Bill Managan: 'a man for all seasons'

When asked his legacy from 29 years of working at Western Washington University, Bill Managan, assistant director of operations for facilities management, simply smiles. “Trashcans,” he says.

“[The old trashcans] were a pre-cast cement with a steel lining that you had to open the door on it. They were cracked and falling apart and staff would get hurt,” Managan said, “It was time; they were a gazillion years old.”

Managan is retiring from his years at Western on June 22, and when he looks back on his time here, one of the many projects that stood out to him was replacing the old exterior cement-based trashcans with new metal models, which cost between $700 and $1,000 each. Funding was initially problematic, with all avenues failing. He was finally able to replace more than half of them with roughly $55,000 left over from sales of “FacMan,” the software he co-developed with Gary Roberts for use in Facilities Management. The software is still used at Western, and one of the largest customers Managan had for the software was all facilities and universities for the state of Wisconsin.

Tim Wynn, WWU Facilities Management director from 2001 to 2011, worked closely with Managan during his time at Western and has kept in touch with him. Some things he remembers about working with Managan include his leadership in energy conservation efforts and the vast amount of work they did together regularizing custodial efforts on campus.

“Basically, he was responsible for keeping campus running,” Wynn said. “He was a key man, and I relied on him heavily.”

After Managan retires, he plans to turn his energies to his life completely off the grid.

“As an architect, I always wanted to be self-sufficient and live off the grid. So I moved way out in the mountains in 1982 and I haven’t paid a power bill since,” Managan said. “I’m just going to go out there, hang out and work on my stuff.”

Managan is still building and remodeling his home, but in the past 33 years he has built his own hydroelectric facility, saw mill and anything else he’s needed on his 20-acres of land. He currently lives with his wife, Margaret, and raised his three children, who are now adults, on his remote property.

Wynn, who has been to the property, describes it as “a fantastic house in the middle of nowhere” that Managan designed and built himself.

"I would call him, like in ancient times, a man for all seasons," Wynn said. "Bill had an inquiring mind, and one of the things that he did best was he would delve into a problem, pull it apart and work on it until he found a solution. There wasn’t anything he couldn’t do."

Wooded and full of hills, ponds and creeks, the property is 25 miles outside of Bellingham, a 45-minute commute, and the only utility that Managan pays for is a phone line and propane. The water on his land is fed from a spring that produces 1,500 gallons of crystal-clear water per minute. That water also powers his hydroelectric facility. One of the reasons he took the job at Western was so he could spend his free time working on his house, Managan said.

“I traded my electric bill for vehicle gas. I calculated in 1982, thinking that ‘gas would never get above $1.50 per gallon,’ that I would be OK for many years, but here we are,” Managan said with a laugh. “It’s what I wanted to do.”

When Managan isn’t working at Western or continuing to build on his property, he plays piano. In 2003, just for fun, Managan started selling live recordings of his music which he describes as easy-listening. It isn’t a money-maker, he said, but the emotional outlet helps balance out the “logic-driven, facilities guy” in him.

Before beginning at Western, Managan worked in Bellingham as an architect. The building that he is most proud of is a bank building downtown that is now home to Bank of America. Managan did 95-percent of that job himself, he said.

A self-described “nuts-and-bolts” architect, Managan found his way to the Pacific Northwest after selling his piano for $600, packing all of his belongings into his car, and heading toward the mountains. He stopped in Colorado and Montana, but once he hit Bellingham he never wanted to leave.

“I wanted the combination of the mountains and the water,” Managan said. “But I live for the mountains.”

When asked what he will miss most after he retires from Western, Managan said, without a pause, “the people.”

“Why I think a lot of people stay is because if you’re a facilities-type person, you’re working with all these unique trades and very specialized individuals. I’ve just seen amazing talents, and when you mix their home lives and the other amazing talents they have with it you end up with a really unique bunch of people,” Managan said. “So it’s the people, the people almost without question.”