raising standards Ten Emerging JanSan Trends: Part Two T This is a continuation of last month’s Raising Standards column. As a review, 10 trends are impacting the cleaning industry and the way facilities and businesses operate. The first five are: Sophistication, budget cuts, outsourcing, stan-dards and instrumentation. Cleaning organizations can handle the impact of these trends on their operations with the help of ISSA’s Cleaning Industry Management Standard (CIMS). 6. Infection prevention Recent outbreaks of infections such as the 2009 H1N1flu and methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) have elevated the need for cleaning organizations to deliver high-quality service. In health care facilities, preventing cross-contamination of bac-teria, viruses and infection is the constant focus for environmental services and infection control staff. The cleaning department plays an important role in breaking the chain of infection, regardless of building type. Thorough and frequent cleaning can help stop the spread of infection in buildings, whether it’s a common cold virus in an office building or a staph infection in a medical facility. To help break the chain, cleaning organizations must focus on assessing risk within their facilities, giving the most attention to areas highlighted as the highest risk. Highly touched objects (HTOs) must be cleaned most frequently and include door handles and knobs, patient bed rails, restroom fixtures, telephones and keyboards. Organizations can use CIMS to ensure staffs receive technical training and to implement an infection prevention plan. 7. Sustainability The cleaning department is a key partner for sustainable orga-nizations. CIMS-Green Building (GB) certification demonstrates a cleaning organization’s capability to assist facilities in achieving Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design for Existing Buildings: Operation and Management (LEED-EBOM) points and offers property managers and building owners assurance that the clean-ing organization they select is prepared to partner with them in the LEED process. 8. Workloading CIMS drives cleaning organizations to workload their facilities and document all workloading data, including square footage, sur-face types, tasks, number of workers and so on. By: Jim Peduto Ten trends are currently reshaping the cleaning industry, highlighting the importance of the industry’s cleaning standard. The workloading process helps cleaning managers calculate cost per square foot per year and even cost per building occupant per year. Moreover, managers can quantify cost per worker and use that data to justify staffing numbers and possibly avoid staffing reduc-tions. Workloading is a trend that helps cleaning organizations deliver what every customer wants — a clean, green, safe building at the lowest possible cost. 9. Consolidation As businesses become more mature and sophisticated, it is natural for consolidation to occur. Roll-ups, mergers and acquisitions are occurring in many trades, including the cleaning industry. Consolidation streamlines business processes, removes redun-dancies among companies and compensates for increasing costs, helping businesses do more with less. As some businesses become larger and more global, benefiting from reduced redundancies and costs, smaller, still-independent businesses can find opportunity in niche markets. CIMS offers the right operating framework to help organizations ensure they have the right management pieces in place to deliver quality service regardless of size. 10. Upper management intervention Upper level management teams within organizations are becom-ing more engaged in the cleaning function of facilities. They look at cleaning as a business and expect the building service contractor or in-house cleaning department to run like a business. Managers are seeking and hiring prospective employees with business or accounting backgrounds to run cleaning operations because they are more focused on data, information and budgets. The current state of unemployment gives upper management a larger pool of business-trained potential cleaning managers. With CIMS as a framework, cleaning managers with a cleaning background and a business background have a complete checklist for running a successful operation. CM Jim Peduto is the president of Matrix Integrated Facility Management LLC and the co-founder of the American Institute for Cleaning Sciences (AICS). AICS is the registrar for ISSA’s Cleaning Industry Management Standard (CIMS) cer-tification program. Visit www.ISSA.com/CIMS for more information. 52 CM/Cleaning & Maintenance Management ® • October 2011
CMM – Archives Oct 2011: 52
