Creating a Successful Floor Care Maintenance Program

Floors Play a Key Role in Presenting the “Right” Image for Your Facility Floors are usually the first thing that people notice when entering a building. This also applies to restrooms, food courts, stairwells, fitness rooms and other areas within a facil…

Floors Play a Key Role in Presenting the “Right” Image for Your Facility

Floors are usually the first thing that people notice when entering a building. This also applies to restrooms, food courts, stairwells, fitness rooms and other areas within a facility.

A Disturbing Trend is Taking Place During This Challenging Economy

Across all sectors of business, we have seen businesses neglecting the importance of floor maintenance. Interestingly, this trend has occurred while some of the most innovative and productive floor care products, chemicals, and equipment are becoming available. Cylindrical brush technology along with other tools introduced in the past few years have made floor care more efficient than ever before.

So Why is the Appearance of Floors on the Decline?

It’s all about cutting costs (jobs) and building maintenance has suffered as a result. All building maintenance work is labor intensive and floor stripping, scrubbing, polishing, and refinishing are some of the most labor intensive and expensive cleaning tasks. In most cases, 70-80 percent of the cost to strip, clean, and refinish a floor is labor.

This Trend Can Be Reversed

But, it will require building service contractors working with their customers and taking a “big picture” approach to floor care. This means we must:

Determine just how much time, effort, and money the facility wants to invest in floor care.
Evaluate the effectiveness of the floor care products and equipment currently being used. Too many facilities have adopted an approach of using the cheapest equipment and chemicals that they can find and it shows! Using quality industrial chemicals will yield better results and actually lower usage costs versus cheap store bought products.
Develop an effective and ongoing floor maintenance program. Many businesses are opting to hire outside contractors (like Scrub n Shine) to refinish their floors and do periodic buffing or burnishing to maintain their floor’s finish.

Big Picture Planning

Facilities that have been most successful at keeping their floors well-maintained on a consistent basis and in a cost-effective manner, work smart and have a plan. They consider issues such as:

Budget to be designated just for hard surface floor care
Determine the appearance level that the facility wants for its floors
Traffic conditions affecting the floors
Equipment necessary (replace old equipment?) for floor care
Floor care skill and training of their staff

Unsuccessful Facility Maintenance Programs React, Rather Than Plan

Poorly maintained facilities play a “wait and see game” and after a couple of months, scramble to make improvements when the floor’s appearance becomes unsatisfactory.

Successful Floor Care Programs View Their Floors as a Building Asset

Well managed and maintained facilities recognize the importance of providing the “right” image and appearance for their facility as well as safety and health issues. Well maintained floors help prevent slips, trips, and falls.

Worker Productivity Can Be Greatly Improved By Having a Floor Care Program in Place

The use of innovative tools, equipment and chemicals increases worker productivity. Successful maintenance programs recognize that a mop and bucket may only cost $80, but the real cost is the increased labor with using it. Successful programs recognize that a small scrubber can save their facility several thousand dollars in the long run.

Let Examine One Case

Using a mop and bucket, it takes about four hours to clean 2,200 square feet. If the cleaning worker is paid $10 per hour and the floor is cleaned 260 days per year, the actual labor cost to maintain this floor is more than $59,000 annually.

Substitute the mop and bucket for a $3,000 floor machine and the annual cost savings are dramatic. Annually, labor costs have dropped to about $12,000 for this same 2,200 square foot floor— nearly an 80 percent drop due to increased productivity!

Need a new scrubber? We can set you up! Contact Us

Preventive Maintenance is the Most Effective Way to Keep Floors Looking Their Best

Minimize labor costs by preventing floors from becoming soiled in the first place. Use of an effective matting system can prevent more than a pound of dirt and several gallons of liquid from entering a facility every day. This equates to as much as 80-90% of dirt being stopped at the door! We strongly recommend that you buy non-slip, heavy duty, industrial-quality, rubber backed mats that cannot be found in stores (we can help you with that). They will last much longer and perform much better than cheaper mats found in stores.

Worker Training

There are more than three million professional cleaning workers in the United States today. Less than 10 percent of these people are professionally trained. This means most cleaning workers do not have technical knowledge when it comes to general cleaning.

The percentage of trained, hard floor care workers is much lower than that!

This lack of training and knowledge can cause a multitude of problems. They aren’t performing as efficiently as they could and their technique may result in injuries to themselves, others and damage property.

We can help.