New facilities VP taking on challenges

May 18—University of Texas Permian Basin has a new person in charge of the campus transformation ready to take on projects with military precision.

Associate Vice President for Facilities Management Michael Trest, who started a couple of months ago, is a Navy veteran.

Along with a renovation of the Mesa Building, the quad, Maple Street entrance, Bright Star Memorial and way finding signs are upcoming as well.

The total cost is $86.9 million with $44.9 million coming from tuition revenue bonds and $42 million from the Permanent University Fund, Trest said.

Adolfson & Peterson Construction was chosen as the construction firm for the Mesa Building project.

The project is designed to provide a wide range of interior upgrades, enhancements, and improvements necessary to support the university's academic mission for achieving new growth and technological functionality, a news release said. Construction is slated to start this fall and is projected for a fall 2024 completion.

"We're going to have new signs around the campus to help direct new people to the campus, students, staff, visitors," he added.

They are in the design phase for the Bright Star Memorial. He was reviewing the plans May 11.

A shipboard electrician, he separated from service, went to school and studied mechanical engineering.

A native of Pasadena, Texas, Trest then rejoined the Navy as a Civil Engineer Corps doing facilities management for Navy Marine Corps bases for a little more than 15 years.

Trest has a bachelor of science in mechanical engineering from Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Va.; a master of science in civil engineering from the University of Texas at Austin and an MBA from UT Austin. He attended the Houston weeknd program and completed the degree in 2017.

Trest's predecessor at UTPB David Wayland, retired as associate vice president of facilities and transitioned to a part-time role as project manager.

The Air Force and active duty Army have facilities management. A lot of military people get into facilities management after the military because they have managed bases with multiple buildings.

"Universities are similar. You have a lot of buildings. You have a campus, or you have multiple campuses," Trest said.

His first university was MD Anderson Cancer Center. Trest was there for four and a half years doing project and program management.

From there, we went to Houston Community College for about three and a half years. Trest left Houston Community College for UTPB.

He said it's sometimes easier and sometimes harder to manage facilities at a university as opposed to a base.

"Sometimes in the military, there are very high pressures. You have different customers. You have different commands, and each one of them has a high ranking officer. They're very demanding and then they have operational commitments, so they have to meet the missions of the Navy or the Marine Corps or they have to meet the military's mission deployment. ... Sometimes we have very short deadlines, and a lot of work to do in very short periods of time. ... For universities, typically it's different pressures, different demands, different deadlines. There are many times whenever there are high expectations and short timelines, but it's different. ... It's different from whenever I was active duty," Trest said.

He added that he enjoys facilities management because it's concrete.

"We're managing our buildings, roof leaks, power outages, loss of power, loss of water, stoppages in sewage systems and it's very concrete. You can actually put your hands on it. So there's a roof on the building and if the roof is leaking, it's concrete. You could actually go walk up there on the roof. Then you can work with the technicians to help find the leak and get the roof repaired," Trest said.

"If we have a water outage, then it's very concrete, where you call the city and see if it's a city outage, or if it's ours, and then to find out where the problem is ... I like that ... you can see and feel it and it just makes sense to me," he said.

Wayland said he and Trest are working together to transition some of the projects that the campus has ongoing. He added that Test at this point is "drinking from a firehose" with all the information coming at him at high speed.

"He's doing a great job. He has a good background. He has previously worked at UT System when he was with MD Anderson, so he has some familiarity with UT System requirements. He and I are working closely together," Wayland said.

Trest and his wife, Leslie, have two boys, Nicholas and Noah.

He said he has enjoyed UTPB so far.

"Everybody's really nice. (It's a) very good group of people; family oriented," Trest said.

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