Building Operations Center plays central role in keeping Hershey campus safe

Penn State Health Milton S. Hershey Medical Center and Penn State College of Medicine employees are asked to avoid calling the Hershey campus Building Operations Center when an emergency is in progress to ask if the emergency is real.

“During a drill or an actual emergency, we ask employees to follow their departmental plan and treat each one as real,” said Marv Smith, assistant vice president of facilities. “The Operations Center coordinators are extremely busy during emergencies trying to dispatch the appropriate resources.”

The Building Operations Center is the Facilities Department’s monitoring and call center for the Hershey Medical Center and College of Medicine campus. Six coordinators staff the center 24 hours a day year-round to monitor all building and life safety systems. They also monitor computer systems that contain more than 100,000 individual data points for building and fire systems, such as temperature, humidity, medical gas pressures and electrical system settings.

When emergency or urgent repair calls come in, Operations Center coordinators dispatch mechanics and notify the appropriate staff throughout the organization. Working in conjunction with technical personnel, they assure that proper operations are maintained across the entire campus.

For non-urgent issues, employees can call 717-531-8010 from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. weekdays or fill out the Facilities online work order request at any time

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