Tag: ansgar villa

After five years of being with the on-call maintenance team, Matt Johnson knows how to spot the week’s theme, or sometimes even the day’s theme, for the on-call services at GEF Seniors Housing’s forty buildings throughout the city. He notes that after three or four similar calls, he can easily predict that many of the other calls for the week will follow a familiar pattern. He remembers one long night in particular where a few difficult calls flooded in.

“A fire line burst at Rosslyn Place and flooded down through the whole building,” remembers Johnson. “I was there for a few hours with the site managers and the fire department just trying to clean things up and get things back in good working order. I got home and about thirty minutes I got another call that Ansgar Villa had started flooding.”

GEF Seniors Housing’s on-call maintenance team sees the on-staff trades taking turns having their cell phones and pagers on hand in case of any emergency at the buildings. The 16 members of the team take weekly rotations where they’re responsible for the after-hours, holidays, and weekends when GEF Seniors Housing’s offices aren’t open. Maintenance Manager Tony Lovell started off with GEF Seniors Housing as an on-call tech around 26 years ago and remembers a very different working environment.

“There was only two of us on-call at that time, so it was basically one week on, one week off,” explains Lovell. “There were only around 20 buildings that GEF Seniors Housing managed, so it wasn’t like there were two of us looking after all forty buildings we have now. Still, it was fairly hectic and we had to learn how to prioritize projects pretty quick.”

Today, there are always two maintenance techs assigned to on-call. Lovell, along with Maintenance Administrator Doreen Kinney, start the year by assigning the on-call schedules, beginning first with prioritizing who’s looking after the Holiday Season. Johnson remembers this past holiday season being particularly hectic for the on-call staff because of the sudden cold snap that hit in December.

“I wasn’t assigned to on-call but I checked in and found a few places where I could lend a hand,” says Johnson. “The whole crew is really good for working together on both helping out when a lot of calls come in and even for the initial scheduling.”

Lovell points out that once the schedule is complete, he and Kinney post it up in the maintenance department at Central Services. It doesn’t take long for the team to get together and start moving around days, ensuring that they continue to have a good work-life balance.

“The schedule looks different pretty-well every day,” Lovell says with a laugh. “The crew is really good about working together on the scheduling, switching out dates for whatever might come up.”

The techs assigned to on-call work on any issue that might come up, even though they may have a specified trade. Johnson and Lovell are both plumbers by trade but have experience working on everything from the key system to electrical tasks and heating issues.

“I’ve always been really handy and I like having my fingers in a lot of different practices, so working on things outside of my trade is nothing new for me,” says Johnson. “Working on all kinds of different building issues still teaches me a lot. Everyone on the on-call team is prepared for pretty much anything.”

The way the actual call system works hasn’t changed much since Lovell first joined the team. When an emergency occurs, the tenant at the building calls GEF Seniors Housing’s answering service provider requesting assistance. The answering service provider system then sends a message to the GEF Seniors Housing staff tech’s pager (yes, pager) with contact information to the person who made the assistance call. Lovell points out that using pagers isn’t a result of not updating the technology within GEF Seniors Housing. It’s actually because of a lack of a more reliable option.

“A lot of our techs live outside of the city and a lot of the times they work in basement mechanical rooms, and all of this affects cell phone signals,” Lovell explains. “Pager signals are still quite a bit stronger than cell phone signals. This is why they’re still used by doctors. Surgeons and techs are the last professions still using pagers.”

For Johnson, working his week as the designated on-call always has its array of challenges. He stays motivated by remembering the people he serves and what his role is in making sure they’re living with a good quality of life.

“The people I work with are always very grateful when you get their heat working in the winter time,” says Johnson. “I’d be lying if I said that the decent extra bit on my paycheque isn’t a good reward for being on call. But I really do enjoy the people part of the job. I get to improve some part of a person’s life. And that’s what I do every time I go into a building. I look for ways to improve things and make things better for the people.”

Duane Krautman remembers getting the call that someone had collapsed in the 12th floor laundry room of Ansgar Villa. He was working on the 10th floor and didn’t hesitate to skip the elevator and run up the stairs once he understood how dire the situation was. He arrived to find Mary Benjamin on the floor, unresponsive and not breathing. He performed CPR on her for more than 12 minutes while he waited for the ambulance to arrive. Benjamin survived this ordeal and never hesitates to give Krautman a hug any chance she sees him, proudly declaring that he saved her life.

For a lot of people in Krautman’s situation, this would be a taxing and emotionally draining experience. Krautman remains relatively unfazed by the experience and actually went right back to work after the ambulance took Benjamin to the hospital. In fact, not a lot fazes Krautman at all. After all, it must be hard to shock someone who spent the first half of his life running New York’s second largest funeral home.

“Most people I know say I’ve lived five lifetimes,” says Krautman with a laugh. “Working here at Ansgar Villa is what I wanted to do for retirement and I love it here.”

Krautman’s journey that eventually landed him in Edmonton starts with him at 17 years old, speaking to a career councillor about what options he had once he finished high school. He remembers wanting to be an oceanographer, but once was told that he didn’t have good enough grades for his dream job, he let fate decide how his future would look.

“There was a big poster of a bunch of different careers on the wall,” Krautman reminisces. “I pulled out a pencil and threw it at the wall. I didn’t even look. Once the pencil stuck to the poster, I said I’ll just do that. The councillor looked at it and said I was going to be a funeral director.”

By 21, he was running the funeral home totally on his own and working on many high profile services, including members of the infamous Gotti family right up to John Lennon. In 1999, he was featured as the main topic of the award-winning documentary short “The Last Guy to Let you Down” from director Rolf Gibbs. After 27 years and working on 7,349 cases, Krautman had to retire because of growing health problems. His retirement is what led him to Canada.

“I arrived in Edmonton on April 1, 2000, to convince my girlfriend it was an April Fool’s prank,” Krautman explains. “I couldn’t stay retired for too long, I got bored way too quickly. I wound up taking computer science courses and working at BCOMM Computers before making my way to working with Boardwalk, and then finally with GEF Seniors Housing.”

Shortly after he was hired to work maintenance for Ansgar Villa, Krautman remembers walking through the hallways and thinking he heard a dog in one of the suites. Once he found where the sound was coming from, he realized they were calls for help. He entered the suite to find a tenant had fallen in the tub and landed in a way that had her suffocating. Krautman sprang into action and helped the woman clear her breathing and ensured she wouldn’t suffocate. For the rest of her time living at Ansgar Villa, she only referred to him as her hero.

“It’s just the way I am where if I see something that needs to be done, I just do it,” says Krautman. “Especially here, I know all 172 people who live at Ansgar Villa, this is like my home to me. If someone needs help, I help them. It’s how I would want to be treated if I lived here.”

The presence Krautman has at Ansgar Villa resonates with every one living in the building. He’s greeted loudly and cheerfully when he walks into a room with tenants meeting up for coffee. Tenants pull him aside to ask about fixing a couple of things and he listens with a concerned and compassionate ear. Nothing continues to faze Krautman as he lives by his policy of not panicking, not stressing, and keeping level headed.

“There was one time when my daughter was six and she fell into the river over by Servus Place in St. Albert,” Krautman explains. “I’m a fast swimmer, so I always told her that if anything like that happened, don’t panic and hold your breath and I’ll be there. After I pulled her from the river, she told me that’s exactly what she did and I was there for her. There’s not a lot I haven’t seen in my life, so when I see a problem, I just go and solve it no matter the situation.”