BSCs Must Now Have Plans For Pandemic Diseases

Janitorial companies are on the front lines of health-related issues, making infection control an important, if not mandatory, area of expertise. This is particularly true in healthcare settings or facilities with vulnerable populations, such as schools and nursing homes.

Building service contractors have to be prepared to handle almost any customer call, complaint or concern. Usually, they are. But last fall, the Ebola scare caught government officials, health care executives, global policy-makers, the general public, and, yes, even building service contractors, off guard.

When the 2014 Ebola outbreak in Africa touched American soil — with an infected Liberian man dying in a Dallas hospital in October after infecting two of his nurses there — it also touched off a very public panic about the disease’s spread and how it can be prevented.

Rarely are BSCs on the front lines of such a newsworthy and potentially deadly pandemic, but as some learned, they should still be prepared to advise customers and take control of cleaning operations in the event of an outbreak.

“A lot of customers were calling us, asking what they could do,” says Todd Haddock, president of AHI Facility Services Inc. in Dallas — the epicenter of domestic Ebola transmissions and fears, last fall. “Their employees were concerned, and those concerns were coming up the pipeline to management. So we helped these customers put together literature that educated them about Ebola, how it’s spread, and what they can do to protect themselves.”