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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.



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.

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!