February Honorees

Dan Heyman provides front-line customer services to State agencies seeking to modify their footprints or obtain new space in State owned buildings.  He has the difficult job at times of resolving conflicts when agency’s space needs are in conflict.  He also has the challenging task of responding to high level agency requests which require immediate action.  Most recently, Dan had to assist former Senator Susan Lee, now Secretary of State for Maryland in relocating from a large Senate office to new space in the Wineland Building.  Dan originally understood that the Senator’s staff would be available to assist with moving her belongings to the new location.  Unfortunately, this did not occur and Dan ended up moving the Senator’s items himself.  This took approximately 7 trips to accomplish and involved navigating narrow corridors and elevators in the Senate building and placing the items in Senator Lee’s new office.  Dan did this with his usual good sense of humor and customer service.  Although, it was a long day for Dan – he demonstrated what it means to be Caught Doing Great Service for the agency in rising to meet the challenge laid before him. 

Tiffany Summers, Mohammad Bahadoritoolabi and Charlene Varlack’s efforts in completing the payroll process each week ensure that all DGS employees are paid accurately and on schedule earn them a Caught DGS nomination.  The holiday season can be particularly challenging due to many accelerated deadlines and an increase in timesheet adjustments that are processed, but the team continues to succeed in closing the payroll on time each week.  These deadlines are all met around other duties like processing new hire paperwork, confirming pay results to DBM, performing reconciliations, adjusting hours for approved leave events and answering inquiries from employees.  The team’s efforts often go unnoticed by everyone in the agency, but when we get our paychecks each week, we should be thanking the payroll team for a job well done, which is why they are being “Caught DGS”.

Baltimore Building Manager Darrell Jones has only been in Baltimore for less than 6 months, but he hit the ground running. He embraced his new role coming in the door and jumped right in. He has taken the lead getting to know the buildings in State Center and getting things done without even being asked. He is very “hands on” completing projects alongside his staff and doesn’t mind getting dirty. For example, he and his team completed a plumbing project on the B level of the 201 garage that had been raining water on tenants’ cars. He repaired 40 feet of 3” drain line to resolve the issue. He also completed repairs to a double sink on the eleventh floor of the 301 building when there was an issue with a back up. He is a working supervisor who doesn’t mind working. Darrell has done well in the Baltimore Division, and we are grateful to have him. Darrell’s motto seems to be “I’ll take care of it” – and he does. That’s why Darrell Jones deserves to be Caught DGSing.

Shae Cronin‘s role for the Maryland Procurement Academy in OSP is officially as a Coordinator of Certification and Training, but in reality he has done well beyond his job description and has done that without needing to be asked. He is the type of person who sees a need and responds, but keeps his boss in the loop as well. Realizing that could be said about a lot of DGS employees, we are nominating Shae for Caught DGS because as we have rolled out a significant update to eMMA in the last 2 months to four State agencies including DGS as a pilot prior to rolling it out state wide, Shae volunteered to take on some significant additional responsibilities that have been absolutely critical. Shae jumped in to learning the new system and for both State users as well as our vendor community, Shae has been teaching the online training classes. He led the work to put together the training materials with the updates to eMMA that have been a result of learning during the pilot. He took those materials and designed them into a format that can be taught live, online as well as they are recorded into short modules that can be viewed 24/7 On Demand through a dedicated web channel for the eMMA2.0 pilot. He has taken on leading all of the training efforts for eMMA, including leading the classes onthe current system for all other State Agency users and vendors as well. He has organized the future training along with continuing to manage the MDPA’s Procurement Certifications and other training programs offered by the MDPA. This willingness to step up and step in to a leadership role well beyond the requirements of his position, but needed by the MDPA and OSP, as well as his high quality work that has showed in positive results and outcomes with eMMA already, is why we believe that Shae Cronin should be recognized for Doing Good Service.