Tag Archives: commercial cleaning

Warehouse Cleaning and Why it is Important

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It is an essential part of any business to keeping your office or workspace clean, including warehouses or manufacturing plants which can get especially dirty pretty quickly. These types of workspaces are going to be quite larger than your typical office space, in which case they are likely to collect more debris with harder to reach places. Maintaining a regular strict cleaning schedule can prevent an accumulation of all the dust and debris.


As with other workspaces as well, a dirty warehouse takes away from being productive in operations by posing health and safety risks to your employees. A clean warehouse increases productivity and is easier and safer for workers. Below, we will discuss some main areas that warehouse cleaning should be focused on.


Floors


Warehouse floors see a lot of foot traffic on a daily basis and can make it difficult for the floors to be maintained. This area should be a top priority. Your cleaning service should be maintaining the floors clean of spills, dirt, scuff marks etc., with dust mops, scrubbers and other sweeper machines. The most common types of floors that should know how to be cleaned and maintained are concrete, tile, stole, carpet and rubber.


Bathrooms


Another high priority area are the bathrooms. It is very crucial to the health and safety of warehouse workers and employees that all high touch areas and surfaces be sanitized daily. These typically include all counter tops, sinks and surround, toilets and the bases of them, door handles/push plates, fixtures etc.


Waste Management


Warehouses and manufacturing plants typically operate with longer extended hours than your typical office along with the high traffic. This makes the removal of all garbage and waste very critical to keep your warehouse running as smoothly as possible. When this is not done regularly and consistently, trash can pile up in the trash bins themselves, or it can start to creep into higher traffic common areas blocking machinery. This will cause problems with safety as well as productivity.


Some of the more common waste items in warehouses are paper products and cardboard, which can end up being homes to rodents, cockroaches or other types of pests! This could obviously have an impact negatively on inventory and overall productivity.






Contact BCS Facilities Group TODAY to look out for your workers and keep your warehouse running the best it ever has!

Janitorial Services in Southeastern PA & New Jersey – Find Out if Your Facility Needs Them!

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Everybody wants a clean working environment to increase productivity and morale in the office. Business owners, Facilities Managers, Office Managers etc. can be tempted to take care of this themselves instead of outsourcing this. Why? To save money of course! This may be doable and manageable if you have a smaller facility with a handful of employees. This can get very overwhelming, very fast. This may force you to reconsider your strategy or approach on the cleaning. Below, we will go over a few touch points that may be a sign you need to outsource your cleaning services.


Larger Office Space


As your business grows or changing locations, keeping up with the cleaning along with your everyday work responsibilities can cause an abundance of added unnecessary stress. For example, if your office consists of larger windows, shelving that needs to be dusted, cobwebs in higher corners/light fixtures etc., flooring that is in a high traffic area, an outsourced cleaning service may be the answer instead of doing all of this yourself.


This all takes a lot of extra time to complete and maintain. As with anything, the larger the space the more time it will take and the more cleaning you will have to do. Don’t let your office get out of hand and finding yourself not keeping the office in the shape you once did without any resolution!


DUST


One of the, if not the biggest problem in offices is…DUST! It will build up on shelves or any other untouched surfaces that will end up circulating through the air and aggravate allergies or respiratory problems. Dusting does take a lot of time and is a bigger chore than you may think and needs to be done properly with the right amount of time and tools. Professional cleaners will know how to not just have it stirred up in the air.


There are a lot of forgotten areas to clean in an office setting. As listed above, high ceilings with corners along with tops of filing cabinets, shelving etc. can be neglected over time. This can be due to lack of time or energy or lack of resources to get high up places. Along with that, you risk safety for you and your employees.


Bathrooms


Bathroom upkeep can be challenging since they are the most used places. Bathrooms that are dirty can and will make a large impression on anybody that walks in them. It takes a lot of time, effort and quite frankly isn’t the most desirable of jobs to complete. Especially for employees who were never hired to do such that.


Keeping up with bathrooms goes deeper than what may meet the eye. Tasks such as scrubbing the toilet, mopping floors, sanitizing the sinks and restocking paper goods and soap dispensers can get very tedious. Not only that but to properly clean bathrooms you would need to close them down, and this is not always as easy during the work day.




It can be difficult to notice a lot of this in a facility that you work in everyday and not necessarily looking for it. Sometimes, you may need to just hit the pause button for a second, sit back and observe your surroundings to see all of this that others may see and you just simply don’t.


If you are in the Southeastern PA area or in New Jersey, reach out to BCS Facilities Group to get a FREE personalized quote today for your cleaning services.



Cleanup Tips and Messes to Avoid for That Halloween Office Party

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Every year in October comes that ever so famous and fun tradition of having a Halloween office party. A brief period where you can put work aside and have a little fun. Whether your office decides to have a party this year or not – which could be used as future reference -, here are some expert tips and advice to avoid those dreadful after party messes you are stuck cleaning up.


Plan Ahead of Time


Make sure everything is clean prior! I know this can be difficult sometimes, but hindsight being 20/20 you will be thankful after the fact. This way the aftermath of the party itself will be at least a little more bearable and manageable during the cleanup. Let’s be real, the harsh reality of cleaning up is the real horror of Halloween!


Trash, Trash…and more TRASH


All parties aside, trash can be a quick build up in a typical office setting. But, (cheesy pun alert) unless you live on Elm Street, there is no reason to create a nightmare with all the messy trash! If you do not already have on hand you can always ask your friendly neighborhood janitorial servicer for large trash bags to make rounding up trash that much easier. This will be easier to create designated trash spots for everybody to dispose of their trash. These are an absolute MUST as with all the typical office trash you will be adding paper plates, napkins, utensils, wrappers, decorations etc.


Easy Access to Cleaning Supplies


Ok, so this one may be a no brainer. When is the last time you have been to a party without a spill or accident? With food, drinks, activities all going on at once, spills or accidents are bound to happen. Some can be very messy and, in the moment you may decide to do a quick fix and brush it off for a deeper clean after the party is over. The reasoning for this? To put it simple, nobody wants to miss a party because of cleaning up! Everyone has that “fear of missing out” or just straight up do not want to waste time in the middle of a party with cleaning. Trust us when we say this, avoid these scary after the fact consequences with potential staining, and other permanent damages. Have supplies on hand that are easily accessible which will help make this process easier and quicker with no lingering headache for those pesky after party stains.


The After Party


With the party in the rear view, everybody going home and seemingly in the blink of an eye an empty office with nothing left but the leftover mayhem staring right at you. This is the moment when you realize that everybody still has to come into work the next day. There may be a couple things you want to consider of possibly hiring professionals to help you out.


Just like most everybody else you have a life outside the office that need to be attended to. Cleaning takes time and to keep circling back to the common theme here, you want to save as much TIME as possible. Especially with tasks that aren’t and shouldn’t be your responsibility. There is a lot that goes into cleaning when you look at all that needs to be done, floors, counters, surfaces, decorations, trash and not to mention everything else in between with spills etc. Cleaning up after any sort of party can be difficult and needs to be done correctly. Professional cleaning companies will provide you time and resources and not to mention more knowledge going into the after-party cleanup.


Have a happy and safe Halloween from all of us at BCS Facilities Group!









Helpful Tips When Transitioning From One Janitorial Service to the Next

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Changing cleaning services can be a pain and hopefully it is not done all too often. With our 30+ years of being in business there is an array of reasons to change your services. The most common reason being poor and/or lack of performance. With this comes eager Facilities Managers, Office Managers etc. asking “When can your company get started?” The answer is going to be 3-4 weeks.


During this time, there will be some very important processes being performed by your new cleaning servicer.


Team Building


One common fallacy that a lot of companies share is that our industry is filled with cleaning members ready to start as soon as possible. That is simply not the case. In most cases, once a new customer has been secured will janitorial servicers start the recruiting process. This could take multiple weeks with the recruiting search, interview process and background checks of all applicants. After that has been completed there will be activities for the onboarding process along with the appropriate training.


Development of the Operations Plan


Once all of the above has been completed, we then work together as a team to develop an operational plan. During this time, it is best practices to learning the workflow of your facility (I.e., areas of concern, etc.). With this upper management works together with our front-line cleaners to develop the most beneficial work plan.


Now, typically when you provide a 30-day notice of termination of services for the previous servicer, they would honor this as it is in their contract until the new servicer is in place. This is not always the case unfortunately. There will always be the vendors who will walk off the job once they are given notice. With this, below are a couple pointers for you to help make the transition as smooth as possible on your end if such occurrences happen.


Transitional/Temporary Services


One of the first steps to take is to reach out to your new servicer to see if they are able and willing to provide a transitional service before the official start date. This will usually be a scaled down version of what full services will be performed.


Remind Current Vendor of Contractual Obligations


With all of these steps being taken, it is important to reach out to your current vendor to simply let them know that it is their obligation to work through their end of the agreement. This could put a strain on possibly ever working together in the future if not.


Having a plan is important if you plan on changing cleaning services at some point in the near future. Know that there will be a transition period in between and having a proactive plan can most certainly save you the headache, and time along with allowing your next servicer to start off in a positive way.

Are Robots the Future of Cleaning?

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Most, if not all of us have seen this robotic vacuum, pictured above, at one point or another. Believe it or not, they first made an appearance as early as 1996, and have come a long way since. Commercial cleaning companies around the globe have started to explore the use of robots – yes robots – to accomplish a select few cleaning functions. However, we will go over if robots will be completely replacing humans in the cleaning field along with some advantages of robots doing the cleaning.


Will Robots Replace Humans?


The big question, are robots the future? With technology in the year 2021 robots in a way could be the future especially at a commercial level. With competition in the cleaning industry ramping up and technology making things more efficient, businesses may need to invest in some form technology down the road with an inevitable paradigm shift.


Now, this doesn’t necessarily mean all you see is robots taking over human jobs everywhere, rather this will give us humans more time to focus on other duties such as business and product development and customer relations.


Advantages of Robots


According to a report by the International Federation of Robotics, industrial cleaning robots are expected to be used by more and more companies in the not so far distant future. There are many reasons for this that mainly focus around two things, speed and efficiency. With technology always improving, they have been becoming more accurate.


With the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic one big thing is to decrease human contact. Well, this has caused more interest in robots with that very thought in mind. Robots also can’t get sick by toxic fumes with cleansers or copious amounts of dust. If robots for whatever reason need human intervention, operators and technicians can safely control the robot. This can also create more jobs as well? Also, with more dangerous tasks such as hi dusting, and window washing, robots can assume some of these tasks and eliminate risk of injury.




These are just a few advantages of robots in the cleaning industry and do not be surprised if more and more companies will begin to follow this trend. To give you a little insight as to robots in cleaning TODAY, there are active floor cleaning robots, window cleaning robots and duct cleaning robots!

5 Reasons Retail Stores Need A Professional Cleaning Company

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Historically, store employees were largely responsible for taking care of the cleaning obligations everywhere! Yes, that’s right, even the bathrooms! Today, with everything going on with COVID-19 it is especially difficult and an unrealistic expectation to have store employees keep up with this. This makes it a crucial time now more than ever for retailers to look towards investing in outsourcing their cleaning services.


Now, pandemic and all things aside, there are going to be many other benefits to take advantage of by hiring a professional cleaning service. Below, we will go over the top 5 reasons – in our opinion – why retail stores should consider outsourcing to a professional cleaning company.


Improves Safety


There are going to be hundreds, if not thousands of customers strolling through your front doors on a daily basis, and with this comes thousands of bacteria, viruses and other types of contaminants floating through the air and on surfaces. Dust and dirt on top of all that make their way in as well, which makes things even worse. A way to help fix this and eliminate risk would be cleaning with commercial grade disinfectants. With a professional cleaning company, the cleaners would know exactly where to clean the most effectively that will have all of your surfaces free of any contaminants.


Welcoming Environment


What makes for a retail store to be inviting? A clean, presentable storefront! When everything is visibly clean and sparkling it will catch the eye of a passer byer. Customers are less likely to make repeat visits or even purchases at a place they don’t view as clean of visibly inviting or welcoming. With the expertise of professional cleaners and their equipment, there will be a consistent level of cleanliness that just wouldn’t be able to be provided by having your employees do the cleaning.


Saves You Money & Time


Here’s a good one. This one seems to be a common theme across the board. It saves you both money AND time! The more time your employees spend cleaning – something they probably were not hired to do – the less time they will have helping customers. The less attention to customers will be a domino effect to less purchases which will decrease your earnings over time. Now, hiring a professional cleaning company does come with a cost, but this will in most cases be mitigated or even eliminated with increased sales.


Reduces Sick Days


Circling back to the first topic we discussed about improving safety, by eliminating germs, viruses, bacteria etc., by regularly keeping up with this it will lower the risk level of employees attracting an illness. Thus, less sick days! This will ultimately lead to higher productivity with a larger portion of the workforce being available and not out on sick time. This will allow you to pay less in sick time and customer satisfaction increased!


More Service Offerings


Your employees are not trained cleaners so there is only so much they are able to accomplish with the task of cleaning and doing it affectively. Let’s face it, cleaning bathrooms, floors, dust is not the most desirable of jobs and can become tiresome. There are going to be jobs such as a strip and wax on a floor or deep window cleaning that your employees may not be equipped for and unable to handle. A professional cleaning company will provide you with service offerings that just simply would be too much to ask your employees to do.


In conclusion, outsourcing to a professional cleaning company would be a great solution to keeping your retail store appearing and operating the best it ever has been!

ATTENTION Property Managers! Here is Why You Should Outsource Your Cleaning

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Office managers, property managers, facilities managers all manage a property to some degree, and with that comes a ton of responsibility. It could be an office building, warehouse, or even a whole corporate complex. With anything, cleaning should be your top priority, and it’s ok to admit if this slips to the back of this giant list of things to do. Unfortunately, it is a more frequent occurrence than you’d expect. But, to face the harsh truth, nobody is going to want to occupy spaces that aren’t cleaned professionally or on a regular basis.


You want your space to look as good as possible so you can rent out the space as quickly as possible. You don’t or shouldn’t have to rely on tenants to do all the necessary cleaning for you. Below, are reasons why you need to keep your property cleaned and maintained.


Reputation


In today’s day in age, everybody uses the internet. This can be really good or really bad due to the sole fact that negative reviews tend to spread a whole lot faster than positive ones. You don’t want to make cleanliness the reason for a negative review. Nobody should have to clean a property to feel comfortable when they first arrive or to forget about who rented the property previously. If that is a common theme, then others will gain knowledge of this and will more than likely hurt your business.


Professionally Cleaned


There is a big difference when you compare the cleaning done by a professional service vs. getting an employee to do it. An employee will most likely take longer as well as miss some spots since they aren’t trained or in most cases hired to clean. It is difficult to expect tenants and their employees to completely clean up after themselves. Trust us! It will not happen mainly because of the differing views of what people view as “clean”. Try to avoid your tenants from being sour towards you right off the bat.


Save You Money!


Believe it or not, this will save you money AND time in the long run! This will help keep your property in the best shape possible, and the ability to rent out the property for years to come. If you keep your property in top shape with cleanliness, it will take longer to age and fewer problems to deal with. By keeping up with floors, furniture, office space, kitchens, bathrooms etc. you will decrease the likelihood of deterioration that would otherwise need repair costing you MONEY. So, not only will your property be in great shape, it will also increase your reputation.



Best Communication Techniques To Follow For a Growing Cleaning Company

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In running a geographically distributed workforce, as most cleaning companies do, client communication is the best way for us to learn and keep a solid relationship. It is important to have both internal AND external communication as there are high-level risks and rewards associated. Below, we will go over the top means of communication so that way you can keep your cleaning business growing.



Strong Customer Service


As your company grows and obtains more and more clientele, it is all the more likely more people will want to get a hold of you. Most small startup companies’ sales reps are probably going to be the owner who provides all of their personal phone/email information. Eventually you will need to have this job delegated. It is important to follow these three steps: Hire a professional and dedicated customer service employee, tailor your experience to your client base, and live and die by what your standards are and what you want them to be dating back from the very beginning.


Reach Out ALWAYS

It is also important to make it a habit to reach out to clients on a routine basis via phone call, email, or text. They can be random check-ins or planned, but the whole idea of this is to keep building that relationship as well as to obtain as much information as you can to see if your services meet their needs. This is a simple yet great way to build that trust and rapport. It shows that you are a proactive company and actually care even when there is not a specific issue occurring. This doesn’t mean there will never be any problems to face, but when this does happen, the conversations will be much easier to have and easier to resolve.


Onboarding/Training


One way to avoid high turnover within your company is to put together a planned experience for new employees. This should include:

-A walkthrough and training of any systems your company uses
-A detailed overview of what your standards as a company are
-Training for on-site communication
-A how-to on when issues arise how to handle them and who to bring them to.


Many companies believe or not fail to execute even these simplest things. Taking the time to invest in these tasks will help ensure you and the business that these employees will develop a sense of trust and feeling like they belong. If done properly, this will prevent high turnover rates and long-term employee retention.




It will be a challenge as your company grows to live up to the standards and expectations you set, but as long as you live by the promises you make both internally and externally, who wouldn’t want to be a part of the business you are building. More clients mean more employees which means a bigger target market, and with this comes more opportunity for communication mishaps. Prioritizing communication is something that can and will guarantee higher returns.

How Often Should I Clean My Floors?

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Throughout the years, we have received a lot of questions about how often floors should be cleaned in an office or facility setting. To answer this, there are several key factors to take into consideration that are going to affect the frequency of this. Hopefully by reading this it will help give you pointers for you determine an ideal frequency to have your floors cleaned.


Factors to Determine Frequency


Traffic
The frequency is largely dependent on how much traffic there is in each area of your office or facility. The most common used areas in your office are:
-Entryways and exits-Primary hallways -Main stairwells
These areas are going to need more frequent cleaning. You do not want clients or even potential clients to walk through a dirty office when they stop by to visit. With that, your office employees and team members do not want to walk through a dirty office with messy or beat-up floors. There are also going to be lower traffic areas that do not need to be touched as often, but the areas with the most frequency will dictate how often you will want to get your floors cleaned.


Activity
There may be areas that get a lot of activity but not a lot of foot traffic. Think of areas like kitchens or conference rooms. These areas will have people sitting in them but not necessarily a lot of walking around. These areas while not a lot of foot traffic are still prone to having scuff marks say from chairs, spilled beverages or food. This is what is called a high level of personnel activity that is going to lead to more frequent cleanings versus areas that do not have as much use.


Floor Mats/Matting
A determining factor that is also going to determine how often to sweep/clean your floors is the number of floor mats or “runners” located throughout the facility. Floor mats tend to keep floors relatively clean which will then reduce the cleaning work and frequency of the cleaning. You will typically find these located toward the front entryway and around the office with areas that have access to the outside as a place to wipe your feet when entering the office or facility. This lessens the chance of people entering tracking mud and dirt throughout the entire office.


Sealed/Unsealed Flooring
Knowing what your floors are made out of will help you also determine the frequency of having your floors cleaned. As an example, sealed floors offer far greater protection against things such as spills, scuffs, scratches etc. When you have unsealed floors, the floors will be much for susceptible to these types of damage that could lead to permanent damage over time. These types of floors will need to be maintained much more frequently versus sealed flooring.


As you can see, there are multiple different determining factors that come into play when trying to figure out how often you should have your floors maintained. There will be areas with much more frequency than other spaces, areas with more activity, and even the types of flooring. It is recommended to maintain your floors on a weekly basis and figure out what frequency works best for your office/facility. We get it, you simply don’t have the time to constantly maintain all of this on top of the other thousand tasks you need to worry about. This is why maintaining your floors professionally will behoove you in the long run with saving you both money and time!

Types of Services Offered By Janitorial Companies

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It seems like a pretty simple question and answer don’t you think? Well, that’s because it is, but this post will help you better understand some terminology used in the industry. You may come to realize that janitorial companies may be able to provide more services than you ever would consider.


As you look around the industry you will notice many companies refer to themselves as “building service contractors”, “commercial janitorial services”, “custodial services”, or even just “commercial cleaning services”. To put it simply, there is not much of a difference at all with these “labels” if you will. Mainly, it depends on who is asking for the services. For example, schools ask for “custodial services”, medical facilities ask for “housekeeping services”, commercial office buildings may ask for “cleaning services” or even “janitorial services” for manufacturing plants and warehouses. These are all interchangeable terms for the most part.

Services

Daily Service – Anything that involves ongoing, daily, routine care of the facility. These tasks are broken into four primary categories and usually outlined in the scope of work on the proposal document:

  • Trash removal
  • Routine floor care
  • Dusting and wiping surfaces
  • Restroom/breakroom services – this includes everything listed above, in addition to replenishing consumable products (toilet paper, paper towels, hand soap, etc.)

Day Porter Service – This is most common with facilities that have a large number of daily users of the building. This includes employees, visitors, students, patients, etc. A Day Porter cleans and keeps things “tidy” in high use areas throughout the day. These spaces can be lobbies, common areas, restrooms or breakrooms, kitchens, cafeterias, outside areas.


Disinfecting Service – This has always been an important offering of janitorial companies with disinfecting high touch areas/surfaces to reduce the spread of viruses. It just so happens that COVID-19 has pushed this into the forefront of everyone’s minds.


Hard Surface Floor Restoration – Periodically, restoration services will be needed to protect and maintain certain floor surfaces. Some hard surface floors that need maintenance include but not limited to vinyl composite tile (VCT), ceramic tile, wood, concrete, terrazzo. Some of the terminology used for these restoration services are “strip and wax”, “recoating” or “deep scrubbing”.


Carpet Restoration – Just like hard surface flooring above, carpeted flooring surfaces also require periodic work. I know what you may be thinking right off the bat. No, carpet shampooing is NOT what is performed by commercial cleaning companies. Instead, carpets are normally cleaned through processes such as encapsulation, bonnet cleaning or even dry carpet cleaning.


Window Cleaning – For the most part, the cleaning of entryway doors and interior glass (office partitions, etc.) is all part of the daily services. However, the cleaning of exterior windows (inside and outside) are usually listed as a separate service. There is a specific deionizing cleaning system that eliminates water spots when it comes to exterior windows.


In conclusion, when you are in your search to outsource your cleaning services, make certain you are inquiring about a detailed list of service offerings as well as coming up with a plan for scheduling these project-based services.