went to the Blockhouse or what referred to is HS-10.

Ben: Now for our listeners hearing some of these numbers there are, in the Park Service, there's numbers for each of the buildings and so when you're talking for doing projects and things like that instead of maybe saying Old Commissary or Post Commander Quarters, it's HS-5 or HS-8 or anything like that. Even the flag pole has a historic structure designation too.

Bill: Yes. Also historic building designation as well okay you have an HS and HB numbers HBs where we replace with HSs. But it's still in the record somewhere as an HB.

Ben: Yeah I've seen both of those in yeah in different documentation.

Bill: And that's standing for historic structure.

Jeff: Great! Bill you work with a team out here that's doing maintenance. Could you tell us a little bit about the different skills that you have on your team?

Bill: Currently I have a Maintenance Mechanic that is geared towards the infrastructure side which is plumbing, electrical, HVAC, with light duty and carpentry and painting. Then we have a Water System Operator because we have the three water systems and he has backup for grounds and that's grass cutting, shoveling snow, that kind of activities and then he also worked underneath a former Maintenance Mechanic so he knows pretty much the alarm system so he also serves as a technician on repairing alarm systems. Then I have a Custodial part-time that does nothing but cleaning. And then right now I have two-- a Carpenter temporary for doing some carpentry work on projects and a Carpenter-- excuse me a Maintenance Worker that's basically that assistant for that Carpenter. And they're working and they've been here about a year almost year and a half now. They've done window works on the South Officers' Quarters or HS-7, they've done the new roof on the Blockhouse, HS-10, they've done new boards in the faux tunnel of the Blockhouse, tuck pointed the Blockhouse and did the demo work in the Commanding Officer Building for architectural research coming up later this-- beginning of November. Second week in November we'll have Architects back to do planning for the restoration of the interior surfaces.

Jeff: This site is also open seven days a week and I've noticed that your team is very flexible of what they do and they're there to do whatever it takes because different things pop up on day-to-day. And there's a lot of cross coverage which is really neat. Maybe you could tell us about something your team accomplished that made you exceptionally proud of them.

Bill: Showing up every day is a good accomplishment after the frustration of the day before. I just can't limit it to one, I mean I'm proud of all their accomplishments that these guys do. I mean, we put all brand new sinks and photo sensors inside the bathrooms make bringing them up to more modern versus an old kick style flushometer to censored flushometer so people weren't having to hunt all over the restroom to where to flush the toilet because, you know, most people weren't used to a foot activated one. Water conservation activities that we've done over the years, replaced the gravel parking lot for the what the park had for 50 years it was a gravel parking lot gave them a paved road, paved parking lot, tore out a bridge that had a million dollars worth of damage to it and replaced it with a pedestrian bridge at a new location. Every building's been re-roofed some type of interior your work done to it as well the 10 structures. These guys have been amazing.

Jeff: Yeah, for the listeners my wife and I live on site at an RV pad at the Maintenance Facility and we were talking that from day one we felt so welcome there and people were there to help us and the questions that you may have as you're living in a new area or setting up in a new area, everybody was really eager to point us in the right direction or assist us. So we immediately felt very welcomed by you and your team when we were on site which was really great.

Ben: One question that that I have is in an ideal world, with the buildings that we have in order to keep them as they are today, we just sort of close this off and not let anyone use it, not let anyone inside kind of thing so how do you, as someone who's in charge of the maintenance that's done on these buildings, how do you sort of strike that balance between visitor enjoyment and preservation? With people using it, with people going inside, things like that you get the wear and tear and I know with being a National Park Service site which is wonderful it is our purpose to present this to the public. But from an, I guess, almost an expense standpoint it's more expensive to have these buildings open to show them to the public so--

Bill: Every building we bring online and open up is costly, yes. But the enjoyment for the visitor is a tangible history. If you can't touch it, smell it, play with it, it doesn't exist in their minds. To me to me that cost is worth it.

Jeff: Kind of following that train of thought is there a part of the fort that isn't here now that you'd like to see reconstructed.

Bill: Operationally, no. I don't want to see any more new buildings coming online. Because without a financial support behind it.

Jeff: Okay. Let's say that you had the budget to support something new, is there anything that you would like to see added?

Bill: A more modern Visitor Center office area and get the operational side of out of it-- the historic structure. And that doesn't have to be a reconstructed former military site or anything, it could be a new building and a new location.

Jeff: Okay, so a new Visitor's building and then return the barracks to its original--

Bill: It would probably still be adaptive use, it may be the Field Rangers Office it may be where the volunteers' house, you know, clothing and stuff will be done versus other buildings that they're currently in. It would not be a total loss of that resource to the public, because the museum is designed to fit inside that room.

Ben: And for those who are listening and haven't visited the fort right now our Visitor Center and offices are in what was one of the original Barracks duplex, yeah. So it housed two companies of Infantry but now it houses our Museum and our theater and all that too. I know there has been talks in the past of adding a building for that purpose of visitor contact and things like that, maybe across the bridge.

Bill: Across the bridge, a small contact station across the bridge so that there-- that first introduction would be great versus the long walk from the bridge to the Visitor Center. Which is part of the relocation of the Bridge Project where we took the bridge that was damaged heavily that was right beside the Visitor Center and relocated to where the military actually had a bridge at that was more an accurate site orientation compared to the 1964 highway bridge.

Ben: And now it looks like it's a historic wooden bridge versus the concrete bridge that used to be there. Although it is built to withstand emergency vehicles and things like that too, right?

Bill: Yeah, it has a 10- ton capacity to run across it.

Ben: Was there any special challenges that came with ensuring that that was within the abilities of the bridge?

Bill: No real special challenges at all. I mean design took it with our demands to make sure we still had that access that gives us two means of emergency vehicle access to the park. One from the West one from over the bridge. So if something happens we got some-- another way to get in. Probably the biggest thing had probably changed the elevation of the parking lot out front. We had to raise that grade probably 3 to 4 feet off the existing grade to be able to make a less of an incline for accessibility to go over the height of the pedestrian bridge that was required.

Ben: I didn't realize it had to be built up that much. I guess that makes sense because if you look at the edge of the parking lot it does kind of drop off a little bit.

Bill: And we hid it well.

Ben: Yeah, very well! With the tall grasses and things like that that we have around there too that that helps as well. Have you been involved in any of the reintroduction of the native grasses that have been in that area as well?

Bill: Minor involvement, but yes.

Ben: Because I know we've been trying to get that back to more native plants less invasive ones.

Bill: Right, actually a majority of the work was done as part of as an additive feature to the road work the 4H-- the Federal Highway Federal Land category 4 funding allows for that type of work. That external, not just the road prism and the road surface, they allow for that greater picture of managing the landscapes, doing whatever signage and stuff like that, gates that kind of stuff would be in the 4H and in the four, we call it FLIP, in the category 4 FLIP funding. That's what did most of it, so it was Federal Highways did a lot of it with our Design Center out of Denver. It was a-- their project, we managed a little bit with input but, it was a Federal Highway Project actually Highway Administration Project.

Ben: And that's another thing too within your purview is, and within your team is yeah, partnerships and maintaining that too, and mowing it.

Jeff: One thing that I had heard and maybe you can comment on is that the walkways under the porches were actually raised slightly. We were talking about the parking lot being raised to improve accessibility. I'd also heard from someone I believe that the porches were raised up to provide better accessibility. Can you talk a little bit about that discussion, how that went on, and how that solution was obtained?

Bill: The discussion is registered-- excuse me Public Law so there was really no discussion. We need to we were altering things so when we alter things we had to come in compliant with modern laws. So at that time we had to come in compliant with the American Barriers Act or Architecture Barrier Act part of the ADA. Which meant less than a half inch incline over top of a threshold.

Jeff: Okay. Yeah, looking at the porches it blends so well it had to be pointed out to me that there was a difference.

Bill: Basically 5 and a half inches taller. What it was is a vertical 2x6 put up on top of the-- well realize that underneath of that was a concrete slab from the 1974 rehabilitations of the forts. There's a wood framework sitting on top of a concrete slab with the wood deck on top of that.

Jeff: Understood. Alright.

Ben: And that's the-- we're talking about the porches right in front of the barracks.

Bill: The barracks in a hospital yeah.

Ben: So that was-- so historically that would have been a step down out of that-- out of those front doors.

Bill: We've also done it to the North and South Officers' Quarters rear porches with approach ramps of the natural pavement.

Ben: Yeah, and those along the South Officers' Quarters were just added not too long ago, right?

Bill: Two-- about two and a half years ago or two years ago and we'll be doing the same thing to this building as well, to the Commanding Officer's building too, accessing from the rear.

Ben: Yeah, no, there's by my count what one-- only one of our historic structures that isn't handicap accessible?

Bill: At this time, yep.

Ben: Are there any plans in the future for that building which would be the New Commissary or HS-4.

Bill: Nothing hard copy, just discussions going on at this point.

Ben: Yeah, because it is fairly limited. I mean you have with Officer Quarters you got front and back doors with the Barracks you don't have that much of a difference to make up but with that you got a few steps up there to get up to the floor level, so I can see how that would be a big challenge to get that within ADA compliance.

Jeff: We've been talking about so many things that you and your team are responsible for. How do you go about prioritizing tasks for yourself and your team on a daily basis?

Bill: We have a lovely thing in the Park Service called Asset Management Process where we already set a priority to our assets, which are our buildings. We rank them from the highest to the lowest. The work that needs to be done will always go to the highest assess first, and with an acceptable budget that we have at the time. So if we have a faucet leaking in the Visitor Center that's a higher priority asset than if the faucet was leaking in the curatorial room of Mike's. Because the Visitor Center is a higher priority than the New Commissary.

Jeff: That is so interesting. I never thought about that yeah so do the priorities of the buildings ever change with time?

Bill: No.

Jeff: No, they're set.

Bill: They're pretty much set unless the mission changes of the Park Service which is established by enabling legislation. So pretty much not going to change.

Jeff: Okay, so you take your mission statement for the park and that leads to your priority on the buildings and that leads to your tasking--

Bill: You incorporate visitor use, visitors importance. you know what would satisfy the visitor, employee satisfaction as well and need a place to work don't want to be having these people working outside in the-- all the weather yeah trying to run a computer that can't be wet you know that kind of stuff. So that's why these buildings get the asset priority that they get.

Jeff: I had no idea that's fascinating.

Ben: So say if like if there was something to be done on say the Shops or HS-3 that was on the docket for the day before but overnight something happened to the Visitor Center HS-1.

Bill: It gets pushed back and if it gets pushed back the entire year then I write it up into a project into the next year's

Ben: Okay.

Bill: That's how I look at it if I can't get to it, it needs to be a project. Because I can't if-- there's two reasons why I can't get to it: money and time. If I don't have the time, it's better for a contractor to do the work, if I don't have the money, it's better to ask the soft funding projects to fund it for us.

Ben: Gotcha. Now where does-- where do projects lie on that?

Bill: Most of the projects are things that we could not do in house to begin with, so that's why they ended up in the projects. One either financially or asset priorities. A lot of our projects will be geared towards the lower priority assets sometimes. Like we have a-- rebuilding all the fencing around here even though we just did a contract for painting them this year, our funding cycle is 5 years out, so in about 4 and a half years they'll be eligible-- their project that was written last year is to replace all the fencing. And as you notice there's a lot of loose boards, a lot of bowing of the fence row, a lot of you know repair damage from windstorms where we've had had to repair sections of the fencing. But it's such a low priority it's not one that I don't like-- I only do when I have the available time because it's a low cost, the fence itself because it's a lot of time the repairs are replacing it with the same wood we just take down adding one new member or something. So the cost is pretty low, it's just the time on that one.

Ben: Now we had a windstorm come through was it December 2021 that knocked down quite a few fences and I know we were working for quite a while to get those back up.

Bill: Right. And as most of you as you saw that process, it was when time permitted fence work was done. We went and did other stuff at a higher priority then we went back to fencing.

Ben: Now with a lot of these things I know there's sort of like a lifespan with shingles on the roofs and fences and things like that. So can you sort of like look forward and see oh this is when it was--

Bill: Yeah, that's part of my project funding to or writing up project-- or what we refer to as cycling maintenance is life cycling things out. Last year we-- or two years ago we replaced the chiller because it was life cycling out plus it was also failing on us. We replaced the heater because it failed but it was within a year or two of being life cycled out anyway.

Ben: So you can sort of, because of the records that we have sort of look forward to--

Bill: Because of that the program that we use the Asset Management Process out we put into dates of when we put the equipment in so we know what industrial standard life cycle is, go from there. It actually has replacement dates in that thing so that you can replace what date you can start writing a project for what date it needs to be replaced.

Ben: Now how long does that-- would you say between when a project is written up as a project to when it's actually completed? I know there's a great variance in time there but what would you say is the average time?

Bill: Four years between when you write up to when you're actually funded the project and then it's about a year for execution. If there's planning and design with an architect or an engineer is within two years of execution after being funded. One year for planning one design and then the next is execution of the construction.

Ben: With keeping the records it's nice to see oh I have this much time before it's going to be actually fixed so I should start writing these projects up now. There's a lot that goes on behind the scenes.

Bill: Yep.

Jeff: We've been talking a lot about the nuts and bolts and finances of your position I was wondering if we could turn things to the softer side again and if you were going to give your friends or family a tour of this fort what would be the favorite thing to show them and what would you tell them about it?

Bill: The tunnel is always a unique thing to show somebody. It is it is one of the nicest things to pop in and show. Though I think probably the second forge in the Blacksmith would probably be my favorite one to show. It's one that we were able to reconstruct from evidence of ghost lines on the existing interior wall surface to show where the chimney was at. The Farm Period didn't really alter the Blacksmith Shop that much they added on to the south side of it but they did not tear into the inside that much so we had some good evidence of where the protrusion of the chimney through the roof line was at with some at-- where they took the chimney out they added small boards in, back in, so they gave you that pretty much there. And the fact that we were able to build that have that and use first versus continuously having to rebuild or reuse the original forge that sort of like George Washington ax for chopping down the cherry tree. Yes, it's the original forge but it's been rebuilt at least three times since Park Service has had this property and we don't know how many times it was rebuilt from the Fort Period during the Farm Period. So it could be that has a new ax head it has a new handle it has a new wedge, you know right but still it's still George Washington's hatchet.

Jeff: To the to the visitor is very difficult to tell what is the original and what is the new and also the reconstructed one is absolutely an operational forge that's used routinely with visitors. So yeah, that's amazing, I like that.

Bill: And it's actually had a rebuilt table on it now since it was reconstructed and less than 10 years ago okay we had some freeze/thaw cycles on our mortar and it blew the stones apart.

Ben: There was there was some work done on that just last year too, wasn't there?

Bill: That's what I mean. It was the work table was rebuilt on the forge.

Jeff: So what advice would you have for someone who's interested in becoming a Facilities Manager at a park?

Bill: Be malleable as possible.

Jeff: Flexibility!

Bill: Because you will be juggling your jobs not only just focusing on one thing one moment I mean one day it might just being able to focus for a few minutes before you have to change your focus to another thing.

Ben: And I think that goes for anyone in the federal service but definitely someone who's managing all these different projects and just day-to-day operations as well. So I mean like during the summer we got mowing going on and but then that's also the season for painting but that's also the season for everything else. So doesn't ever slow down it seems like.

Bill: No it doesn't.

Jeff: Terrific! I think I have one more question for you and it's a bit of an oddball one, so bear with me. Is there any question you wished I asked you that I hadn't, and how would have you answered that?

Bill: You partially asked it in the last one. What was the facility-- the one condition one feature that you'd want to be but realize that the small park units that we have in the service, many positions have a lot of collateral duties that are assigned to it with the expectation that collateral duties are about 20% of your time. This facility position has four collateral duties assigned with it too. Plus two parks.

Jeff: Alright, so the math adds up to a different number other than 100. I gotcha.

Bill: So the ability to maintain to focus, you know, that I think is the hardest thing to do in this job is maintaining the focus. Not only being malleable to adjust to situations that are coming up but trying to maintain focus, because that is constantly changing on you.

Ben: And now you briefly mentioned it but you not only manage the facilities for here at Fort Larned but you manage it for Nicodemus as well, right?

Bill: Nicodemus National Historic Site as well.

Ben: Which also comes with its own set of challenges.

Bill: Uniqueness! It's an untraditional park. The resources up there are not owned-- the resources identified in the enabling legislation, only one is owned by the National Park Service. The other ones are all privately held either operated through easements or through just has providing assistance while you watch the decay of a structure.

Ben: And unfortunately, we've seen some of that happen this year. So maybe we'll have to pick your brain sometime about the challenges in Nicodemus. But for the meantime or in the meantime I should say for those listening whether they're local or I should say in the first part if someone's local what are some ways they can help out and if they're not so local are there ways they can help out as well?

Bill: If they wish to volunteer we can always use volunteers in the Maintenance Fields. The operational side, the mowing, the snow removal, that kind of stuff. But a lot of painting. We have a lot of painting that we can always use help with we're always willing to develop skills that somebody's wanting to learn skills as well. I mean we've in the past we've had four different Traditional Trades Apprentice Program applicants here. We've also had seasonal applicants that were under skilled that learned skills before they moved on. Those are things, we don't mind training you know sharing our education and our experiences with other people to meet the needs of the park or the resource.

Ben: I've experienced firsthand a couple years ago and need to help out painting, painting a couple structures and all that and I can definitely attest that there's a lot to be done all the time.

Bill: And again as we just talking about priority assets the stuff that you worked on were the lower priorities and as you saw they weren't addressed as often.

Ben: But they're still-- I mean they're still on that list still need to be addressed and still need to be taken care of. So, what are some ways that folks who aren't so local-- what are some ways they can help out?

Bill: When they come to visit, don't graffiti. Don't make the worst-- the job harder.

Ben: There you go. Yeah, not only--

Bill: Put your trash in your trash can, you know.

Ben: Do your part to help.

Bill: Do your part to help.

Ben: Yeah, not only is graffitiing-- you get a hefty fine but you're also permanently damaging the buildings and all that. Well we thank you for coming on and sharing a little bit about what you do and giving us some-- giving us and giving our listeners some insight and so we thank you!

Bill: You're welcome!

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Ben: Alright, well we hope you enjoyed that interview, I certainly did! If you aren't already following us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter go ahead and follow us there also check out our website, has a lot of great resources for you.

Jeff: Also, Cape Hatteras National Seashore was mentioned in this interview please go and follow them as well they have amazing content and certainly a bunch to learn there as well.

Ben: Thank you again for taking a listen!

Jeff: And we will see you next time on Footsteps: The Fort Larned Podcast!

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