“We’ve stopped talking about deferred maintenance. It became this big, ugly number that no one wanted to tackle.”
Lisa James, Associate Vice President of Facilities Operations at Cornell University, wasn’t trying to be provocative. She was describing reality—and heads immediately nodded across the room.
With federal research funding uncertainty, enrollment pressure, and operational budgets tightening across higher education, campus facilities leaders are being asked to make impossible choices about what stays online, what gets deferred, and what quietly slips into risk. That was the backdrop for a opening panel at the Higher Ed Facilities Forum (HEFF) in Bonita Springs.
James was joined by Niraj Dangoria, Vice Chancellor for Operations Management and Capital Programs at UC San Diego, and Everet Simmons, Vice President of Construction, Facilities, and Real Estate at the University of South Florida. The discussion was moderated by Lalit Agarwal, President and CEO of APPA.
This wasn’t a theoretical conversation about campus operations strategy. It was senior facilities leaders talking openly about the decisions they’re making every day—often with limited dollars, rising expectations, and no clean answers.
At USF, Simmons oversees roughly $528 million in deferred maintenance, with another $500 million in assets approaching end of useful life over the next five to ten years. His team tracks priorities through what he calls a “Jay Leno’s Top 10”—a living list of failures that would have the biggest impact if left unaddressed.
“It sits on my desktop every day,” Simmons explained.
Cornell took a different approach. Rather than leading with a single, overwhelming number, James said her team stopped using the term deferred maintenance altogether.
“It didn’t get us anywhere,” she said. “No one really wanted to pay attention to it.”
Instead, Cornell reframed the conversation around impact and risk. The question shifted from how big the backlog is to what actually happens if something fails—and when.
“So what,” James said. “Who cares if that thing fails?”
At UC San Diego, Dangoria described a more formal triage approach. Buildings are grouped into three categories: very old facilities likely headed for demolition, where only critical fixes are made; middle-of-the-road buildings, where teams chip away as funding allows; and newer assets, where limited dollars can deliver the longest return.
“We do very purposeful thinking about where we’re going to put our limited dollars,” Dangoria said.
As the conversation moved into day-to-day operations, the tension became more tangible—especially for frontline teams.
James described the challenge of managing expectations as budgets tighten.
“Our folks are the ones out in the buildings face-to-face with customers,” she said. “And they’re hearing, ‘You’re just asking us to do more with less.’”
She shared a moment from a conversation with Cornell’s landscape crews. Being asked to weed less often doesn’t save effort—it makes recovery harder as problems spread.
USF is navigating a full reset of service levels across custodial, grounds, maintenance, and utilities, while also managing campus reaction to a new 7% project fee that many departments weren’t used to paying.
Dangoria was blunt about the limits of that approach.
“Do less with less is the most useless phrase that has ever been sprouted,” he said.
“The day a generator doesn’t work or an HVAC unit goes off, you’re like, ‘Screw the less is less. I want my things fixed now.’”
At UC San Diego, the commitment has been not to reduce service levels, but to influence behavior—often by tying operational changes to sustainability goals and smarter use of space. That thinking has already led to unexpected conversations, including requests for classrooms with no Wi-Fi or cell service to support secure testing.
Agarwal pressed the panel on one of the hardest parts of the job: communicating trade-offs upward.
James said she’s spending more time with college officers and financial leaders, consistently explaining how funding actually works and what impacts to expect.
“If you have high atrium lighting,” she said, “don’t call me until they’re 50% out. I’m just not going to get there.”
Simmons emphasized clarity and brevity when speaking with senior leadership.
“If I don’t come in with exactly what they care about and an option they can pick,” he said, “you can instantly see the cell phones come out.”
Dangoria pointed to a deeper disconnect. Leadership often underestimates the time and effort behind projects. One renovation assumed to be minor had already consumed more than 360 staff hours due to repeated faculty changes.
“That gap between perception and reality,” he said, “is our biggest challenge.”
What made the conversation resonate wasn’t agreement—it was contrast.
Three institutions. Three different approaches. Shared pressure.
Facilities leaders left with clearer language to use back on campus, frameworks they could adapt to their own environments, and a better understanding of how peers are navigating the same constraints in different ways.
No two campuses will solve this the same way. And that’s exactly why these conversations matter.
🎥 Watch the full discussion from HEFF here: