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Meter-Reading Meets the Age of TechnologyBy: Brooke Benson '19

In this day and age, technology dominates the world in countless ways. UNH Utilities recently suc-cumbed to this technological domination as they begin working with a newly implemented FAMIS-ToGo program on distributed tablets throughout the department. In the past, meter-readers had to record data on paper, however that method has been rendered obsolete within the last few months as the new program was rolled out. This program has innovated and simplified the way that Utilities tracks and logs the meter-readings across town and campus

The campus sub-metering program manages the metering all across UNH, tracking and measur-ing the energy and resources being consumed in the buildings and establishments on campus. The meters count the usage of water, electricity and natural gas. Adam Kohler, the Campus Energy Man-ager, is responsible for the sub-metering program and has found great success in the implementation of the tab-lets and FAMISToGo program. “The new program on the tablets is a huge time saver,” says Kohler. “It saves hours of manual data entry and allows for better accuracy because it lets the meter-readers directly enter information from the readings into the database.”

Because all the data is directly entered into the program by the meter-readers, the former process of transferring the paper records to another department that would read them over and input the data themselves has been elimi-nated. This improvement helps to avoid any clerical errors, as well as making the process much faster and efficient. The program shows recent former data on each meter so that the reader is able to easily compare all of the readings to each other and determine if there are any trending discrepancies that need to be dealt with. There is also an option to add notes or commentary to each reading, in case there are any issues with the meter itself that need to be reported.

Mike Sullivan, one of the three Operator Technicians at the Water Plant, reads meters across campus and has adjusted to working with the new program. Of the 700 total meters across campus, Sullivan is responsible for reading 141 of them. “The new system is a big step in the right direction,” says Sullivan. Having reflected on the advantages versus the disadvantages of the tablet system, Sullivan found that the advantages far outweigh the single disadvantage of the system, that being that the battery of the tablets has to be checked and charged.

Meters are read across campus to allow Utilities to be able to manage the amount of energy and re-sources being used by each building. Knowing this information will help ensure that energy is being evenly dispersed, and if it is not, to find ways to increase the efficiency of energy usage. The imple-mentation of the FAMISToGo program on tablets has allowed the process of ensuring accurate read-ings to be much faster and more effectively recorded.

Hamilton Smith Topping CeremonyThe Hamilton Smith renovation/building project passed a milestone yesterday as the ceremonial “last piece of steel” was put into place.

Many gathered to celebrate the occasion from the Provost P. Vasudevan, to Kenneth Fuld the current

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Dean of COLA.

Our own Doug Bencks gave a quick speech about the history of Hamilton Smith and the significance of the project and Dean Fuld said a few words regarding the impor-tance of humanities.

Others present from Facilities included Jeff McGrath, Mike Brooks, David Clark, Dana Peterson, Bill Janelle, Don Houde, Alex Brickett, Brenda Whitmore and of course

Project Manager Rich Rouleau.

After everyone had had a chance to sign, the steel was away, lifted into place, amid cheers from the watching crowd.

Stay tuned to a future issue of Foundations where we’ll give you a sneak peek into what’s to come for Ham Smith and a taste of UNH history!

Ritzman Sprints to Spring with WEight Loss!Fourteen employees from Facilities participated in a “Sprint to Spring” weight loss challenge lasting 10

weeks, ending the first Monday of spring, March 21st. The fourteen Facilities employees who participated are Stephanie Carbabona, Meghan Proctor, Susan Thorne, Brenda Whitmore, Amanda Marone, Ginelle Harbeson, Shawn Herrick, Sandra Hickey, Rhonda Vincent, Andre Cardoso, Kathleen Jones, Paul Henry and Mark Geuther and Jeff Parsons of Transportation Services.

Sandra Hickey and Shawn Herrick put together the challenge and invited others in Ritzman Lab to join. Employees chipped in for add-ed incentives to participate and decided there would be 4 winners.

Weight loss was calculated by percentage of body weight lost rather than pounds.

Each Monday morning team members could weigh in on a communal scale at Ritzman near Sandra’s desk. Then Shawn would send an email with a spreadsheet letting everyone know where others were placing. This kept the competition hot from week to week. “It was a real motivator to see those numbers!” said Project Manager Stepha-nie Cartabona.

They had all types of people join, from those who didn’t necessarily want or need to lose weight, but who wanted to support those who did, to those who had personal weight loss goals and just needed a boost to keep them-selves going. Overall the group lost from 1 to 12.2% body weight each.

“The group was very supportive of each other,” said Project Manager Mark Geuther, “On many afternoons during our breaks, a group of us would do what we started calling the “Gregg Challenge” and climb the stairs at Gregg Hall to get in a bit of exercise. Other days we’d walk to the stadium and walk up and down the stands or just take walks on our own.”

“Everyone encouraged each other to get out there but we had a healthy amount of competition too!” said Hickey, “It was great to see people talking about buying new clothes because of how much weight they’d lost!”

“We found it was a great way to stay on track and to remind ourselves to get back on track when we strayed,” said Document Management Specialist Ginelle Harbeson, “It was also a great way to share with each other, discussing what we were doing to lose weight including exercise regimes or new food choices.”

“We were surprised to see an unexpected first place contender, right away, but were very pleased by what he was able to accomplish.” said Herrick “And we’re really proud to say that we lost a total of 98.9 pounds as a group.

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Ritzman is a lot lighter these days!”

Herrick and Hickey have actually heard a lot of interest in the challenge from others in Facilities and are hoping more will join. The Ritzman group and potentially Facilities employees at 6 Leavitt Lane are considering doing something else this summer and doing another full challenge next fall. Either way, it was a positive experience!

Sprint to Spring Winners: First Place: Mark Geuther, Second Place: Stephanie Cartabona, Third Place: Ginelle Harbeson, Fourth Place: Meghan Proctor

Congrats to everyone who participated!! And looking forward to our new bigger competition!

Our New Motto , your UNH Email SignatureThe Leadership Team encourages Facilities em-ployees to celebrate our new motto by updating your email signature to include the phrase: Pride, Service and Dedication. Here’s how you can set up your email signature in Outlook:

From Outlook to go File>Options

At the next screen: choose Mail>Signatures

From the Signatures dialogue box, choose New to set up a new signature. Name the signature something that you will remember. Do not worry about oth-ers seeing the name of your signa-ture as this is something internal to Outlook. Next you can begin formatting your signature in the box at the bottom of the screen.

To insert a photo, use the button with the green circle. You can for-mat text as you would in Word.

Set the default signature to your new signature (Upper right corner) and this signature should show up each time you write an email.

Shout Out! Cyd and Karen of HousekeepingJohn Pistey, Operations Manager at the Whittemore Center writes, “Hi Jean, I wanted to write and formally thank Cyd Pea-body and Karen Henry for all of their hard work to prepare for the Frozen Four and keep the facility looking great through the event. They both did an amazing job, and the event wouldn’t have reflected as well on the Univer-sity without them. “ Congrats Cyd and Karen and amazing work!