Dennis Woody -- Keeping Employees Happy

In a 360-degree evaluation -- job performance feedback from your bosses, your peers, those you supervise and your customers -- Dennis Woody would receive top ratings all around.

Woody, HVAC controls coordinator in Facilities Management at Duke, likes to keep his customers happy -- and that includes thousands of Duke employees and students who depend upon him for proper heating and air conditioning. That even includes the person swaddled in a sweater complaining about the cold while the person in the next cubicle gripes about the heat.

People who work with him use phrases like "natural-born leader and motivator," "unfailingly polite" and "winner" to describe him. And his bosses point to more than a million dollars he has saved Duke through his creativity and astuteness.

Service/Maintenance

Presidential Award

Dennis Woody, facilities management -- HVAC

Presidential Meritorious Award

James (Rick) Teta, medical center engineering and operations

Robert Autry, facilities management -- lock shop

Wesley Wallace, facilities management -- high voltage

Robert Strombeck Sr., material services

Woody, who received a 2007 Presidential Award in the service/maintenance category, is quick to deflect praise to include his entire department.

"Our department as a whole is always trying to save Duke money," said Wood, 44. "When I first started at Duke, the big goal wasn't as much about satisfying the customer. That's something that I've really strived to do, not just look at saving money."

Woody started his connection with Duke more than 25 years ago right out of high school. He started work as a technician with a mechanical contracting company that frequently sent him to Duke to install heating and air-conditioning units. He was offered a position in Facilities Management in 1982, around the time that computerized HVAC systems were emerging. When the man operating Duke's computerized system left, Woody volunteered to take over. Largely self-taught, he's been there since.

"In electronics and computers, the work is always changing," he said. "There's nothing boring about it. I work inside and outside. I go all over campus. With technology changing as quick and as much as it does, I'm always having to learn, and there's different challenges."

In nominating Woody, Curtis Browning, supervisor of the HVAC shop, said Woody had saved the university nearly $700,000 by stop/start optimization he implemented in the early 1990s. In 1995, his team efforts in rebalancing a system saved another $350,000.

"Dennis works as if the entire system is his personal responsibility," Browning wrote in his nomination.

Woody said his family instilled in him the desire to always try to do better, and he's naturally mechanically inclined. He started his career working on the machines themselves, hands-on work, using tools, getting dirty, he said.

"So I know how these things work, how they should work, and what's best for them," he said. "I love to tear things apart and get in there and figure out how it works. I don't like something to beat me."

Married, with a family, Woody indulges his love of watching auto racing and going to the coast to fish every chance he gets. Keeping up with the rapidly changing technology in his field will prevent him from getting complacent. And he said he appreciates the "bunch of good people" he works with.

"The award means a lot to me," he said, "but there's no way I could have done it by myself. There's a lot of people at FMD who help me succeed at what I do. I'd just like to thank them."