Employee Highlight: Justin Moore
February 10, 2025
McCormick Zone electrician ensured world record-setting match was a success
Senior Electrician Justin Moore first joined the McCormick Zone Maintenance team only a year ago, but his impact has been far-reaching.
Last fall, the UVA Aquatic & Fitness Center (AFC) was set to host a swimming and diving meet against the University of Florida when they encountered a problem. A floating walkway in the middle of the pool had shifted, causing the swim lanes to be off the measurements required by the NCAA.
“The NCAA adjudicators were ready to tell Florida to go home,” Moore explained. “I asked the judge to give me five minutes.”
Moore used a laser measuring tool on one end of the pool to determine the distance the platform needed to be moved and relayed that info to Aquatics Director Jackie Cothren and her staff who quickly worked to adjust the platform.
“I brought the adjudicator over and showed them that we had brought it down to a quarter-inch discrepancy and they said, ‘Meet's back on!’” he recalled.
In the end, the meet resulted in UVA Senior Gretchen Walsh setting one world record and four American records.
“When Jackie told me [Walsh] broke a world record that day, I had such a smile on my face,” Moore said.
“[This] would not have happened if not for Justin!” added Cothren.
Last summer Moore assisted with another exciting project in the same location — a Visa commercial that aired during the 2024 Olympics. Multiple tractor trailers of equipment were loaded into the AFC for the commercial, which featured UVA graduate and 2-time Olympian Kate Douglass.
“I'm sitting with my daughter watching the Olympic swim trials and the commercial comes on and I said to her, ‘Daddy helped make that!’” Moore said.
The senior electrician first applied to work at UVA following his daughter's five month stay in the NICU at UVA hospital.
“I wanted to be here with the people who saved my daughter's life,” he explained. His wife followed a similar path, pursuing a job at the University's Continuum Home Health department, which provided their daughter's needed nutrition at home following her NICU stay. Their daughter is now a healthy and thriving three-year-old and the couple is expecting their second child in the next few weeks.
“As a parent you realize you're no longer the main character,” the senior electrician said. “I have more responsibilities now and it was important to find [a position] where if something were to happen, we would be covered.”
In addition to UVA's benefits and stability, Moore enjoys the variety of work and supporting ground-breaking research. He has worked with students and faculty developing self-driving racing cars and with engineers and physicists to build a freezer that reaches temperatures as low as negative 500 degrees Celsius.
Outside of work, Moore enjoys deep sea fishing, reading, volunteering with his church, building LEGO sets with his daughter and cooking.
“I always say that cooking is the cheapest form of travel,” he said. “I can make food from all over the world right here in my kitchen.”
Jane Centofante
Communications senior generalist
UVA Facilities Management
(434) 982-5846
janecentofante@virginia.edu