Was this person rewarded for his "glue" contributions?
If anyone has tips for how to sell the value in this, please let me know
They love metrics and that sort of thing, that's why it's hard to quantify even though it's clearly valuable.
But yeah, I used to do this just for my own interest of learning. Companies can't accept that only one or two persons are doing this. They would say - its a part of the job.
One thing you can do is keep tab of problems and create a common resource point for all the team. And use some kind of way to show hours saved. Long shot but it holds a substantial promise.