By Troy Hudson

It’s 7 AM and the snow is piling up outside. It’s looking like this storm isn’t headed out to sea after all. You can’t afford to miss your 9:00 math class again, but you’re also worried about a treacherous commute through ice and slush. You check your phone and see a text alert from SMCC that says campus is closed for the day and just like that, you’re free to catch up on some homework (or—let’s be honest—binge watch Netflix). Crisis averted.
For the facilities management team, however, the day is just getting started. In fact, it may have begun at 3:00 in the morning and won’t end until every major road and walkway on campus is safely cleared of snow and ice.

Snow is, for better or worse, a fact of life in New England, and every public institution requires a plan to deal with it. We are all familiar with the plows operated by the city that attempt to keep the roads passable during and after winter storms. A small army of city employees and independent contractors lay down about a billion pounds of road salt in Maine every year as they push around the ubiquitous white stuff. But SMCC doesn’t rely on the City of South Portland to clean up snow on campus. A dedicated team of professionals is employed by the College to keep things running smoothly in even the worst weather.

Facilities Trades Supervisor Dave Balberchak with the CAT front loader used for campus snow removal. Photo courtesy of Troy Hudson.

Dave Balberchak, the Facilities Management Trades Supervisor at SMCC, talked to us about snow removal on campus. Together with a team of about twenty people, he’s responsible for coordinating the operation that few students get to see, since it almost always takes place when campus is closed.

The pressure the team faces is intense, and constant vigilance is needed. “You have to move very slowly. You have to move deliberately. You have to be thinking constantly about every move you’re making, your actions, what’s around you, what’s behind you,” says Balberchak. With poor visibility and slippery conditions, one false move could be disastrous. Luckily, the plow operators are a highly skilled crew.

It takes time to learn the ins and outs of snow removal. “A lot of our guys are very well seasoned, but if we ever have a new guy on the plow blade, he’ll ride with one of us to start,” Balberchak assured us. “You have to be deliberate about where you’re pushing that snow, because you could easily bog down the snow blade, push it in the wrong place and now you don’t have a new place to push the rest of it.”

And where does all of that snow end up when there’s no more room? In times of especially heavy accumulation, snow is piled high behind the Culinary Arts building. “I’m glad we have such a place,” says Balberchak, “otherwise we might have snow banks twelve feet high at times.”

The snow removal process is done for every measurable snowfall, and safe passage is usually restored in time for classes to be held as usual. But on at least a handful of occasions each year, winter weather forces the campus to close entirely. Dean of Student Affairs Tiffanie Bentley says that’s not an easy decision to make. “The length of time the storm lasts, the amount of wind blowing snow and the timing of the storm are big factors impacting whether the campuses can be cleared and ready for students and employees to arrive,” she says.

As we all know, weather prediction is not an exact science so Bentley pulls from a variety of resources to determine the best course of action, including the National Weather Service, local forecasts, other school district closings, and daycare closings—she explains, “Since they close the least, this is a bad sign.“ After all this, she confers with Facilities and Project Manager Jay Reny before making a decision to close campus. Regardless of whether campus is officially closed or not, Bentley says students at SMCC are empowered to make decisions for their own safety: “If it is unsafe to travel because of the weather conditions in your area, you should exercise your best judgment and stay home if needed.”

Given the size and power of some of the equipment utilized by the Facilities team, Bentley says closing campus is sometimes necessary because “it is difficult to impossible to safely maneuver around vehicles and pedestrians.” In addition to a fleet of plow trucks, the College keeps two Bobcats, a Kubota, and a rented 28,000lb CAT front loader. The Cat is used to quickly clear Parking Lot A, the largest lot on campus, because it is able to clear three times as much in a single pass as a standard plow truck.

Getting the roads and walkways cleared is still only half the battle. According to Bentley, “The sidewalks have to be cleared and salted, the fire hydrants shoveled out, all the basement entrances and porches shoveled off, which requires a significant amount of shoveling by hand due to the nature of our older buildings. All the furnace vents and oil accesses, fire lanes, etc. have to be available.” Shoveling is coordinated by Custodial Supervisor Tim Slane, who works closely with Facilities to optimize the process.

Because the entire operation usually takes place before students and faculty arrive on campus, the effort that goes into keeping the grounds safe isn’t always obvious. It’s all too easy to take for granted the behind-the-scenes preparation that takes place while we’re at home, warm in our beds. Balberchak says, “We in Facilities are very aware of why the students are here. The students are here to learn. A student optimizes their learning abilities by attending class every day that class is open, so it behooves us to make sure they can get to class. That’s why we’re out at 3:00 AM.”