Building service contractors know there’s no such thing as a “typical business day.” Nonetheless, Contracting Profits recently approached three contractors working in different markets and at disparate stages of business growth and asked if our reporters could shadow them for the day; we thought the atypical revelations that emerged might make for good reading by their peers.

An entrepreneur in Denver, a businessman “back from the brink” in small-town Wis-consin and a process-oriented manager driving change in Washington agreed to let us tag along and, ultimately, journal our observations.

Did we come away with any common bonds among the trio? Yes. They all love what they do. And they wouldn’t trade the long hours, hectic pace, demanding customers — and yes, the mops and buckets — for a desk job.

Tim Poskin, USSI

by D.M. Maas

The cleaning industry is cutthroat. Even 90-plus-year old companies such as Washington, D.C. -based USSI need to find new methods of staying competitive and innovative. For USSI, innovation is a new cleaning system.

The system, called (OS1), uses a form of team cleaning. The new system is a top-to-bottom change, not only for the cleaning crews but also for top-level managers on down.

Today, Poskin is bringing a large three-building project online in Baltimore. At more than a million square feet, it is the largest start-up USSI has ever done, as well as the largest (OS1) implementation ever done in one night. But this is what Poskin loves about his job.

“I thrive off of the analytical. ‘Processes,’ ‘systems’ and ‘standardization’ are soothing comfort words for me,” he says. “I enjoy the rewards of implementing these processes and seeing the benefits. Calculating building profiles, creating staffing levels, applying these to a level of service and then creating job cards is one of my favorite projects.”

The day starts early at 7 a.m. as he receives $70,000 worth of supplies, including paper products, chemicals and cleaning equipment. Poskin and his crew spend the day setting up check-in stations and bulk storages and verifying that all supplies are ready for a 5:30 p.m. start-up.

Unfortunately, today there is a problem. Not all the supplies have arrived. Someone needs to return to Virginia, a four-hour trip, to retrieve the missing materials. To try to avoid mistakes like this, Poskin gives his supplier his product list weeks in advance, but today it didn’t work.

As the employees arrive, they break up into groups for one hour of training. Then, the trainer gives the staff their supplies and takes them to their designated areas. By 7:15, every crewmember in the three-building start-up is in his or her section and cleaning with the new method.

Poskin’s role is to ensure that the large level of change needed to implement the new cleaning system at each job site is not met with resistance.

“Change for management is never easy. Most managers don’t react well to being moved outside of their comfort zone. Sometimes the confrontation is not a pleasant one,” he says.

The cleaning crew, on the other hand, often takes the change much better than management.

“In most cases, the crews really like the new system because they get good training, and they know what is expected of them on every shift,” says Poskin.

Tonight’s start-up goes so smoothly that at 8:30, Poskin is able to take the owner of another local cleaning company and his crew on a tour of the building to show them what the new cleaning system is all about.Poskin enjoys sharing his enthusiasm with others, especially customers.

“I like to visit with our customers as much as I can. They appreciate the value USSI delivers with great performance in their buildings,” says Poskin. “USSI has great relationships with their customers. These relationships help us spread the word about [our system] and what it brings to our customers as well as tenants and occupants.”

D.M. Maas is a business writer in Washington D.C.


Lee Fahrenkrug, First Choice

by Stacie H. Rosenzweig, Editor

“You can either run your business or do your business.”

Lee Fahrenkrug is blunt. In recent years, the owner of a 10-year-old, family-owned cleaning firm has been doing too much of the latter, and not enough of the former.

It wasn’t always this way for First Choice Cleaning of Neenah, Wis. At the company’s peak in 2001, Fahrenkrug had more than 50 employees and scores of small, but profitable, accounts. But, the economic downturn after Sept. 11, 2001 hit Wisconsin’s Fox Valley especially hard.

“The first account we lost was our biggest,” he says, “and after that, we lost a whole string of smaller accounts as they struggled. Some have come back, but some never got back on their feet.”

The company downsized to just 16 employees, and there were times when Fahrenkrug wasn’t sure he would make it. But 2005 has been different — business is again on the upswing, and the company has increased its payroll to 35; Fahrenkrug’s son Brad came aboard as a full-time operations manager, and the company was recently able to hire an office assistant again.

Even so, Fahrenkrug has some personal difficulty delegating tasks to others, so he can run the business more effectively.

“That’s probably the hardest thing we’ve got to do, as business owners,” he says. “We need to learn to let go.”

He says he’s getting better as his business has developed. Fahrenkrug first founded the business in 1996 with his brother, after losing a 26-year engineering job to downsizing. Eventually, Fahrenkrug bought his brother out and built the business to its pre-9/11 peak.

Fahrenkrug’s day starts around 7 a.m., and today is no exception. Normally, his day would continue until 9 or 10 p.m. (7 p.m. on a “slow night”), but a dental appointment will cut today a bit shorter.

“If I have some personal things to take care of, I can lean on my help to fill in the gaps,” he explains.

Thus, absenteeism can be quite a challenge, especially with his small staff. That’s when Fahrenkrug kicks fully into “doing the business” mode.

“Once, five people called in sick during one shift,” he explains. “I credited every customer I could for the lost time, and then we tried to service the rest. I did a lot of the cleaning myself. I worked from 7 a.m. until 4 a.m., the next morning.”

Normally, Fahrenkrug doesn’t do much cleaning himself, but as his company rebuilds, he’s been to the customer sites, mop in hand, much more often.

Cleaning isn’t on Fahrenkrug’s schedule for today, however; he’s scheduled a staff meeting, a visit to a customer site, a discussion with an employee who wants to pick up some extra hours and lunch with his insurance agent.

Even before the formal agenda begins, he gets into a conversation with Brad. The younger Fahrenkrug is new to the business, and he’s still figuring out just how to prioritize his time. Today, the subject is quality control.

“I’d like you to eventually take over the inspections,” Lee explains.

“Well, that would mean I’d be spending a day or two a week doing nothing but inspections,” Brad says, matter-of-factly.

“Then that’s what you’d be doing,” Lee says.

Quality assurance is, indeed, an ongoing challenge for First Choice. Today’s customer visit is a response to a customer complaint — the facility, a newly constructed shipping building, just doesn’t seem to be clean.

Fahrenkrug and the customer contact walk the shop floor, and the contact points out the problems — switch boxes need to be dusted; stairs and ladders seem soiled. There still is quite a bit of construction dirt in the plant; First Choice was told the post-construction cleaning would be done but the construction company, but that never happened.

There are two First Choice employees working at the plant today — they, says Fahrenkrug, will do what it takes to keep the account clean; the customer nods approvingly.

Most BSCs face a labor pool others would think unsavory, and First Choice is no exception. In spite of this, Fahrenkrug sees promise.

“We don’t always get the top people, the cream of the crop, but there’s a lot of people who want to work, and they turn out to be excellent employees,” he says. And, while some customers demand a higher standard and a clear background for cleaners in their building, others don’t, and Fahrenkrug will give seemingly marginal employees a chance in those facilities.

“We’ve turned around people who were going to jail,” he says. “I think they’ve all got a place in the world.”

Besides his work and home, Fahenkrug’s own other place in the world is behind the controls of a private airplane. He’s a licensed pilot, and often, he’ll take Brad up in the plane with him for a little bit of father-son bonding time.

“He’s just a struggling young man with a wife and a young son,” Fahrenkrug says. Brad, a computer programmer by trade, came into the business earlier this year after a layoff.

“He called out of the blue and asked if he could work with me,” Fahrenkrug explains. “I asked him if he meant work ‘for’ me, or work ‘with’ me, and he wanted the latter. It was probably one of the proudest moments of my life, when my son said he wanted to become a part of the business.”

Fahrenkrug hopes to groom Brad to take over the business one day, although he’s not sure if he’ll ever want to fully retire.

“I’ll probably come by quite a bit, but if I want to go away with my wife for awhile, I’ll know the business is in good hands.”


Vivienne Lloyd, Time Creators

by Briana Snow

The Denver highways are filled with rush-hour traffic, and the sun has only been up for a little while, but Vivienne Lloyd’s silver Nissan has been in the Time Creators Inc. parking lot since 4 a.m. It gives her some quiet time to prepare her company for today’s full slate of residential and commercial cleaning jobs.

The small, upstart company does house cleaning, post-construction cleaning for condos and apartment buildings as well as move-ins and move-outs for property-management companies. They also clean gyms, smaller office buildings and common areas of apartment complexes. Currently, Time Creators handles approximately 75 percent residential and 25 percent commercial cleaning. However, Lloyd is looking to change that balance in favor of commercial accounts.

By 7, the office is filled with the sounds of busy residential cleaners, readying their supplies for the day. They receive their tickets and get directions for the residences they will be cleaning. As usual.

However, a crisis arises that will change the whole schedule — a worker, who is supposed to transport a crew, is having car trouble and can’t make it into work. The crews must be re-organized before the day even starts.

Lloyd gets to work, rearranging her crew. Labor is a big challenge for Time Creators, as it is for many cleaning operations; Lloyd says her turnover approaches 40 percent. She has had the same core group of workers for years, but there are many who simply don’t show up for work without explanation.

She believes commercial cleaning will be easier, in a sense, because it’s not as difficult to find employees; in her market, many commercial janitors are people with other full-time jobs who are looking for extra work at night. But as Time Creators expands further into the commercial cleaning market, Lloyd knows she’ll face new and different worker-related challenges. She will need to hire a manager and larger crews, since her company will be cleaning 24 hours a day.

She would also need to figure out which of her employees will do better on which jobs. Her staff members who do extremely well with attention to detail would be on crews that do residential cleaning. Those who are able to do small maintenance jobs, as well as clean, would do commercial cleaning.

A few juggled schedules later, the crisis is averted. Lloyd heads out into town to drop off a crew for their first cleaning job. In the middle of rush hour traffic, Lloyd lightheartedly points out another one reason she’ll be happy to expand into more commercial cleaning: gridlock.

“When you do commercial cleaning you don’t have to deal with all the traffic,” she smiles.

Nevertheless, she also says that one significant benefit to residential cleaning is the customer loyalty. Commercial companies will change cleaning companies at any time in order to save money, even if it’s a nominal amount. Residential clients tend to stay with companies they can trust, even if the price increases. For Lloyd, residential cleaning is “predictable income” for her, but she wants her business to grow and she sees that opportunity in commercial cleaning and building maintenance.

On her to-do list are two estimates. The first is a post-construction clean-up for man who recently purchased a beautiful new condo in “Lo-Do,” one of Denver’s most up-and-coming neighborhoods. The second is a move-out clean-up in an apartment building with a property management company Lloyd has worked with before. A resident has moved out and she needs to see how many hours her housekeepers will need in order to make it acceptable for a new tenant.

She has a contract in Colorado Springs for 150 condos for post-construction clean up, so she will head down there in the afternoon to check on her crews and make sure the job is getting done to her specifications. Currently, her company is also contracted to do post-construction cleaning for 200 condos in Aurora.

The rest of the morning is spent shuttling from one end of the metro area to the other — picking up and dropping off different crews, stopping by to meet clients personally to make sure her company is meeting their standards.

“It’s my job to set expectations for the client,” Lloyd says. They’ll know exactly what will happen when they contract with Time Creators. She likes to meet with clients personally, or at least keep in contact through e-mail, to make sure that their expectations are being met. This personal touch keeps everyone on the same page and inspires loyalty and customer satisfaction, she says.

Lloyd considers her business successful, due to that personal touch but also to her dedication to learning and growing as a small business owner. She recently hired a business coach to help her with productivity. She belongs to ISSA and the Association of Residential Cleaning Professionals. She’ll head to the next trade show to take a closer look the newest cleaning techniques and products. Lloyd also takes advantage of all the free seminars and classes she can find, and this has played an integral part in making her business run effectively.

Above all, Lloyd is committed to constantly improving her knowledge of the business. Her small business is thriving because of her optimistic mentality and her dedication to constant improvement.

“I am always learning, every day,” she says.

Briana Snow is a freelance writer in Denver.




POSTED ON: 8/1/2005