That I May Serve: Bo Frazier
Working at Virginia Tech since January 3, 2007
After Bo Frazier retired from a successful 20-year career in the United States Air Force in 2006, he took a month off and then joined the ranks as one of Virginia Tech’s 13,000 employees.
As a maintenance engineer with the Air Force, Frazier’s job included managing the upkeep of thousands of square feet of horizontal surfaces at military bases all over the world, including airport runways, roads, sidewalks, parking lots, and more.
Now, as manager of Parking Services, he applies much of that experience to his current work with Virginia Tech. Frazier carries the Ut Prosim (“That I May Serve”) spirit with him, alongside a breadth of logistical knowledge that benefits students, employees, and the community who all use the paved surfaces on Virginia Tech’s Blacksburg campus.
Frazier and his team are responsible for the upkeep of Virginia Tech’s parking surfaces, a task which involves snow removal and striping for the university’s 16,500 parking spaces.
Q: What do you do on a day-to-day basis?
A: At the end of the day, I manage Parking Services as a whole. There’s a lot of things that go into that. Permit sales, parking enforcement, facilities management. We have two parking garages, 72 parking lots, and about 16,500 parking spots. It’s our job to maintain and repair lots, signage, paint striping, and all those types of things.
There are more than 300 events on campus each year, and parking plays an important role in all of those events, which include football games, basketball games, graduation, and concerts, and more. We have to plan ahead to accommodate and work through the logistics of parking for all of those events. We have to plan ahead for construction projects, new buildings being built on campus, and the loss of parking as a result of those new buildings.
Q: How did you come to work here?
A: I was born and raised in Giles County. I joined the Air Force shortly after high school, and spent 20 years and seven days in the Air Force. While I was in the Air Force, I started out as a heavy equipment operator for several years. I ran graders, dozers, cranes, and backhoes. From there, I moved to maintenance engineering, which involves managing construction projects and repairs for runways, taxiways, parking aprons for aircraft, and any horizontal pavements on campus, like roads, sidewalks, drainage systems, and parking lots. It’s very similar to a university, in that you do the same type of thing. I was pretty much an expert in maintenance of these surfaces from my time in the Air Force, so it’s very easy for me to do here.
I started here on January 3, 2007 and have been here ever since. I started as the assistant manager for facilities, which lent itself to the pavement overlays and paint striping I’d picked up in the Air Force. When my boss retired, I moved into my current position.
My favorite part of my job is the people I get to work with. I enjoy the employees we have here and working together as a team to be as good of a department as we can be.
Q: What do you like to do in your spare time?
A: My first priority is always my family. I’ve got three kids and a wife. The way I look at it, you’re only little once, so I try to enjoy that and keep the kids active and doing things. I really enjoy bass fishing. I fish in bass tournaments and I really like golf. I like to golf every chance I get. Other than that, I’m just enjoying life. I’m pretty easy going, and I get along with most folks.
Written by Steve Barnett, a 2015 multimedia journalism graduate currently studying public relations.
First published: April 18, 2017