Q & A: Meet Ed Havlovic

Recently, Ed Havlovic, Director of Plant Operations at Embrace Living Communities sat down to discuss ways he embraces life at home, what his key focuses are in his role, and ways Embrace Living Communities is creating a healthier future for everyone.

 

Tell us about your family. 

My wife’s name is Cathy. I have two sons, Eddie and Sean.  Eddie is a Marine, and Sean is in the Army.

What is an interesting fact about you? 

I enjoy riding my motorcycle, I’ve been riding since age 19. I have a 2002 Harley Davidson Electra Glide. Occasionally, I’ll ride with some of the other staff at the communities who also ride. 

How long have you been at ELC?

This year will make 31 years.

 

How did you first get started working with Embrace Living Communities?

I was introduced to the organization through a friend’s mother in the mid-80s She worked at the organization during that time. 

 

What was your original role with Embrace Living Communities?

My original role was a groundskeeper in Bensenville at Anchorage of Bensenville (Illinois). Then I moved to the nursing home (named Castle Towers in Bensenville, Illinois) where I was a maintenance worker for almost 6 years.

 

What first attracted you to working at the organization? What’s inspired you to keep with the organization?

It started out as a summer job and just blossomed. It was the mission. Helping the elderly population just grew on me, it was something I knew I wanted to continue to do. I’ve been blessed with the opportunity to do it for 30-plus years. That was my calling.

 

Once I got into the organization, [my wife and I] met at the nursing home a couple years into working. She was involved in the recreational activities there, and she had such a passion for working with the elderly. It kinda rubbed off on me.

 

At Embrace Living Communities, what are your main focuses?

We are making sure the buildings are sustainable for 100 years. The plan is to continue to check the buildings to make sure we’re doing the preventative maintenance we can. We’re doing thorough inspections every week. 

 

What are the long-term and short-term goals for developing energy efficient buildings? 

In the short term, we’re in the process of making all building boilers energy efficient. We’ve also installed energy efficient windows in 80% of the buildings. Also, we’re slowly changing over to LED lighting.

For the long term, we’d like to use solar fuels and solar electricity to power more buildings. We can probably cut our energy costs in half by doing this, but it’s more difficult to implement in urban areas, like Chicago, than in warm, suburban communities in Florida.  

 

How does Embrace Living Communities consider the environment in its operational plans?

We try to reduce our footprint with every project we do. New flooring, vinyl tile, roofing, are all used from a certain amount of recycled materials.