The Palais des Nations with its new
building, outhouses and annexes, is
made up of 2800 offices, some 660 toilets, 34
meeting rooms with their machine rooms,
and stockrooms for archives, comprising
altogether nearly 4000 doors with their
automatic closing devices, hinges, key-holes,
locks and keys. Each office has one or several
windows with canvas or metal blinds outside
and, in some cases, with venetian
blinds inside. Each office has furniture with
locks also.
The repairs to these doors, windows,
blinds and pieces of office furniture, as well
as the repairs to metal shelving, access
traps, kitchen caddies, gates and bicycle
shed doors, are all carried out by two men:
Marc Gomez, who is 56 years old, has
served the UN for 30 years and who specialises
as a locksmith, and Georges Cottenec,
who is 53 years old and who joined
the UN 13 years ago, after having worked
for 20 years for an outside company, replacing
the blinds in the old building.
M. Gomez & G. Cotonnec..
The priorities for Marc and Georges are blinds and keys, with an annual budget of 20,000 Swiss francs for blinds alone and 30,000 Swiss francs for keys. To simplify the management of keys for all the buildings: Secretariat, Council, Assembly, Library, K and D, and to reduce their cost, a common pass key was introduced in the 1990s and, since 150 offices are refurbished every year, all the offices should be equipped with pass keys in ten years time. The blinds in the old and new buildings date from the 1970s and are equipped with a mechanism which is now out-dated, but which is solid and easy to use. Regular maintenance should allow this system to be used for another 30 years. The aluminium shutters need to be repaired as soon as the slightest problem occurs, because a new shutter costs around 2,000 Swiss francs. As for the canvas blinds, their life expectancy has decreased from 14 to 7 years, not because of the quality of the canvas, which has in fact improved over the years, but because the blinds are not pulled up every evening -previously two people were employed to do this in all the offices.
M. Cotonnec.
The multitude of
daily repairs and the
time-consuming locksmith
tasks, mean that
Marc and Georges must
juggle with time and
with their four hands.
When one of them is
absent, it is imperative
that another colleague from the Artisans
Sub-Unit helps out. Fortunately, the Sub-
Unit Chief, Michel Baronian, allows them
the necessary autonomy to carry out their
tasks properly. For Michel, as for Marc and
Georges, it is the result which counts: satisfied customers and proper maintenance of
the buildings. As witnessed by their workshop
and the room where they stock the canvas,
screws, rails, panes of glass, etc. they
are well-organised.
Even though they carry out as rapidly as
possible the work requests made through
intranet on http//scaserver.unog.un.org/sbst or by telephone to extension 72119, please
respect their work by keeping your keys
safely, pulling up the blinds at night and
not forcing the blind mechanism.
30 years ago the team was made up of 3
locksmiths-cum window and blind specialists
and one locksmith for office furniture.
As of the beginning of October 2005, Georges
will be alone. Marc will have retired. There
will be no time to waste in finding a replacement.
English version produced by Isobel Lang.
