tackling trouble areas Process Cleaning — Past, Present And Future Support for an innovation in the way cleaning is performed. By: Corey Morris Images courtesy of the Washoe County School District T The Washoe County School District (WCSD) in Reno, Nevada, with almost 68,000 students and 9,000 staff, is one of an elite few districts in the country to have achieved International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 9001 certification for quality management systems thanks, in large part, to the successful implementa-tion of a program known as process clean-ing — and the decade-long efforts of a man for whom a vision became a reality. “Years ago, after knocking around for a bit, I found myself working as a custodian in a school district. On my first day, I was handed the keys, shown the zone I was to clean, where the tools were and I was told, ‘I want it clean’ and that was it,” Rex Morrison, WCSD housekeeping training supervisor, said. “I picked up the tools and I started to work. Before I knew it, the night was over, I was done … and I had no idea what I’d done or how I’d done it.” Soon after, Morrison moved to the Washoe County School District, where he found much of the same: He was handed the keys, told they wanted clean class-rooms and bathrooms, given a set of tools and was told to “get to it.” When facing such situations, custodians often tend to follow much the same pat-tern: They develop their own protocol, their own system of doing things that, as long as there are no complaints, is assumed by everyone to be “just fine.” “At that time, in Washoe County there were around 450 custodians. That meant Pairing standards on procedural best practices with the proper tools and equipment ensures better results. 36 CM/Cleaning & Maintenance Management ® • January 2011
CMM – Archives Jan 2011: 36
