Long before BYU's recent push to be more gospel centric, Mike Ball would refer to his student employees as "souls". You can frequently hear him tell his souls about his most recent temple visit. You never heard a foreman on a construction site talk like that to employees. He cares deeply about them and each Friday he treats them to a nice breakfast. In conversations with Mike’s souls, they talk about how much they love and respect him, and it is easy to see how they emulate him. For example, he is tidy even in demolition of all things, and when he begins building, he maintains exacting standards. The souls are then inspired by his love and example and want to follow him. The result of his work here is more than new structures, he builds lives!
Most of us see our job in narrow terms, but not Mike. He doesn’t just take construction plans and build from them. Instead, he makes sure the needs of the university are being met. One small example among many is when an area was being remodeled. They had scrounged up a couple surplus cherry wood tables to serve as a temporary help desk while the old one was being demolished. Mike knew they would need drawers, so he volunteered to take the drawers from the desk being demolished and fasten them to our temporary desk. Of course, it wasn’t a slap dash job, it never was with Mike. He made sure they were positioned just right and that the table looked like it was designed to have them. It didn’t take him a long time to do, but the fact that it wasn’t in any plan meant he never had to do it. Yet he took the mental and physical effort to consider the whole operation and realized that the goal was never to build something in a plan, rather it was to meet the university’s needs. If we all followed that lead, we’d be the smoothest running operation in the world.
Mike Ball is an exceptional employee who has saved the University hundreds of thousands of dollars in construction labor costs along with mentoring and teaching student employees. For the past few years, Mike has been overseeing the construction/remodeling projects in the library. To get these projects done, he hires student employees to accomplish the demolition, framing, drywall, ceiling tile and other work. Many of these students come with little to no trade experience. Mike teaches and trains them to do the work. This allows the students to learn a skill that they may not have had in the past.
As a team they can accomplish more than Mike could ever do on his own. With the help of student employees, Mike saves the University hundreds of thousands of dollars in construction labor costs. Those over the library love the work Mike does. They feel the quality is great and the cost to do the work is incredible. Some have commented that Mike has saved the library remodeling projects 20 to 25 percent in labor costs. This has allowed more areas of the library to be remodeled.
At any given time, Mike has 18 to 22 student employees on his crew. When others have struggled to find and hire students, Mike always has a full crew. The student employees enjoy working with Mike so much that they tell their friends to come to work with Mike. Maybe he always has a full crew because of his work cart that is always filled with treats for the students. Every Friday he brings a special treat for the students to eat during the morning break and then leads them in a little gospel discussion. This is reminiscent of the story of Brigham T. Higgs who was hired as the first Physical Facilities employee of BYU in 1898. Brigham T. Higgs was always concerned about the welfare of the students he worked with. You can say the same thing about Mike!