Since 2018, Facilities/Construction Management has held an annual University of Houston System Facilities Forum that invites facilities departments from within the UH System to congregate, collaborate, and exchange ideas to better serve their universities. 

For David Oliver, Senior Associate Vice Chancellor and Senior Associate Vice President for Facilities/Construction Management, the success of the 7th UHS Facilities Forum shows how the event has progressed and improved year over year. 

“We’re not looking inward at facilities specifically, we are looking outwards at how we are in place within the university and how we can get better and help the university get better,” said Oliver on what the forums are all about. 

Each forum has a theme and the guest speakers during the two-day forum use the theme to guide their topic. Past forum themes include, Breaking Barriers with Dream Teams, Shifting into High Gear, Digging Deeper into Sustaining Our Evolving Environment to name a few. 

This year's theme, TIME, was an acronym to remind forum participants that it’s time to think, innovate, motivate, and empower. 

“Time is the most valuable resource we have, so we have to make sure we manage it, and we lean into it, and it just took off from there.  And of course, empower is a good word to end with while we start the new school year,” said Facilities Partnerships and Engagement Executive Director Jennifer Rea on this year’s theme. 

To coincide with this year’s theme, every table was designated a name tied to a clock. Some names included clock tower, atomic clock, cuckoo clock, and pendulum clock. 

Guest speakers at the forum included Houston Public Media Associate Vice President Lisa Shumate, who spoke about leadership in the age of change, and University Information Technology Associate Vice President David Johnson discussed AI and how universities can implement this in their daily operations. 

Additionally, EAB Senior Director of Research Michael Fischer, provided two presentations, the first one reckoning with relevance, and the second on how to become a more effective university. 

This year’s forum was attended by two first-time attendees who came away impressed by the two-day event. 

“It has exceeded what I could have expected,” said James Williams, UH Victoria Senior Director of Facilities Services. 

“A lot of these topics that we talked about are very relative to what we’re faced with. And it’s good to be able to have that opportunity to interface with some of that aspect plus the opportunity to interact with some of the others throughout the UH System.” 

Doug Wells, UH Clear Lake Associate Vice President for Facilities/Construction, agreed that it was helpful to connect with fellow facility employees from across the UH System adding that he appreciated the discussion about campus trends and the future of higher education. 

Williams and Wells said they look forward to attending future forums and plan to bring more team members to join them.