UCF’s surplus property team recently was selected as one of the winners of the 2018 Prudential Productivity Award, given out by Florida TaxWatch to acknowledge individuals and organizations that reduce costs and improve service for taxpayers. TaxWatch reviewed about 400 submissions statewide for recognition and 24 cash awards.
The UCF team, nominated by Montel Watson, director of Resource Management for Facilities and Safety, redesigned the disposal process for university-owned surplus. In 2017 alone, the team facilitated $596,401 in direct cost savings for the university through intra-departmental adoptions of items and generated $317,271 in sales to the public for the remaining items. The team members are: leader Lance Watkins, Christopher Rausch, Joshua Haupt, Eli Rivera-Maldonado, Russ Kraft, Andrew O’Mara, Hugo Infinger and Ruben Rojas.
In 2015, the team developed a user-friendly, online surplus database system making it easy for intra-departmental adoptions of items before they are sold to the public. Since launching this program, $1,785,000 worth of assets have been successfully transferred from originating departments to other departments in need of those assets.
This achievement was accomplished outside of the regular duties of the team members. The design and implementation of the new system was done while team members balanced their full-time responsibilities.