Tag Archive for: labor efficiency

How Often Should I Disinfect?

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A question I often get when discussing disinfection is “how often should I disinfect?” The answer is it depends. If you are disinfecting a room daily that is only used twice per week then you are doing more than you need to. If you disinfect a room once a week that is used everyday then you are not disinfecting enough. Below I will briefly explain how you can determine the frequency at which you should be disinfecting by analyzing the touch points in your facility.

The more a surface is touched, the more often it should be disinfected. A protocol unique and best suited to your environment begins here. Touch points, or touch point surface areas can be categorized three ways. Each will receive the appropriate level of disinfection frequency.

Not all touch points require the same frequency of surface disinfection. For example, door knobs, computer equipment, elevator controls, hand rails, chair arms, table tops and many other surface points are designed to be touched and should be considered high touch points. Touch points surrounding points designed to be touched including doors, door frames, locker surfaces and tabletop bottoms are touched less, and may be categorized as medium touch points.

Low touch points are areas that may include any surface mentioned above, yet touch traffic is limited or infrequent altogether. Examples may be walls that are not around areas of heavy foot traffic or floor boards. By reducing how often you disinfect these low touch points you can focus your time and energy on addressing areas that receive more touches.

A proper surface disinfection protocol will become most effective if aligned to the real activity in your spaces. Document your touch points and begin to map out your frequency of disinfection schedule or best practices accordingly. It is important to disinfect your high touch point as often as possible. Many times we look at the cost of labor and product over the cost of sick people in the space.  Productivity and lost work time is a much higher cost then disinfecting . Its also important to remember you will actually save labor and product by identifying the high touch points from the medium and low so that you can maximize your labor and product by not giving equal time to low and high touch points.


5 steps to a healthier facility ecourse

What is the ISSA CITS Certification?

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What is CITS? There are a lot of people in the facility cleaning and facility maintenance industry that are just becoming familiar with the term. CITS stands for the Cleaning Industry Training Standard. It is provided through the International Sanitary Supply Association (ISSA), the leading trade association for the cleaning industry worldwide. CITS has been designed specifically to help address the need for training and improved professionalism throughout the cleaning industry. This includes the cleaning of facilities such as commercial buildings, educational institutions, office buildings and all other workplaces. It is designed to assist with the training and education of all commercial custodial and cleaning personnel whether they are in-house or contract service providers. The CITS program is authored by the American Institute for Cleaning Sciences (AICS) who are the leading authorities on the commercial cleaning industry.

CITS consists of several programs to give your cleaning staff a better understanding of how to clean a facility more effectively and efficiently. It is designed to create a healthier, safer environment, reduce waste, reduce risk, increase productivity and standardize the cleaning process. These programs include:

  • General Cleaning

  • Hard Floor Care

  • Carpet Care

  • Restroom Care

  • General Safety

  • Hazard Communication

  • Health Care

  • Value of Clean

  • Customer Service

  • Green Cleaning

  • School & Educational Institution

These programs are available through Accredited, Certified Trainers who can instruct your custodial staff in the proper and most efficient and productive means available to clean and maintain your facility. CITS ensures the workers cleaning your facility are trained and certified.

The basics of all courses in the CITS program cover

  • Expected Results

  • Tools and Equipment needed to perform each task

  • Chemical Products needed to perform each task

  • Personal Protective Equipment needed to perform tasks

  • Cleaning different surface types

  • Safety Considerations and avoiding Risk

  • Cleaning issues unique to your facility

At the end of each training session each participant will be required to pass a written exam to prove they have the knowledge needed to perform the job and gain the certification.

People are hired every day to clean buildings. It is commonly assumed that people inherently know how to clean a building. This has been proven over the years to not be the case. Workers need training and education to become productive, efficient and capable of performing multiple tasks in a set period of time. Training and education is essential to perform the job safely and quickly. It is necessary to avoid risk to themselves, risk to facility occupants and risk that may cause property damage. Training also reduces complaints that may arise from the condition or appearance of the facility.

CITS is the Standard in Cleaning. In fact, as you now know, it is the Cleaning Industry Training Standard. If you would like your cleaning staff to become more productive, exercise all safety precautions, avoid risk of injury and damage to property, increase the health of your facility occupants, and reduce complaints about facility appearance then CITS is your answer. If you are interested in having your cleaning staff become Accredited in their profession, please contact us at the Rhiel Innovative Solutions. We can help you achieve your goals.




ISSA CITS Certification

Is an Automatic Floor Scrubber Right for You?

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Thinking about purchasing an automatic floor scrubber? There are a lot details to think about. Not just the construction and reliability but also maneuverability, coverage, the floor surface being scrubbed, type of debris being removed from the floor and budget requirements. A person can damp mop about 5,000 square feet of floor area in an hour.  Automatic floor scrubbers can do 5 times that and more and be an essential part of your floor cleaning program.

Cleaning a floor is labor intensive. Automatic scrubbers can increase productivity, reduce labor hours, increase efficiency, and clean better than a mop. Up to 90% of the cost of cleaning is labor. Everything you can do to reduce this cost affects your budget. The one time cost of a floor scrubber can easily be justified by the savings in labor. The larger the facility, the larger the savings in labor.

If you’re not sure which machine may be right for your application, remember this, the machine with the lowest price tag is not necessarily the best machine for the job. Look at the Return on Investment (ROI). Even though it may be more expensive, a larger machine capable of cleaning much larger areas may be a better investment. The larger the coverage area, the greater the productivity and efficiency and the bigger the savings in labor.

To determine the ROI is a relatively simple process. Divide the Cost of the machine by the monthly labor savings. For example, if the equipment cost is $8,000.00 and the monthly labor savings is $1500.00, divide $8,000 by $1500. The result means you will have the machine paid for in a little over 5 months. The typical lifespan of an automatic scrubber is approximately 7 years. If well cared for the life span can reach 10 years. That means you will be saving $1500.00 per month in labor for the next 9.5 years. That’s a labor savings of $171,000.00 over 10 years on an $8,000.00 investment. Once you realize how much you can save in labor you may be able to justify an even larger scrubber, or you may be able to add additional equipment to do an even better job cleaning and add to the labor savings.

Make sure you are selecting the right machine for the job. This is a long term investment and selecting the wrong equipment may be something you have to live with for a long time.

Determining the right scrubber for your application is only the first step in the process. Now you must determine where to purchase it. For most facilities finding an expert local distributor is the way to go. Local distributors typically have multiple lines of equipment from which to choose. They also have experts in the floor care industry and the local parts and service departments to back up the equipment after the purchase. Make sure to have a representative complete an in depth facility survey that takes into consideration all of your issues and concerns. Local distributors can then demonstrate the scrubbers that will do the best job and stay within your budget requirements.

For more information on the proper selection of an automatic floor scrubber contact us at the Rhiel Supply Company. We can help with expert knowledge, state of the art equipment, facility surveys and equipment demonstrations.





Informed Buyer's Guide to Automatic Floor Scrubbers