Tips To Scheduling Cleaning Work

A reader writes: “We just took on a large campus with a lot of buildings to service various days of the week. Any guidance would be appreciated.”

Congratulations on adding this new contract. Based on our discussion you are accustomed to route work for small sites where a worker will travel between accounts each night on a pre-set schedule. When I say small, I mean areas/sites that can be serviced by one person in less than 2-3 hours each visit. As I understand your current structure, you have mainly part time workers using their own vehicles to clean 1,2, 3 or more sites each day which is radically different from this new, larger account.

Based on the information you provided, areas range from small public rest rooms, lobbies, break areas all of which are under 1,000 square feet and can be serviced by one or two-person crew rather efficiently. You also have large and even larger accounts that range from 25,000 to 250,000 square feet and will require more than one person to service them correctly and in a timely manner. You will have to give serious consideration to adding full time staff, lead workers, floor techs and other staff to accommodate this campus wide contract.

I note that you did not include any vehicles such as vans and trucks in your proposal which may be why you were the lowest bid. As I see your routing for this work, I suggest you assign one or more vehicles to accommodate the different tasks that need to be performed while still requiring other staff to use their own vehicles to travel to their assignment. Based on the anticipated floor work, I suggest you develop a floor crew to work on different sites each night with goal of fulfilling floor care such as strip/scrub/recoat, carpet cleaning, scrubbing rest rooms, etc. and use other staff to perform scheduled buffing/burnishing, high dusting, window work, etc.

Finally, I suggest you monitor your schedules and be flexible in adjusting as you go through a learning curve with this new contract.

Your comments and feedback are always appreciated. I hope to hear from you soon. Until then, keep it clean…

Mickey Crowe has been involved in the industry for over 35 years. He is a trainer, speaker and consultant. You can reach Mickey at 678-314-2171 or CTCG50@comcast.net.