UK seeks company to oversee maintenance, custodial, some health care services
The University of Kentucky is looking to hire an outside services company to oversee maintenance, custodial services and some aspects of health care, the university told staff last week.
The university has said the public-private partnership will be not lead to reductions in pay or benefits for current staff, and is “not about reducing staff,” according to information posted on UK’s website. Six staff areas at the university, UK HealthCare, UK St. Claire and UK King’s Daughters could be overseen by an outside company: maintenance, grounds, custodial services, dining and food services, in-patient transport and in-patient sitting services.
More than 1,100 employees work in those services, said UK spokesperson Whitney Siddiqi.
“We recently communicated with employees that as part of this review, the university is exploring whether partnering with an external company could help us design, implement and manage a more coordinated, effective enterprise-wide service model,” Siddiqi said in a statement. “Already, UK has several public-private partners for select services such as dining and food services, but these differ by location and service. We are in the early stages and will be requesting proposals from potential partners in the coming weeks.”
A request for proposals will be posted in December, with the goal of making a final decision on the partner in the summer of 2026. If the university decides to proceed with a partner to oversee the areas, current employees would remain UK employees, and pay and benefits would not be reduced, Siddiqi said.
The details of how many employees would be impacted by a partnership, and in what ways, would be finalized during the RFP process.
“In partnership with an external company that would bring more resources to the table, we can create a lasting structure that can improve on the already great work done and, in the future, operate even more effectively and efficiently to meet this moment,” the university said on its website.
In 2014, UK entered into a partnership with Aramark to take over the school’s dining services. Under that contract, current dining employees remained UK employees with benefits, while new dining employees were hired through Aramark.
In addition, earlier this year, UK announced Integrate Blue, an initiative to “improve organizational efficiency, consistency and quality of service delivery” by integrating some services — such as IT and communications — across the university. As a result of that initiative, some areas of the university are being centralized and others are moving into the Beyond Blue Corporation, a non-profit created by UK that serves as a holding company for UK King’s Daughters, UK St. Claire and Champions Blue.