Moving manager

General Article

PHS-move point person Bev Silver served as a 'conduit of information' between the new building's planners and employees

Michael Carney examines a floor plan for the PHS building with Bev Silver and Kim Wisecup, who played key roles in coordinating the division's move. photo by Todd McNaught

Some kids collect baseball cards. Others collect rock-star posters. Bev Silver collected floor plans. "My dad was a finish carpenter for high-end homes," Silver said. "He'd bring floor plans home all the time. I loved looking at the plans and I would save the ones I liked."

Although Silver didn't follow in her father's footsteps, she never lost her fascination with construction—not even after she came to work for the Public Health Sciences Division at Fred Hutchinson in 1987. And that explains a lot about Silver's deep involvement in helping coordinate the division's constant growth, capped by the recent move to the new PHS building.

Together with PHS colleagues Kim Wisecup from SCHARP and Cip Dacanay from Cancer Prevention Information Technology, Silver represented the interests of the division's staff in the building's development from early planning through the move. As a result, PHS members were able to provide more input into the design of their building than had ever occurred before. "All three of them are just amazing," said Lawrie Robertson, PHS administrator.

Silver's official title is administrative manager for the Cancer Prevention Program, but in May of 2000 she began spending more and more of her time on the PHS building project. The closer the building came to completion, the longer the hours grew for Silver, Wisecup and Dacanay, Robertson said. "They were working seven days a week and late into the evenings," he said.

With the move-in all but complete, Silver can finally exhale and reflect on a job well done. "The most rewarding part is that the building really is beautiful and functional, and it achieved the design goals of the PHS Executive Committee," she said.

Silver describes her role on the PHS building project as "the conduit of information." Among other duties, Silver was the voice of the Executive Committee, providing architects, contractors and the center's own Facilities Planning Department a single point of contact when they needed information from the committee and vice versa.

Grass-roots efforts

Silver also led a grass-roots group, with representatives from 24 different employee groups, called the Space Programming Effort Committee (SPEC). Their input helped Silver ensure that commitments were kept and concerns were addressed as design and construction moved forward. "I felt strongly that they needed a voice," she said.

On top of that, Silver was part of the Space Coordination Team, which included representatives from each of the division's research programs, from division administration and information technology and from facilities planning. The team met nearly every week to deal with issues as they arose and to plan ahead for whatever steps were coming next. It was also a forum for working through details with center service departments.

Robertson praised Silver's perseverance. "Bev really believes that if you set up a process, you need to retain its discipline," Robertson said. "She made sure every step that was agreed upon was followed."

Along the way, Robertson said, Silver made everyone feel they were being heard. "She approaches every situation from a win-win perspective and is exceptional at how she deals with groups of people who may be worried about a possible outcome but in the end are very happy," he said. "She's not a push-over by any means, but she knows how to find the best outcome and the fairest outcome. It's kind of magical."

Career path

Coping with the endless details surrounding a project as enormous as the PHS building required Silver to fall back on skills she acquired as an educator. After graduating from the University of Oregon with a master's degree in education, she became a learning specialist and designed curriculum for learning disabled students at several school districts near Eugene, Oregon. The job required her to "break things down into tasks that are manageable," and she applied that skill to the PHS building project.

Silver spent five years as an educator before deciding to pursue other opportunities, including a position as a technical editor in the Environmental Health Sciences Program at Oregon State University. Much of her work there involved cancer research. "I felt really good about that job," she said. "Working with researchers and being in an atmosphere where ideas were being discussed was very stimulating."

After deciding to move to Seattle, she interviewed for a human resources position at Fred Hutchinson. Although she didn't get the job, she felt such a strong personal connection to the center that she stopped sending resumes to other employers and vowed to keep trying to land a job at Fred Hutchinson. Silver's "leap of faith" was soon rewarded when she received a call offering her a position as an administrative assistant for the Cancer Prevention Research Program under Dr. Maureen Henderson.

Dynamic duo

Silver's arrival coincided with the beginning of CPRP's rapid growth. The program went from 35 people to nearly 100 people in her first two years and just kept on growing. As it did, Silver gained more and more experience in managing the logistics of creating new spaces and moving people into them.

As a result, Silver was a natural choice to help coordinate the division's biggest move of all—from Met Park in downtown Seattle to the new PHS building on the Day Campus. But Silver didn't want the job without the help of a colleague who had also helped manage several previous—if smaller—moves. "When Lawrie Robertson asked me to be the point person on this, I said yes, but I want to work with Kim Wisecup," she said. Wisecup is a project coordinator with SCHARP.

Robertson calls his decision to assign Silver and Wisecup key roles in the PHS building design, construction and move-in "the best decision about a planning process I've ever made." He remembers how the pair held individual interviews with 690 employees to ask them how they wanted their work spaces furnished.

That kind of personal attention was deeply appreciated by the staff, Robertson said. "I had an employee who's normally not very emotional come into my office crying after that saying, 'This is why I work at Fred Hutchinson,'" he said.

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Who is your PHS-move unsung hero?

Following its semi-annual all-staff meeting from 9-10:30 a.m., April 21, the Public Health Sciences Division will host a reception honoring center employees who went far above and beyond their normal duties to ensure the successful opening of the new PHS building.

E-mail nominations for 'unsung hero' recognition (name, department, special contribution) to Lawrie Robertson, division administrator, at lroberts@fhcrc.org. The meeting and reception will take place in the first floor conference rooms of the new PHS Building.

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