Meet the Faces of GSDM: Dental Repair Team with Thimi Ilia, Konstantinos Siachpazidis, and Mohammed Benrezouk
When dental equipment runs smoothly, it fades into the background of daily clinic operations. When it doesn’t, the disruption is immediate—delaying care for patients and interrupting students’ clinical education.
That’s when the GSDM dental repair team steps in.
“Being a dental repair technician is not just [about being a] simple technician that repairs things,” Thimi Ilia, repair technician supervisor, said. “There’s much more behind the scenes that people don’t see what we really do.”
The three-person dental repair team is led by Ilia, who has been working at GSDM for nearly 20 years and in his current role for eight years. He is joined by repair technicians Konstantinos Siachpazidis and Mohammed Benrezouk, both of whom joined GSDM in 2023.
The dental repair team handles the installation, maintenance, and repairs for all GSDM clinical and laboratory equipment at 635 Albany Street and 930 Commonwealth Avenue including, but not limited to, intra-oral X-ray units, treatment chairs, simulation manikin units, CAD/CAM technology, and supplementary equipment. They also advise faculty, staff, and students on the proper usage of dental equipment and how to report any issues.
Every day, Ilia, Siachpazidis, and Benrezouk must be prepared to come up with novel solutions to fix whatever problem comes their way. Benrezouk said he does not take the responsibility lightly.
“We are the first responders for the equipment,” Benrezouk said.
According to Ilia, managing routine inspections and equipment maintenance is more nuanced than it may seem. Ilia said the team does extensive preventive maintenance, a series of proactive tasks to prevent unexpected issues and extend equipment life. They also perform warranty-based maintenance, scheduled repairs, and inspections to keep a manufacturer’s warranty coverage active.
At the start of each workday, Ilia, Siachpazidis, and Benrezouk organize outstanding service calls to plan emergency, preventive, and warranty-based maintenance needs accordingly. Ilia said this planning is crucial to making sure the team is aligned and acting efficiently.
“In the morning, every morning, we sit down for at least 20 minutes and we go through everything that needs to be done,” Ilia said. “Then, one of the guys, or even two, depends on the workload, follow up with that repair and the others go to the daily checkups.”
Preventive maintenance can range from replacing filters to cleaning suction lines. Ilia said these tasks are the key to keeping clinical and laboratory equipment working.
“All these services we do go as unseen because the equipment runs smoothly and is functional,” Ilia said. “Without having this maintenance, that won’t be possible.”
GSDM has a high quantity of clinical and laboratory equipment to manage, therefore Ilia said it is vital for the dental repair team to stay organized and promote a line of open communication between faculty, staff, and students.
“[Communicating] makes it easy for things to get repaired and fixed before it affects students completing their duties or has an effect on a patient’s appointment,” Thimi said. “If a chair doesn’t have water, something very simple, no one will respond as quick as we respond.”
The team has regular meetings with Clinical Affairs, Information Technology, and other departments to discuss ongoing methods to enhance the repair process.
“Small changes, but piece by piece, we build something better,” Siachpazidis said.
Communication also happens externally with vendors and manufacturers. The team said they share with vendors their observed client experience, direct any concerns they have, and recommend ways to redesign inventory parts. Benrezouk added that manufacturers can offer helpful insight when things are going awry.
“When something goes down, we need to troubleshoot and sometimes we cannot understand what’s going on,” Benrezouk said. “Sometimes, we need to contact the manufacturer. That’s all behind the scenes.”
One project on the dental repair team’s agenda is the ongoing transition to newer dental technology.
Learning the ins and outs of the new technology can be challenging, but the repair team recognizes the benefits it brings to the patient care and educational experience at the school.
“Whenever something has to be replaced with a new device and new equipment, it’s going to be newer technology than the previous ones,” Siachpazidis said. “We have to follow up. It keeps us awake.”
Ilia, when asked why he has stayed at GSDM for almost two decades, said the answer was simple: the people.
“Interacting with many people, nice people, starting from the students, helping them, assisting them has been a joy, and then [the] faculty make it a great place,” Ilia said. “You see and meet a lot of great people here.”