00;00;00;26 - 00;00;10;21
Liz Kay
Hello and welcome to the Providence College podcast, I'm your host, Liz Kaye, and I'm joined by producer Chris Judge of the Class of 2005 here in the Providence College podcast, we bring you interesting stories from the fryer family.

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Liz Kay
This week we're talking with Alex Somers, a health policy and management major from Brunswick, Maine. Demarches worked for Providence College's physical plant for two years, gaining valuable skills. He was later able to apply as a facilities management intern at Maine Medical Center in Portland.

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Liz Kay
Now, Tamara's continues to work remotely for the medical center's facilities and engineering division during the school year. Alex, it's great to talk to you.

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Alex DeMars
Or do you talk to you too? And thanks for having me, guys. I appreciate this opportunity.

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Liz Kay
So tell us a little bit about your internship at Maine Medical Center. What were your some of your responsibilities? Would you do?

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Alex DeMars
So my internship actually started out through a very wide, wide program just through MaineHealth, which is the internship program that the big health care system that services Southern Maine offers. And so originally I was in a different department learning about operations, but I quickly got a connection to the senior manager of facilities and operations, and I reached

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Alex DeMars
out to him and he explained to me that there's not a lot of kids interested in the field, which I was very interested in. In fact, I was at my laptop when I was plugging in excel sheets on one part of the screen and the other part of the screen.

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Alex DeMars
I was looking at generator diagrams. So I knew I was interested in how things worked in this very niche area of health care. I started working in and little by little, I was handed more responsibility under his supervision and also started eating some of the other technicians in various projects throughout the summer, specifically one building that I

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Alex DeMars
was assigned to. I did a lot of work for, which is a brand new medical office building that was put up on in Scarbrough. So it's not actually in Portland, but there is a neurology suite there. There is a spine suite there and there's all kinds of operations that go on there, including MRI.

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Alex DeMars
And so I was basically tasked with taking care of work orders for that building and eventually doing some of the compliance and regulations parts of health care, which I'll get into later. But really overseeing that building because we needed a lot of help was an awesome experience for me, especially with all the things that come with the

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Alex DeMars
installment of a brand new building for a practice. So.

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Liz Kay
And sounds like you kind of carved out this position, then like to find a place that really fit your interests?

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Alex DeMars
Yeah, I've kind of been the guinea pig for an apartment, I guess you could say as far as someone who is interested in the facility side of health care. It's a super niche thing and we need more people to go into that field.

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Alex DeMars
And so now I've kind of piloted this fellowship program, which hopefully helps more kids be interested in what I'm doing.

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Liz Kay
Well, I think, you know, too, nearly two years into the COVID pandemic, most people probably have a better understanding of how critical hospital facilities and maintenance are to health care. What are some of the things you think people should know about this side of the work and some, maybe some surprising or unexpected aspects to the role?

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Alex DeMars
That's a great question. I think that the first thing they should know is that there's many, many different regulations in health care compared to a normal building when you're managing facilities, right? And that gets even further divided when you're talking about medical office buildings, which the specific parameters that they'll fall into, but medical office buildings versus what

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Alex DeMars
they call health care occupancy versus what they call an ambulatory occupancy. So those all get separated. And one of the big things to understand is that each one is regulated to a different degree. So if you're in a really massive hospital, like I'll give an example of 22 Bramhall Street, which most people when they think of Maine

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Alex DeMars
Medical Center, that's the big building where a lot of operations go on. That is regulated to a different degree than my building that I was in charge of, just because it's not as many critical things inside of it.

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Alex DeMars
It's still important nonetheless. But the first thing I'd say is it's very important to realize that each one of them needs to be monitored to a different degree, which I've learned as I've gone on. Secondly, I will say that another thing people need to understand is that.

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Alex DeMars
Any time that there is some work being done inside of these different kinds of health care occupancies, there's different procedures that you have to follow. So it's not as simple as me going up to a wall, tearing it down and installing something.

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Alex DeMars
You have to install different protections that are there to help patients and staff not get contaminants into their bodies that you're doing with construction. You need to do a balancing test to make sure that the air pressure and those relationships are are proper for the rooms that are installed there.

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Alex DeMars
And also, like you mentioned, was the COVID has really made a couple of significant changes. Some of them, which I've learned about at seminars, which I'll go into, but one of them is the amount of outside air that was being put into the building during the COVID pandemic.

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Alex DeMars
A lot of newer what they call air handlers, those kinds of units and machinery are now operating with taking in 100% outside air. And so that's been a thing that's helped make some of the air pressure relationships more clean in our facilities.

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Alex DeMars
And you know, going forward, like you said, I think that the people that work in this industry deserve a lot of credit because they're making these environments safer during a pandemic for the patients, which is really, really important.

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Alex DeMars
Our overall goal is to do is to make staff and patients comfortable and safe in our facilities.

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Liz Kay
And they probably, like you said, had to learn things pretty quickly and adapt and change things pretty quickly in the last 18 months to two years. As we learn more about everything, about COVID. So.

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Alex DeMars
Absolutely.

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Liz Kay
So what's it been like to continue to work remotely this year?

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Alex DeMars
So it's been nothing short of amazing. I mean, at first I was really kind of upset that I've made all this progress in summer, and I wouldn't. As you know, the facilities and engineering side of things is very hands on part of health care.

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Alex DeMars
So doing something remotely, I was a little worried about what that would look like. But my supervisor and also some of the other individuals that I work with and we've done a great job with giving me products and helping to teach me something each day.

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Alex DeMars
In addition to getting paid for the work that I do, so for example, I've had some tasks with generating contracts recently for our buildings, which essentially is an agreement with a company that you work with. It states the terms and conditions and most importantly, outlines the standards that you're going to follow when the work is done.

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Alex DeMars
So a lot of the work that I do remotely is based around sustainability number one and number two, regulatory compliance. So I'm responsible, like I said, for a few different buildings in particular. But now I'm kind of expanding our contracts to make sure that all the language is right so that when there's a survey being done by

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Alex DeMars
an organization such as the Joint Commission, which you might be familiar with. They basically will not find anything on their survey that's problematic because they want to see certain things in your contract agreements. So that's just an example of what I do on a daily, on one of the projects that I've been taking care of.

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Alex DeMars
And then on a daily basis, what I do is I monitor things that go on in the specific buildings that I'm a scientist. So for example, we have a work order system, and if staff are having problems in the building, then what I will do is I'll reach out to the correct person that needs to get the

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Alex DeMars
work done. And even though I'm not there, I can basically send emails and look at work orders that staff are putting in. So I have this remote access, which is really great. And I guess the last thing that I want to mention about working remotely and what it's been like is it's give me a great appreciation for

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Alex DeMars
the people that I work with and their willingness to teach me online. I mean, I have many different people that will sign me up for webinars. Many different people that will, you know, tasked me with a certain lesson for a day, specifically my supervisor.

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Alex DeMars
And it's just been great because I've been learning about stuff through Providence College and I'm interested in it, while at the same time learning about some of the things that it takes to be successful in our line of work.

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Alex DeMars
So it's overall been a really great experience.

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Liz Kay
Well, I think that might be a great segue to talk a little bit about how you first became interested in health policy and management. How did you pick your major?

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Alex DeMars
What's funny was that when I was looking at schools, I was already interested in going into the health care field, and so when I first started searching for schools, I wanted one that was in more of a city environment.

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Alex DeMars
So as you know, where I live was kind of rural and I wanted to get that experience with, you know, obviously a good education with a smaller class. I get individualized approach and Providence College fit both of those categories and also had the health policy and management major.

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Alex DeMars
I'm obviously not every school offers that to kids, so I didn't necessarily know what I wanted to do, but I knew it because they were offering that and I attended, you know, events beforehand for health policy administrators. And I really, really liked the department and teachers that I was introduced to.

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Alex DeMars
And so I guess that might answer your question.

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Liz Kay
Yeah, definitely. And we're talking on January 21st, which is the end of the first week of the spring semester. How are things going so far?

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Alex DeMars
Thanks for asking. They're going great. It's interesting because now I'm at a point where I've been in health policy management major throughout. I've taken most of the classes and senior, and now I'm finishing out a lot of different electives that our department offers.

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Alex DeMars
So I really enjoy learning about public health and administration. That's a class I'm taking right now, as well as diet, health, nutrition and obesity in the US. It's another elective I've taken. So what is the main thing that I try to do as somebody who's been in the major for a while and I hope people reach out

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Alex DeMars
to me is talk to them about how many different things you can do with the major, which is another reason why I mean, certainly I've kind of been the guinea pig for some of my professors working with me with the niche area that I'm in.

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Alex DeMars
But. Also, I want to be somebody who can explain the different avenues you can take for a major cause, I've taken so many different classes.

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Liz Kay
Fine. Now we'd be remiss if I didn't ask you about your two years working with physical plant. What are some of the skills you learned there that have helped you in your role now with Maine Medical Center?

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Alex DeMars
Yes, so at first when I was working for the physical plant, it really made sense to me because as you probably see from some of my other experiences, I've I've really worked a long time in my life with a lot of hands on type things.

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Alex DeMars
And so having that gave me a break from the day to day school work I had and was great to kind of feel like I was welcomed into their workforce and the stuff that they do on campus. And so at first, I was tasked with some pretty basic things, but eventually my supervisor, who was the manager of

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Alex DeMars
all the Vasey operations on campus, as well as the actual executive director of the physical plant, Andrew Sullivan. I really started creating a really good relationship with both of them and they, along with the technicians that were underneath them.

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Alex DeMars
And they taught me some very valuable things about how machinery works, what it takes to run a heating plant for the whole campus. How do you cool down different parts of campus? How do we basically organize controls for building automation, for our machinery to make sure everything's running on a schedule?

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Alex DeMars
And even some parts, like I was talking about a regulatory compliance. I really got some great exposure from Andrew Sullivan, who's the executive director of the physical plant, and I eventually curated a good enough relationship with them where they were able to advocate for some of the experience I got from them when it came time to my

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Alex DeMars
internship. So they actually were some of the people that helped me get my interest over time, incredibly thankful for and I try to stop in and see those guys as much as I can because they really don't get enough credit for how much they do for our campus.

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Alex DeMars
They make it a safe space, just like I was talking about before, and I'm really fortunate to have those kinds of connections to this day.

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Liz Kay
So I think everybody on campus who's been here for a little while recognizes the value of physical plant, and they're an amazing team of folks with great attitudes. Mm-Hmm. You've been involved with several professional organizations. Could you tell us a little bit about them and how they've assisted with your career journey?

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Alex DeMars
Absolutely. The first organization that I've been a part of and really gained help in my interest for the field as long as shadowing some people in the field is the American Society of Health Care Engineering or Ashley. And so there's a lot of organizations inside of the American Hospital Association that if you're interested in a certain area

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Alex DeMars
of health care, you can join, as she does with people in our field of health care facilities. Management is give you anything from continuing education credits to workshops that you can attend to further your knowledge. The updates on recent codes that are going on in the media are just things that different organizations have put in place.

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Alex DeMars
And most of all, they give you certifications that are helpful and nationally recognized. So, for instance, the one I'm going for right now, it's called Certified Healthcare Facility Manager, which is a certification through Ashi, and it's one of the.

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Alex DeMars
Really important things that you need to gain because it has many, many different competency areas, people that are interested in our fields. That's the first one I'm part of and it's been a great help and and I hope more people use its resources because they're awesome.

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Alex DeMars
People there on the second one is near his or the New England Health Care Engineer Society, and so that's basically a subdivision of Ashi. OK, but there's different chapters for each New England states, and there's one from my home state that I'm involved with as well.

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Alex DeMars
And so I've been a student member part of that committee, and I actually attended a conference in Newport last semester where I was able to meet different individuals who are part of that organization. And they're even more tightly connected because as you can imagine, there's only so many people who do what we do in the New England

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Alex DeMars
region. So if you have a question and you want to bounce it off when your colleagues from the New England Health Care Engineer Society, it's just the click of a button and you can get some great information. I have colleagues that I've met that are my age is even more rare for the field that we're going into

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Alex DeMars
or that I'm going into. And so that's also been great kind of welcoming thing for me as I've progressed along. The last one is more regulatory thing, and it's the National Fire Protection Association. This is another really helpful resource for people that are going into our field because it essentially outlines and governs a lot of the codes

00;15;15;29 - 00;15;29;07
Alex DeMars
we follow in health care. So I'm a member of their organization so I can stay up to date on different codes like I mentioned the requirements. And it's a super valuable for people that are looking to advance in the field quicker.

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Alex DeMars
So, yeah.

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Liz Kay
Excellent. And I think you it sounds like you've gotten the chance to do a little public speaking and presenting as part of your experience.

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Alex DeMars
Yeah, absolutely. Through my job, like I said, I try to interact with a lot of different practice managers from my buildings. And it's been great because as we're opening this new building, I had to hold meetings myself with the help of some of our vendors and my supervisor just to tell them about and kind of explain some

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Alex DeMars
of these complicated things around machinery for people that are on the clinical side. It's important to feel like they have an advocate working for them to make sure their space is safe and also comfortable for all them. So I actually organized a meeting over winter break with a bunch of different clinical supervisors and practice managers.

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Alex DeMars
And certainly I attribute a lot of the the skills that I've learned from Ashley and.

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Liz Kay
You mentioned the hands-on work that you've been doing throughout your life. Alex, could you tell us a little bit more about some of the work you've done, especially that business you started when you were 13?

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Alex DeMars
Yeah. So when I was younger, you know, I was in, I was preparing to buy my first car and I got out. It's my family, but also some of the people in my neighborhood I grew up with that were saying, you know, a lot of people that are older in age, they're in our neighborhood that might need

00;16;47;10 - 00;17;05;28
Alex DeMars
help with certain things like, do you think you could design something to make a little money for school, but more importantly, just start relationships with these people and help them out. And so I started mowing one lawn sixth grade, and then I learned a little more about it turns three in seventh grade, and it kept growing and

00;17;05;28 - 00;17;20;14
Alex DeMars
growing until I decided one day that I was going to actually try to get into a real tree because, you know, mowing lawns was good, but it wasn't anything that I knew I was just it was really teaching me a ton and I was using my mower to go around the neighborhood.

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Alex DeMars
But I wasn't. I didn't have any kind of real business model, and I wanted to get into that kind of world. So when I was 16. I joined a painting crew, a small group of people in a town called Aroostook, which is very small on the coast of Maine.

00;17;35;02 - 00;17;47;01
Alex DeMars
And so underneath, you know, once again, another great mentor that I had taught me how to paint houses and because he was older in age, eventually he ended up letting me take a lot of the operations into my own hands.

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Alex DeMars
By the time that I was getting older in high school, and so I painted, I painted houses on the coast of Maine with him and two other really great coworkers of mine for about six summers. And so kind of the capstone of that was when I was done with learning those things over that long period of time

00;18;05;17 - 00;18;25;04
Alex DeMars
, I got some valuable experience knowing how business operations go on profits and the costs associated with that. And even more than that, I was exposed to dealing with customers and how to give them what they're looking for. But the biggest thing that I got out of that experience was that I was able to take a skill and

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Alex DeMars
always have work for myself whenever I needed it. So what I started doing is painting houses by myself, even after four people that I knew. And so when the summer of 2021 came around, I was kind of stuck because my boss had retired.

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Alex DeMars
They were kind of slowing down stuff on the painting crew, and I said, You know what? Let's take my skills and see if I can tackle this by myself. So right before my internship started, I actually painted the whole house for myself.

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Alex DeMars
It took about four weeks and it was a really good, I guess, accumulation of the skills I've learned. And that's why I tell everybody that it's really, really good to get into a trade when you're younger because it's a skill you could take with you for the rest of your life.

00;19;07;13 - 00;19;16;07
Alex DeMars
It's fun to be outside during your summers, and more than that, it pays really well. So you could definitely help afford some of the stuff that you need when you do go into school.

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Liz Kay
And have you been able to use some of these the funds you've raised to fund some hobbies in your past? I'm curious what you do in your spare time, especially as this pandemic stretches on, people seem to have a little bit more spare time than they normally do.

00;19;32;15 - 00;19;46;07
Alex DeMars
Yeah, absolutely. I really enjoy the outdoors. You know, I'm from Maine, and so I do a ton of hiking in the winter. I snowmobile and go ice fishing. And, you know, in the summer, I also do a fair bit of bass fishing and trout fishing as well.

00;19;46;27 - 00;19;59;25
Alex DeMars
So that's definitely my first love is just doing things in the outdoors, a lot of hiking with some of my friends and family, but also I've always had a hobby of working on cars. My grandpa kind of pass that on to me when I was very young.

00;20;00;10 - 00;20;13;13
Alex DeMars
And so he used to what we used to work on his old muscle cars together a little bit, as well as my dad helping me out understand some of these mechanical things. And so over time, I've had a lot of trial and error working on my own vehicles and stuff.

00;20;13;14 - 00;20;28;18
Alex DeMars
But yeah, it's definitely been helpful to find that hobby of mine because once again, it's just a skill that I've learned over the past through doing different things. And I continue to do that now, and I hope I think I'll be a car guy the rest of my life for the better or worse, I don't know.

00;20;29;26 - 00;20;32;22
Liz Kay
And were you able to raise the money to buy that first car?

00;20;34;03 - 00;20;44;17
Alex DeMars
My parents did help me out with my first one, I'm not going to lie, but over time they they got sick of me, and so they basically said, you're on your own. So yeah, over time I have been able to.

00;20;45;13 - 00;20;48;26
Liz Kay
Well, Alex, it's been wonderful chatting with you today. Thank you so much for joining us.

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Alex DeMars
My pleasure. It's great to talk to you as well.

00;20;51;25 - 00;21;03;22
Liz Kay
All right. Subscribe to the Province College podcast and all the usual places, including iTunes, SoundCloud, Stitcher, Google Play and Spotify, as well as your smart speaker if you like what you hear. Please review and share with others. Thanks for listening and go friar's.