For people who attend colleges and universities in the New England area, one thing is for sure: when wintertime rolls around and the weather gets cold, snow is surely coming in the near future. Being in an area that can experience high volumes of snow, it’s important to have a planned out process to remove snow and ice.
This is where the facilities department here at Springfield comes into play, working tirelessly to help ensure students’ safety by clearing off snow from key parts of campus.
Facilities closely monitors the forecast, as Director of Facilities Management Kevin Roy gets together with his team to discuss any upcoming storms or inclement weather coming to campus. Often working with the Department of Public Safety, the facilities team looks at various factors to determine if campus needs to be closed.
“[We] kind of devise what the storm is going to do, take a look at what events we have on campus and then carve out what the process will be,” Roy said. “Every storm is a little bit different based on timing and whether it’s slush [or] ice. Every plan’s a little bit different.”
With each storm being different from the next, this also can impact the status of campus remaining open for in-person classes. While a big storm might take place the night before and go into the early morning, this could possibly give the facilities team enough time to get the campus in a good condition for students and faculty.
On the flip side, another storm could start to come down in the early morning and extend into the afternoon and evening, making it more challenging to keep the campus open. In situations like this, facilities will often have to go over the snowy area numerous times so students can get to where they need to go.
“We balance what’s good for the students and what’s the safety of walking from class to class,” Roy said. “I would say we just take everything into account and we try to make the best plan.”
On top of this, the amount of snow plays a role, as well as the type of snow that falls.
This year has been an especially difficult year on campus, with more snow than the last couple of years. This also sometimes can create a challenge in terms of where to put the excess snow and how to get all of it cleared.
“Anything over a foot, it changes the game,” Roy said. “Because there’s less places to push the snow. If you look in our parking lots, you got the great big mounds of snow, so you’re losing parking spaces. But also, was there snow on the ground before you got that snow? As the snow builds up on the sidewalks, we have to push it from the edges just so you got somewhere to put it for the next storm. We definitely give it the best try, to keep everything operating.”