An overview of my work as Building Manager at the Parsons Lab at MIT.

1. Wall and Bridges
A Building Manager’s Story

2. A rough attempt to communicate what I did in the 4
months or so that I had been given the title Building
Manager, what I was trying to do, and why.
ABOUT THIS BOOK

3. 1
Making space available in the basement storage room so that junior faculty have a fair share of available storage space.

4. 2
All but a few of the orange bushes facing Vassar Street are dead. I called MIT Grounds and they agreed to replace them in May. I don’t believe
that has happened.

5. 3
DIY projects to refinish the tables in the conference rooms. Cost: a weekend of my time and a bottle of wax/stain.

6. 4
The new blackboard in 316 is part of a larger effort to upgrade the classrooms, with the AV equipment being a key focus. This is being done in
partnership with the Registrar’s office, which manages all MIT classrooms.

7. 5
Even in rooms that weren’t part of any specific project, I tried to organize what was in there, remove what didn’t need to be, etc.

8. 6
Basement bathroom.
Diane has to come down here
every day to fill the mop
bucket because it’s the only
available sink.
I was working with Facilities to
have this room overhauled at
MIT’s expense, making the
argument that women are
underserved at Parsons in
regards to bathrooms.
And mothers need a nursing
station.

9. 7
Move the directory to the opposite wall and put a video monitor here.

10. The idea was to put the Departmental branding in the space below
the window.
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The Robert Engman Mobius.
This used to hang from the
dome in Barker Library and
now its in storage at the MIT
Museum. I had the idea of
bring it to Parsons as a symbol
of MIT and the Environment,
and to up the branding of the
Parsons Lab/CEE. The MIT
Museum agreed to this and I
was working with Charlie
Harvey to make it happen.

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Bottle-filling stations.
MIT is happy to come and
install bottle-filled stations for
you.
Getting them to pay for It is a
different story.
It requires a working
relationship with the Facilities
team, the support of their
managers.
We had two installed at no
cost, and were working on a
third.

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I spotted this bench on a loading dock in the basement of Bldg 7 and wheeled it through MIT’s underground tunnel system. Then I asked MIT
Grounds to donate the potting soil. I contributed the vases from home.

14. DIY Repairs.
The furniture in the ladies room— honestly, I think Vicki said that torn
vinyl sofa was there for 15 years. It took me less than a day to refinish
the wood, stain it, and reupholster the chair. This is not brain science.
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15. Everything at Parsons belongs to someone.
Sometimes they’ve lost track of it, sometimes they
have future plans for it, sometimes they’re shocked
it’s still around.
But tackling this thankless task is a fundamental
need — for cleaning, for fairness. No on says thank
you when you ask if you can move something that
belongs to them. But 25 years of friendships gave
me the courage. And every single thing I moved
required a strategy that I worked out in advance, so
that the request wouldn’t blow up in my face.
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I’m still rather staggered by how much work I did in the Parsons Machine Shop. It’s an extraordinary space with extraordinary potential.

18. Oh, I had big plans for the combination of MIT’s underground tunnel system,
Parsons’s loading dock, sustainability, undergraduate engagement, etc.
We were applying for a $50K grant from the Office of Sustainability for various
projects, one of which would enable the Machine Shop to become a Sustainability
Maker Space, geared primarily to undergraduates interested in Sustainability.
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Small projects but important. I came in one weekend to clean the East stairwell and that was a revelation. And it provided the driver for a
host of other changes.

20. 18
Skype stations. I created three new online calendars for people to reserve for Skype calls, but didn’t have a chance to finish the actual
spaces.

21. 19
Daylighting is fundamental to
every single argument that
Parsons will make with
Facilities in regards to getting
them to pay for any upgrades.
Facilities have had a flat
budget for more than 10
years, and they go into action
when you can make a case for
energy savings.
Beyond that, the windows at
Parsons are glorious, and they
should be used far more
effectively than they are being
used at present.

22. 20
I was making a lot of progress with the corridors, but a lot more was in progress — door labels, washing the doors, repairing baseboards,
etc.

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24. From my 10 years with the Energy Club I can say for a certainty that
Course 1 students and postdocs are the most engaged in all of MIT in
regards to the world around them.
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26. 24
Parsons has a great printer and a lot of unused frames. Photos like these should rotate on the walls, so that they communicate more of
CEE and Parsons to visitors… and to Parsonites!

27. Managing 2 week-long conference.
Everything else in this pdf is work I did because it felt important to me. My real responsibilities were to provide academic support to 4
faculty members (Penny, Phil, Dara, and Dennis), and to provide support to Phil as Lab Director.
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Since 2007 I’ve been an active volunteer in MIT groups, starting the MIT Drupal Group in 2008, and giving many presentations on Drupal.
And building and maintaining the websites for the Energy Club, Energy Conference, Clean Energy Prize, and so forth. Until working at
Parsons, I worked as a web developer. But now I realize my next job will be a variant of my job at Parsons, and will continue web
development on the side, primarily to drive the massive changes that need to happen in terms of how universities like MIT and Harvard
deliver web development to their communities.

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31. I’ve done lots and lots of graphics, and was working on a communication strategy to present to Bldg 1
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32. Some of my websites, past, long past, and present. (The ESI site was
just a mockup, I didn’t do the live site.)
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Hmmmm… look familiar?

35. 33
I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of looking at this dog lick Otto’s ear.

36. 34
Cleaning. Windows.
I engaged cleaners to clean
the Parsons windows
(exterior), and was working
with Housekeeping to tackle
the interior.
But serious streaks remained
on the outside, and I had
scheduled a new exterior
cleaning for this window only
to determine if the streaks
could be removed, and what
the cost would be.

37. The world has failed at it, so it’s no discredit
to say that MIT has struggled with it. And so
has CEE. It’s the same struggle I’ve had
with this screencast/slideshow — to
communicate an idea that requires change.
For which there is no clear financial motive.
The challenge for CEE is made all the more
difficult by the growth of research centers,
which create independent sources of
support.
And to my mind, this is the challenge that
has bedeviled CEE for a very long time.
Markus has laid out a brilliant 10-year plan,
and a brilliant research structures that ties
together all the strands of the department’s
work into a coherent story.
But implementing that plan remains an
unfilled challenge. It’s not just that the
research-related links on the website are
either broken or out of date. A website that
features snow-capped mountains, glaciers,
and icebergs is my idea of a drop-whatever-
youre-doing-we-have-a-problem-fix.
But the lack of branding on the Parsons Lab
exterior is simply another version of this
issue, and in some ways far more serious.
The Ralph M. Parsons for Environmental
Science and Engineering is either a stand-
alone environmental research center, with
its own independent source of support, or it
isn’t.
I understand the need to say that science is
a fundamental part of environmental
research. But the independence required to
say this comes at too great a cost.
And can be communicated in other ways.
And obviates the important goal of
environmental researchers to make their
case, and build relationships, with their civil
colleagues.
Environmental Communication isn’t easy.
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44. 42
This is a draft of the branding I was envisioning for the East foyer.

45. 43
This is the old Building 20 and it’s a throwback to the classic MIT structure that defined the original quadrangle. MIT was built on the model of
New England factories: low, horizontal, stairs at both ends. The focus was on functionality and versatility. Parsons is a glorious version of this.

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Frank Gehry: “MIT says they want new, new, new. But what they really want is what they had before.” And that’s what he gave them when he
designed the Stata Center, except that he made the horizontal vertical. And castles are not the same thing as corridors.

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