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Nick Parnell, Director of Facilities Services, 2015–2024

Nick Parnell, Director of Facilities Services, 2015–2024

Since 2015, Nick Parnell has been the school’s director of Facilities Services. He and his team deal with the things you can’t see—or shouldn’t know about—so that you can do what you do every day.

Nick was my first hire when I joined Milton in 2015—I arrived to news that our prior director was retiring—and I assembled an interview committee. Nick was selected due to his combined expertise as an architect, managing facilities for the Newton Public Schools, and most recently, director of facilities at another private school.

Nick’s main goal since he arrived has been to execute the campus master plan. This has covered everything from the school’s land strategy, to faculty housing, to how to best address needs for a new library and a new home for math, without adding additional square feet. In addition, he has lent his expertise to projects that best use and update existing spaces. Nick was also instrumental in the renovation of the Faulkner building in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, mobilizing with incredible speed to create a Health Center facility with modern amenities and air circulation.

Being a director of facilities is not as straightforward as it might seem—and while we are grateful for what we have, the school is constantly having to balance the quality, speed, and price of projects. As a result, Nick has spent a great deal of his time figuring out how to divide projects into parts—in fancy terms, “phases”— to allow us to keep enough classrooms running or to afford to begin a project.

There’s always that question of “can we do it” in the time we have, is it “really” going to break if we do not move forward… and I know his personal favorite— a question from me— “is that really going to look good”? As you will see if you look up at the ceiling of Thacher, yes, it IS painted black behind those acoustical panels – what I’ve determined to be Nick’s favorite color. “It’s a historical room,” I said, “really, you want to paint the ceiling black?” “It will fade out, and you totally won’t notice it” Nick said. And he was right. But I will say, if you don’t like the silver-colored toe kick on the stairs at FMC, you now know EXACTLY where to direct your concerns.

While Nick may have moved into the facilities area, he is still an architect at heart. He creates high-level sketches of spaces we want to repurpose or enhance so that we can see and contemplate them quickly, allowing us to rapidly generate options, rejecting those that don’t work, and creatively playing with those that remain. He gets excited about and capitalizes on discoveries big and small— like the time we found a couple hundred square feet and windows behind a wall at Robbins house, in a stairwell that “went to nowhere”—which now serves as the dorm’s TV room and spills light into the common room.

Along with the facilities associate directors, he also has helped the school navigate tricky issues, in particular with the town Building Department, Historic Commission, and Public Works. I have personally learned a great deal from Nick—and never once felt that I could not ask him a question or ask him to re-explain issues I did not understand the first time around. He’s served as an intermediary between our construction team, project manager, architects and engineers on all of our master plan projects. And he does not hesitate to let it fly if the work is not getting done or if he sees a barrier to occupying a space on time.

On another note, I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge the momentary challenges and humor related to having the same first name as his partner, Heidi Black. He’s solved that problem by calling her “my Heidi” and me— well, occasionally, when it’s to his advantage—“my Boss.” That said, I do every once in a while get a wayward text, my favorite one being the one I got a few years ago that said “can you get the tomatoes for dinner?” I of course assured him that no, I could not.

At the end of the day, Nick goes back to his roots— his parents were educators— and likes to tell it from an extremely practical perspective. “The teachers won’t like that, let’s try it a different way” or “I can’t see how that will work for a five-year-old.” And in so doing, he’s shown us his own special version of “Dare to be true”—although different from what might be covered in our classrooms, it’s come in the form of big debates about constructability and how to address code issues. And it’s also come in the form of smaller ones about how to address a “reveal” and the right color for a ceiling, which—while it may seem superficial—allows us all to receive the subliminal message that it was done right, with quality and care.

Nick, we wish you well in your retirement, in your many travels that you have planned, and we are happy to know that still— for a few hours a month in the coming year— we’ll see you popping your head around the doors of buildings and projects, making sure that they will be completed as intended. Thank you.

Heidi Vanderbilt-Brown
Chief Financial and Operating Officer

The Builders

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