knows the ebbs and flows of the building and its occupants. And the occupants and management are familiar with and trust the company that is performing the work. A BSC who is working at 2 o’clock in the morning often detects problems that can develop into emergencies. A BSC with a facilities support division can both see and respond to a problem before it becomes a wide-reaching emergency, even before the customer is aware of the issue. “Sometimes, we are the only people in a building in the early hours of the morning. On one occasion, a water supply line to a coffeemaker in a company’s second-floor break room came loose in the middle of the night. The janitor noticed it, and set the wheels in motion. A floorcare team with extractors was brought in immedi-ately to get rid of the water. A plumber arrived to fix the water supply line. All of the necessary maintenance and facilities support team members were brought in to clean up, fix and mitigate,” says Julio Rios, facilities support project manager at Pacific Maintenance Company in Santa Clara, California. “By the time the customer arrived the next day, they had no idea there had been a problem until they were informed of the event. They were relieved that it was taken care of. It could have caused a few million dollars’ worth of damage and loss of pro-duction if the water had started to seep through to the floor below. And this kind of response just doesn’t happen unless a BSC has the necessary service professionals on the team and on call 24/7.” Support staff from BSC operations can unclog a toilet, move furniture, patch a wall and even paint. A Win-win Situation For The Customer Facilities that use contractors who provide a seamless combination of cleaning and facilities services can realize a number of advantages. The manager gets to work with people he or she knows. The BSC is aware of and sensitive to a fa-cility’s scheduling needs and idiosyncrasies. The BSC is also mindful of the client’s pro-cesses, policies and security requirements. And, there is a single point of contact for the building manager for everything from a spill on the warehouse floor to resolving a middle-of-the-night emergency that re-quires the boarding up of windows after a break-in. One of the other advantages for custom-ers is the cost savings involved in outsourc-ing their facility service needs to their BSC who has both the appropriate credentials and team members. According to Rios, “If there is a clogged toilet at a facility, a building manager could call a plumber and pay a minimum rate equivalent to an hour of service to have the toilet fixed, whether the plumber is on-site for 10 minutes or an hour. If a BSC’s facilities service folks are tapped to unclog a toilet, the facilities technician can also tend to oth-er needs. The same technician can unclog the toilet, move furniture and patch a wall, all in the same hour. It’s much more effective for the facility and is an efficient use of time and money.” Rios continues, “The other perk is: The cli-ent doesn’t have to find and hire a different vendor for every single item that needs at-tention. It’s streamlined in terms of point of contact, work orders, accounts payable and quality control.” Another advantage is that some BSCs of-fer, through their facilities support divisions, niche services that customers otherwise don’t know where to source. Energy audits and utility retrofits are ex-amples of niche offerings available through some BSCs. A contractor has to be completely ready for and experienced with facilities support services, from plumbing to pest control management to graffiti removal. When a cleaning company has estab-lished relationships with its customers and it introduces a new service, it must be both able to flawlessly perform the service and also be ready to answer clients’ emergency requests, sometimes involving some unex-pected surprises. Failures occur when a contractor over-commits and under delivers. “Building service contractors know how to clean, but they don’t necessarily know how to do facility maintenance services or tenant improvements. A failure on the facilities support side can affect the clean-ing side of a contract. No matter what, a contractor has to stay within its own core competency. Otherwise, it might lose all the business it has with a particular customer. In other words, don’t jeopar-dize your relationship with a customer by providing a new service that you’re not qualified or ready to perform,” Rios com-ments. Pitfalls And Cautions Though a facilities support division can be a good way for a BSC to differentiate itself by providing a menu of services beyond clean-ing, there can be some serious pitfalls. Kari Hus is president of Pacific Maintenance Company (PMC), a world pioneer in the devel-opment of clean room protocols and high tech cleaning practices. Hus has over 30 years of jani-torial and maintenance management experi-ence, and under her leadership, PMC expand-ed to include a Facilities Support Division and achieved CIMS certification. Based in Santa Clara, California, PMC provides comprehensive facili-ties maintenance services from coast to coast. Contact Pacific Maintenance at (888) 762-0808 or www.PacificMaintenance.com www.CMMOnline.com 41 Image courtesy of Pacific Maintenance Company
CMM – Archives July 2014: 41
