Create A Cleaning Schedule For High-traffic Facilities

“A [mass transit] facility can go from clean to dirty in a matter of minutes,” says Becky Gawin, deputy director of Facilities and Services with the City of Phoenix-Aviation Department.

In this role, Gawin oversees aviation services contracts, which include custodial services at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport. Here, 200 custodians clean Sky Harbor’s 5 million square feet of terminal space, from top to bottom, every single day.

With the constant need for cleaning and disinfecting in these spaces, it’s critical that BSCs maintain a regular cleaning schedule. It isn’t realistic to clean the facility once in the morning and proclaim it clean and sanitary for the remainder of the day, Gawin says.

“When you clean in an environment that has that much traffic, it’s only clean until the first person comes in and uses the area,” says Mark Searcy, global operation support manager at Coverall Health-Based Cleaning System, Deerfield Beach, Fla.

To wage battle against germs in crowded transit facilities, Kennedy recommends developing a cleaning schedule that considers the ebbs and flows of traffic throughout the day. He says the biggest challenge is cleaning the centers during short windows of time.

“Fitting cleaning into those compressed timeframes requires planning everything out to the last detail,” he says.