Tag Archive for: sustainability

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

What is Touch Point Healthy?

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This entry is a follow up to a post I made about a month ago dealing with proper surface disinfection. Take a few minutes to read that post first may help give you a bit of context.

By definition, Touch Point Healthy means that all of the touch points in a space have been properly cleaned and disinfected. Touch Point Healthy has evolved into a global health initiative that fully integrates technology with proper protocols to close the gap between where we are today in terms of healthy surfaces and where we want to be.

By combining the latest application technology with new, advanced disinfectants we can now cover surfaces more completely and effectively to reduce and eliminate viruses and bacteria. This promotes cleaner, more sanitary surfaces which lead to a healthier environment.

Pathogens in our environment  represent the introduction of stronger or changing microbes that our current  application methods have not been able to eliminate or prevent. Our protocols for cleaning and disinfecting have been lagging for years while viruses adapt and become more resilient to current chemicals and application techniques.

Taking advantage of new advances in disinfection and product chemistry is critical to not only have safe surfaces and space but to also be cost effective. Touch Point Healthy is a decision you make for the advancement of safe surfaces in your space for the health and well being of the people who occupy that space at any given time.

When your facility is TOUCH POINT HEALTHY you demonstrate that you are committed to proper surface disinfection and to the health and safety of the people in your building.

The Touch Point Healthy process relies on the use of the FACTS protocol as a way to measure the effectiveness of your current disinfecting program and where you need to improve. FACTS is an acronym that stands for:

(F) FREQUENCY-  Count your high touch point surfaces and compare to your surface treatment frequency to see if you are properly treating every touch point each time you are disinfecting.

(A) AGENT –  Check the appropriateness of your disinfectant of choice and compare it to your current disinfection needs. For example if your trying to kill a pathogen that takes 10 minutes of dwell time ( meaning how long the surface has to remain wet) most times the solution will either evaporate before the 10 minutes or will be wiped off by the person applying due to time constraints.

(C) COMPREHENSIVE – Review application methods to gauge the effective treatment coverage of the entire touchable surface.  Spray bottles do not achieve 100% coverage of a surface

(T) TOUCHLESS –  Witness how your handheld cleaning and disinfection methods only further spread the pathogens. Spray bottles are ineffective to cover the surface completely . Wiping off with a rag will only cross contaminate the surface and spread viruses and bacteria from one surface to another

(S)  SAFE – Consider exposure to pathogens, chemicals, inhalation and injury during touch point treatments.

Touch Point Healthy means safer and healthier surfaces which translates into safer and healthier spaces and safer and healthier people. Higher productivity & less absenteeism at work or school is a benefit to everyone. Click the button below to start a conversation about Touch Point Healthy!


touch point healthy surface disinfection

GenEon TRIO RX and U.S. EPA Registration

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GenEon Technologies (San Antonio, TX) has just announced that their TRIO RX On-Site Generation system is now capable of producing a U.S. EPA Registered Disinfectant. This is a huge step forward for on-site generation (OSG) technology and infection prevention as a whole. Being registered by the EPA now allows GenEon to more effectively combat the spread of infection in schools, healthcare facilities and food service and food prep facilities. It is important to note that solution generated by the GenEon system is chemical-free. The registration number now puts this OSG chemical-free solution at the same level as chemical disinfectants manufactured in factories. Chemical-free cleaning and sustainable maintenance practices have come a long way since they first arrived in the industry and this is perhaps one of the greatest advancements to date.

Who is GenEon?

GenEon is a design-development company that is committed to sustainable, intuitive designs that allow our customers to have healthier, more effective alternatives to chemical disinfectants. – John Shanahan, Vice President GenEon

This quote from the GenEon announcement of their registration number–found here–sums up the big picture view of who GenEon is and what they are trying to accomplish. The company provides several different units that generate the chemical-free solutions. On-site generation is simply the process of generating your cleaning or disinfecting solution at your facility as opposed to buying a chemical or product that is manufactured elsewhere. Currently their systems can produce a glass cleaner/general purpose cleaner, a heavy-duty degreaser, a cleaner/sanitizer and a cleaner/disinfectant. This replaces virtually all of the cleaning chemicals used on a daily basis for facility maintenance. They have a wide range of systems from low volume units for small facilities to high volume units for larger facilities. GenEon is currently at the forefront of the shift toward a sustainable, smarter approach to cleaning/disinfecting. To learn more about GenEon check out their about us page.

What is Chemical-Free Cleaning

Chemical-free cleaning in the the context in which we are using it is a sustainable alternative to using traditional chemical cleaners. There are many names for this technology such as smart water, engineered water, activated water, electrochemical activation (eca), electrolyzed water. For more information on these types of technologies checkout this Sanitary Maintenance article. In recent years this technology has made great strides, the headline of this article being one of them, that are beginning to reshape and reinvent the way the world sees cleaning. Chemical-free cleaning allows front line workers to not be exposed to hazardous chemicals everyday which will be a great benefit to their health, it allows facility occupants to not be exposed to any left over residue and it is a positive benefit to the environment. Facilities of the future will all utilize this technology and pair it with other sustainable practices which will create a better, brighter future for all of us.

The sanitary supplies industry is rapidly moving into the future and changing the way the world views cleaning. Follow our blog to keep current on more

 

Discover more information about GenEon Technologies by visiting their website www.geneontechnologies.com

 

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