Facilities and field services
The buildings run because our people do.
Northmill keeps commercial properties working: heating and cooling, grounds, cleaning, repairs and the crews who answer when something breaks at 2 AM. About 420 of us, five locations, one dispatch board.
- 420 employees
- 5 locations
- 28 years
- 24-hour field response
About Northmill
Started with two vans and a pager.
Northmill opened in 1998 as a small mechanical contractor with two vans and a paging service. Property managers kept asking if we could handle the rest of the building too, so over 28 years we added grounds, janitorial, general maintenance and a field-response crew that never closes.
Today about 420 people work out of five locations. Most of them are in the field. The office exists to keep the field moving: schedules, parts, permits and paychecks.
- 420
- employees
- 5
- locations
- 28
- years in business
Operations board
Five locations, one dispatch board.
Each location runs its own crews and its own yard. Dispatch, HR and finance sit at Central and serve all five.
- Main yard and shop
North YardFlagship
Fleet maintenance, the mechanical shop and the largest field crew. Where most new technicians start.
- Depot
Eastgate Depot
Grounds equipment, seasonal storage and the crews covering the eastern industrial parks.
- Branch
Riverside Branch
Janitorial teams and night-shift coverage for the office towers along the river.
- Field-response base
Southfield Station
The 24-hour response crew, on-call techs and the parts cage that stays open all night.
- Headquarters
Central Office
Dispatch, Customer Care, Sales, Finance, HR and Management.
Headcounts are rounded to the nearest whole person and change as often as people do.
What we do
Everything a building needs short of building it.
Facilities maintenance
Scheduled inspections, repairs, lighting, plumbing and the small things that become big things if nobody looks.
HVAC and mechanical
Rooftop units, boilers, chillers, controls and the seasonal changeovers that keep tenants from calling.
Grounds
Mowing, beds, irrigation, snow and ice, parking-lot sweeping. Crews run before the first car arrives.
Janitorial
Nightly cleaning for office and light-industrial space, day porters where the traffic justifies it.
Field response
A leak, a lockout, a power fault, a storm. One number, a tech on the way, an update when they arrive.
Project work
Tenant turnovers, small renovations and equipment replacements coordinated by the same people who maintain the site.
Roster
Eight departments. Most of them wear boots.
Roughly two-thirds of Northmill works in the field. Everyone else exists to make that possible.
Field Services
Technicians, grounds crews and the 24-hour response team across all five locations.
Operations
Dispatch, scheduling, fleet and parts. The people who decide who goes where and make sure the van has what it needs.
Facilities
Janitorial teams and day porters, mostly working nights out of Riverside.
Management
Location managers, crew supervisors and department leads. Every supervisor came up through a crew.
Customer Care
The phones, the client portal and the follow-up call after every completed job.
Sales
Site walks, quotes and contract renewals. Sold by people who used to do the work.
Finance
Payroll, billing, purchasing and the weekly numbers every location manager sees on Monday.
HR
Hiring, onboarding, benefits, training records and the open-enrollment reminders nobody wants to miss.
Safety culture
Nobody gets hurt for a deadline.
Field work has real hazards: heights, electricity, refrigerant, traffic, weather. We treat safety as a habit, not a poster. Every shift starts with a short huddle, every crew can stop a job without asking, and every near-miss gets talked about the same week.
When weather turns or a site becomes unsafe, the crews it affects hear it from their location before they leave for work, not from a rumor at the gate. A closed site is a closed site.
- Daily pre-shift huddle at every location
- Stop-work authority for every employee
- Weekly near-miss review with the crew involved
- Weather and site closures sent to the crews they affect
How crews stay informed
If the day changes at a site, the crews working there hear it from us.
Northmill sends workday notices through DirectToEmployees: a closed yard, a late start, a gate that moved, a system that is down, a company event. Each notice goes to the one audience it concerns, so a closure at Eastgate reaches Eastgate Depot and nobody else.
We build those audiences ourselves and keep them current. HR or a location manager adds a person to their location, their crew or their shift when they join or move, and takes them off when they leave. A combination we use every week gets its own audience: the Riverside night crews are Riverside Night Shift, not two lists added together. People HR adds to New Team Members get a short welcome series over the month after they are added: who sends notices, how a change will reach them, and where the real systems are.
A notice says what changed and where to look. Schedules live in our scheduling portal; pay, benefits and training records stay with HR and Finance. Notices arrive by email at the address each person agreed we could use, with nothing to install. Anyone who chooses to connect on Blasts with that same email address gets them there instead.
We use it to tell people things, not to check up on them. We don't track who opened a notice, where anyone is or what is on their phone, and nobody is expected to answer outside their shift. A reply goes to a person at Northmill.
- All Employees
- North Yard
- Eastgate Depot
- Riverside Branch
- Southfield Station
- Central Office
- Field Services
- Supervisors
- Riverside Night Shift
- New Team Members
- Company Events
Power your Blasts with credits from BlastCredits.com.
Blasts is the direct communication platform at Blasts.app. Connecting is each employee's choice, and anyone who does not connect keeps getting our notices by email.
- Eastgate Depot closed today: ice in the yard
Eastgate is closed today. Do not report to the yard. Your supervisor will call you about today's work before 7. Next update here by 1 PM.
To: Eastgate Depot - Tonight's shift starts at 11 PM
The Harbor Point towers are not ready for us until 11, so tonight starts an hour later. Your assignments have not changed. Your updated start time is in the scheduling portal.
To: Riverside Night Shift - North Yard: use the Mill Road gate Monday to Wednesday
The main gate is closed for paving. Enter and park through the Mill Road gate; vans stay in the same bays. The main gate reopens Thursday morning.
To: North Yard - Work-order app down until about 9 AM
The work-order app is down because of an outage at the vendor. Use the paper tickets in your van and enter them once it is back. Dispatch has today's jobs if you need them.
To: Field Services - Fall cookout at North Yard next Friday
Lunch from 11:30 to 1:30 for every location, families welcome. Night crews get their own round at Riverside Thursday at 9 PM. Questions go to HR at Central.
To: Company Events
Examples only: none of these notices were sent.
Leadership
Three people who still answer their own phones.
Rosa Delgado
Operations Director
Ran dispatch for nine years before taking over Operations. Owns the board that moves 142 field people every morning.
Curtis Whitaker
HR Director
Joined in 2015 to build onboarding for a company that was hiring 60 people a year. Still runs the first day himself.
Jenna Kowalski
Field Services Lead
Started as an HVAC apprentice at North Yard in 2009. Leads all field crews and the 24-hour response team.
Careers
How hiring works here.
We hire about 60 people a year, most of them into Field Services. The process is short because good technicians have options.
Apply in five minutes
Name, trade, experience, which location you can reach. No cover letter. HR replies within two business days.
Talk to a supervisor
A 30-minute conversation with the person you would actually work for, at the location you would work from.
Ride along
Half a shift with a crew. You see the work, the crew sees you. Paid at the starting rate for the role.
Offer and start date
Written offer, benefits summary and a start date that fits your notice period. First day is at Central with Curtis.
Apprentice roles in HVAC and grounds open each spring. Night janitorial and field-response roles are open most of the year.
Careers
Good work, steady hours, people who have your back.
Technicians, crew members, dispatchers, night cleaners and a few office roles. Every posting lists the location, the shift and the starting rate, and HR answers questions before anyone applies.
Reach Northmill
Clients, applicants and vendors all start at the same address. Tell us which location you are asking about and the right person will get back to you.
- Field response runs 24 hours from Southfield Station
- Office hours at Central: Monday to Friday, 7:00 to 5:00
- Applications accepted year round