Facilities director outlines asset-management upgrade and campus feasibility work

Joe Salomon, director of facilities, told the Newington Town Council on Sept. 10 that his department has restructured staffing and rolled out an asset-management platform the presentation identifies as KeetoBox to track town buildings and equipment.

"Our goals are to provide a clean, safe and compliant and efficient operating building for the public, employees and the visitors that utilize our facilities," Salomon said, describing a department of six core staff plus operations and project management support. He said the system uses QR codes to tag assets and that "there's currently about 1,400 assets that have been identified and we continue to add to that number."

Salomon said the software captures work-order histories and preventative-maintenance schedules that allow staff to see recurring failures and lifecycle replacements. He gave the council a short-run accounting of work orders: about 668 in the initial eight months after launch, more than 1,200 in a full 2024 year, and roughly 295 so far in 2025. He said preventive-maintenance schedules currently number about 135 that together represent roughly 360 recurring tasks.

The presentation attributed a substantial improvement in the department's backlog after the system was implemented: where the vendor's national model initially showed more than $10 million in deferred maintenance, Salomon said their local cleanup and calibration brought a working backlog closer to $3.5 million. He called life-cycle modeling "imperative" for capital planning and said staff are refining national-default replacement assumptions so the model reflects local building ages and conditions.

Salomon also reviewed short- and long-term projects: recent lead-paint abatement and roof work at historic properties, emergency generator hookups at two historic houses and the senior and disabled center, and plans to replace or renovate garage space at the highway campus. On that campus he said the feasibility work with the architect team (TLB Architects) is intended to separate public-works functions from public-safety training areas, add a second entrance for safety and circulation, provide a larger bay that can house ladder trucks, and create a second, aboveground fueling island for gasoline and diesel as a redundancy.

Council members asked about ADA self-evaluations (Salomon said building-by-building assessments are underway with corrective plans routed through the Human Services director), vendor updates to cost data (Salomon said the multi-year agreement includes vendor-supplied updates to national-cost inputs), and how the department prioritizes projects (he said staff prioritize life-safety, mechanical age and functionality and rely on user departments for operational priorities).

Salomon said silo demolition on the highway campus is near the top of the to-do list and that three quotes and an environmental study are in hand; the dry-storage building will wait until grounds staff no longer need the space. "We had the money because we CIP for these projects ahead of time," he said, adding the town is prepared to select a contractor once outstanding questions are resolved.

Why it matters: Town officials say improved asset data should help the council and the finance office refine CIP assumptions and present clearer cost estimates for bond or CIP requests. The KeetoBox data also underpins decisions about where to invest limited capital for the greatest lifecycle benefit.

What's next: Salomon said feasibility studies for the highway and grounds garages will add MEP, structural and civil analyses that will yield rough-order-of-magnitude cost estimates for council consideration.