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Once you submit your maintenance request via RentCafe client portal, you may have to wait a few hours before a technician completes service—unless Jorge Blanco is your maintenance tech. He’ll probably be finished before you can answer the front door.
Jorge Blanco, service manager with Yardi client Kettler, is the reigning National Champion of the National Apartment Association’s (NAA) 2016 Maintenance Mania. He won with a record-breaking 1:11.618 completion time of eight tasks.
Yes. Eight.
Blanco competed in an elimination-style qualifying series against 4,000 maintenance professionals from across the nation. In the end, 20 finalists remained. The group competed at Maintenance Mania during the NAA Education Conference and Exposition in San Francisco.
Contestants raced to complete the following tasks:
- A.O. Smith water heater installation
- CFG faucet repair
- Fluidmaster toilet repair
- Frigidaire icemaker installation
- Kidde fire and carbon monoxide safety installation
- Kwikset key control deadbolt teas
- Seasons ceiling fan installation
- Racecar derby
The last task is not something that most maintenance specialists face on the job. It requires the DIY construction of a model car that must integrate three maintenance products. The car must make its way around a track and to the finish line before its creator can reign as champion.
Blanco is no stranger to Maintenance Mania. He has won the championship four times since the competition started 10 years ago. He believes that he has held the title for so long because Kettler provides a supportive environment for employee training.
“Kettler has provided us with a facility that we rent, me and the other technicians, giving us a place where we can actually practice for the event,” says Blanco. “That’s where we practice the ice maker, the Fluidmaster, the smoke detector, and things like that. I think that by them providing that facility for us, that made us become some of the fastest in the country.”
The skills learned while training for the event have made Blanco a more efficient technician in the field. He has experience preparing new construction for occupancy and handling maintenance requests on site. In both cases, efficiency and tenant satisfaction are essential.
When it comes to the latter, nothing tests his dedication to the craft like a call at 4:59pm.
“The last minute calls are the hardest, when you’re getting ready to go home and somebody calls you for no AC or the heat is out. Sometimes people wait until the last minute. They knew the AC wasn’t working earlier in the day,” he laughs. “Sometimes you even get night calls. But we always try to take care of our tenants. You get up and you do it for your tenants, to show them customer service and to show them that Kettler cares about their tenants.”
Though Maintenance Mania is fun and games—and cash prizes—it reminds Blanco that his speed and accuracy serve a greater purpose.
“Tenant satisfaction is important because it really shows who we are as a company and the services that we provide. We want to make sure that tenants see that they are valued every time that they put in a request. And they put in good reviews, too, and show that they appreciate what we do.”
