Tag Archives: facilities manager

3 Tips For Commercial Cleaning in the Winter Time

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With winter just a few days away – even though it may not fully feel like it – in the midst of the holiday season, lets all take some time to start preparing your office or facility for the upcoming winter months before temperatures begin to fall even further. Let’s take a look at the top 5 tips for keeping you and your employees safe this upcoming winter season here in the PA and NJ area.


Disinfect


The #1 and most important tip which you should be doing year round is disinfecting and regularly cleaning your workspace. This is as especially important in the winter months as this is the season primed for the flu and colds. It is extra important to keep your employees safe and healthy during these months. It may behoove of you to reach out to your current janitorial service to schedule an extra deep cleaning. If you do not have a service already, BCS Facilities Group provides an array of cleaning services, day or night to help protect and keep you and your employees safe.


Entryways and Walkways


With the winter months comes snow, rain sleet or all the above! This can lead to a slip and fall hazard for employees or visitors entering and exiting your facility. Ways to avoid this is to make sure you set forth safety protocols for clearing walkways or paths by using anti-slip products such as salt or even runners to absorb water by the doorways leading to the outside.


Floor Deep Clean


To piggy back off of the previous tip, flooring remains to get a lot of use as is the case year-round. With the outside elements especially the use of salt, snow and people tracking all of that in with heavy duty shoes, this can cause some damage to your floors. This is where walkway mats or carpet runners can come in handy as well.


It is very important to make sure your facility is well maintained this upcoming winter season as we all start to slowly transition back into office life. Make sure your employees are well educated about the importance of health and safety during these harsh and cold winter months ahead. BCS Facilities Group has provided janitorial services for over 30 years with our “Boots on the Ground” experts here to serve YOU with the highest quality and reliable service. Stay safe and stay healthy!

Top 3 Tips on Creating an RFP For Your Janitorial Service Needs

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Let’s start off with the number question you may be asking. What exactly is a Janitorial RFP? To put it simply, it is a document that solicits proposal, and often made by an agency or company interested in the procurement of a service, product or any asset that they deem to be valuable to qualified contractors. This is often times completed through a bidding process between these suppliers.


Below, we will go over some tips, from our experiences, to help you find a new cleaning company that is the best fit and value for your facility.


Tip #1: Don’t Oversaturate Your Search


What do I mean by this? Often times you want to give many companies the opportunity to bid for your business, but you leave yourself at risk since not every company is going to be the best fit for your facility. One example of this is you may be a large corporate office building that requires nightly cleaning along with a day porter during the day, and you may find yourself with companies bidding that specialize in medical facilities and retail stores. This may not be the best “marriage” between the two. Or, you are a very large facility and smaller janitorial companies may not have the capacity or resources to tackle a job like that.


Do some research beforehand to potentially eliminate some of this unnecessary hassle and do NOT send RFPs to a company that you know will not be able to handle the task at hand. This is a waste of their time and money and your time by reading it.


Tip #2: Keeping It Simple


RFPs are not everybody’s favorite to read since they can become a mess or a cluster of random pieces of information seemingly thrown together without any organization. While you want to give vendors/contractors as much information as you possibly can, as with anything there is a “too much”. Before just sending a mass request with a document from past RFPs make sure you are updating this and reading it over as most companies do change, adapt and grow from year to year. There may be added work from years past or different scopes of work needed. Make sure you are checking for outdated information. What information is needed for a vendor to create a good proposal. Some examples include:
Times of day the facility needs to be cleaned
How many people are in the facility
Square footage
Number of restrooms/kitchens etc.


Tip #3: Be Specific About Pain Points


Try to sit back and ask yourself a couple key questions. Are you unhappy with your current or previous janitorial company’s services? Is this switch in vendors solely cost related? Has the scope of work changed wherein the current servicer cannot get the job done? If there is one piece of advice, I can give you on this it’s be transparent. If you are honest with your issues, this will give vendors the opportunity to speak to these issues you are having and offer some solutions rather than just following the generic protocol. This will also give you a good look at their commitment to customer service as well as quality control.


If you follow these tips when creating your next RFP for janitorial services, this will create a significant connection with a distinguished and reputable janitorial vendor.



Day Porters: Who They Are and What Services They Offer

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To put it simply, day porters and day porter services are the unsung heroes of workspace sanitation and an investment that would be worthwhile for any type of business. These services are great at maintaining a healthy, clean and safe work environment through daily janitorial services. This is a highly specialized position that keeps your building looking phenomenal when that unexpected guest visits, employees and customers. Day porters look for ways to optimize the upkeep process to ensure everything runs smoothly. Let’s take a deeper dive at exactly what day porter services entail.


What Is a Day Porter?


Day porters, to put it simply, are present during the actual work day during your work hours maintaining the cleanliness of your facility. Typical janitorial contractors operate after work hours with a specific scope of work. Day porters are also professionally trained with the proper skills to conduct best practices and use advanced equipment for proper disinfection of the workplace. They disinfect/sanitize high touch and high traffic areas throughout the day to prevent bacteria buildup to lessen the chance of illness.


Customizable and Easy to Manage


One of the more unique aspects of day porter services and quite frankly goes with the BCS motto, day porter service schedule and checklists are completely customizable to fit YOUR needs. If there are more difficult areas or aspects that need to be cleaned more frequently, day porters can most certainly add to their checklist of duties. Day porters’ jobs are to ultimately care for your building or facility to the best of their ability which makes communication with them crucial so you get the best outcome possible.


By having a day porter in your workspace, they essentially become an extension of your staff. At the end of the day, your janitorial contractor manages the day porters, so if a problem arises you can reach out to your janitorial contractor to aid in and address the issues.


Extended Hours of Cleanliness


Day porters are great at time management and find the most effective ways to keep your business clean for longer periods of time. If you already have a cleaning service that comes after hours like most, what happens when you have busy days where your bathrooms end up with piles of paper towels by the trash and no toilet paper and unflushed toilets? Most ordinary employees will not be going out of their way to clean that up. Day porters make sure that every single day, no matter what time it is, that your facility looks top-notch.


Contact BCS Facilities Group TODAY to learn more about how our day porter services can assist you in your janitorial needs!

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.



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.

The Top 3 Things To Look For In A Janitorial Company

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It can be a challenging task now more than ever to find a reliable commercial cleaning company. Sure, you can go on your Google machine and search for “commercial cleaning near me” or “janitorial services near me”, but what exactly are you getting yourself into when you do that? Whether it be Yelp, Bark, Home Advisor, etc., some (not all) are simply marketing companies that pose as a commercial cleaner, and what exactly do they do? Some examples are Vanguard, Executive Cleaning Services and Jensen Brothers that simply gather your information and subcontract the work. All you want to do is find a REAL cleaning service without all the additional hassle, and unfortunately can be more tough than need be.


However, once you do find a REAL commercial cleaning company, your work is only halfway done since there is a slew of companies in the cleaning market. Are you starting to weigh the idea about outsourcing your cleaning? Click here for more information. Are you currently outsourcing your cleaning and think it may be time for a change? Click here to find out more. So, the million-dollar question, how can you find a commercial cleaning company that can give you the best and most consistent results? Read on for the top 3 things to look for during your search.


Problem Solving – I’m sure at one point in time or another you have heard the common phrases such as “We have been in business for over 30 years”, “customer service is our #1 priority”, “we use the latest technology”, or “our core values are x,y,z”. Who cares? The one thing you are looking for is for your problems to be solved so you have one less thing to worry about on your busy plate. It is super important for a commercial cleaning company or anyone for that matter to understand your problems and provide swift solutions to them! This involves reducing the number of distractions caused by janitorial issues, and having the peace of mind knowing that your facility will be properly staffed each and every day while bringing solutions to you without even having to ask.


Local Presence – In other words, it can be challenging at times to find a service that can provide consistency. To put it simply, janitorial work is not overly complicated to the point where it requires years of experience or all of this extensive training to go along with it. Sweeping, mopping, dusting, emptying trash, cleaning the restrooms, kitchens, etc. doesn’t sound super overwhelming right? What it all boils down to, is the adequate oversight. This mainly stems from the management level (i.e., field managers) that are relatively close to your facility. This is very important when you bring in a cleaning service since it A.) reduces risk and B.) it builds TRUST! A good cleaning company will always be looking to improve their work, encouraging their teams while coaching them!


Industry Leadership – As mentioned at the beginning of this post, there is a slew of commercial cleaning companies in this market that can easily blend into the crowd. Look for a company that goes above and beyond. For example, they are heavily involved in the local community, they genuinely care about the industry and providing the necessary services for your own well-being first, they are involved in the industry through association memberships along with learning and spreading helpful information.


Let’s face it, the internet today is FILLED with anything you can possibly think of. This ultimately can be and is a very good tool with seemingly anything you desire right at your fingertips. However, with a tool such as this providing such ease in our lives it can also be layered with fraudsters and an extra layer of caution with office/facilities managers alike. By learning these few items listed above, this will be able to help lead a decision maker in the right direction to eventually make the correct decision for their company.

Don’t Let Dirty Windows Obstruct Your View!

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All facilities, offices, buildings have one thing in common: windows. There comes a great deal of importance to clean windows with your business, but when exactly is it time to have them cleaned? What are the advantages of having clean windows? Clean windows are a win-win situation for all offices and facilities alike and is crucial for maintaining not only the cleanliness of your facility, but simply creates a healthier and happier environment.
In this post, we will discuss the importance of window cleaning with numerous advantages of having clean windows along with how often you should invest in getting your windows cleaned!


Extends the Life of Windows

– Windows, especially external can take on a lot of contaminants (think bird poop, pollen, etc.) and regularly cleaning your windows can help maintain removing these. – I am sure we all can attest to this one, but dirt, debris, dust LOVE to stick/cling to windows. Over time this can cause permanent damage and ultimately will require a full window replacement sooner rather than later.


Clear Visibility

– Clean windows with visibility are just more attractive to put it simply. Whether you manage an office, retail store, of any other type of commercial facility, your results to attract happy customers wanting to spend money or even employees working with a more positive mindset. – With glass clear of any and all fingerprints it helps engage potential customers and passer biers as they feel more invited into your business.


Eliminates Pests

– Are you constantly seeing webs in the corners of windows? Yeah, it can be a real downer! It can be pretty horrifying realizing that they come from spiders or even a worse cause. – Regular window cleaning will eliminate pests by getting into every nook and cranny, ultimately forcing them to move on.


Reduces Infection Risk

– As mentioned in our last post, germs are spread through high touch surfaces, and glass doors, windows or any glass surfaces are not exempt from this. Regularly cleaning these surfaces will ultimately help prevent the spread of viruses, colds or other illnesses. – Clean windows are beneficial in a way where it helps prevent the development of mold and mildew. Stale windows allow for the growth of bacteria, which leads the way to rust and other discoloration.


How Often Should My Windows Be Cleaned?

With all of this being said, you may be asking yourself how often do my windows need to be cleaned? Well, there are many factors that need to be taken into consideration when discussing windows. Factors such as, exterior quality of the windows with other materials that can be affected by the climate of your specific area.


The ideal window cleaning schedule can vary depending on your office, building size and location, internal and external conditions. The best approach to this would be to develop some sort of regular detailed cleaning schedule. This comprehensive plan will help you determine how often your windows need to be cleaned and how this can save you MONEY and TIME.
If you can keep a regular schedule, you will have a set of windows free of all dust, dirt, etc. and windows you can be proud of!

Allow BCS Facilities Group to work with you to come up with the perfect window cleaning schedule!