Remediation Remedy

There’s an old saying that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. But lack of knowledge and a 10-year-old mystery nearly spelled disaster for property managers at the Washington State Ecology Building.

Located in Lacey, Wash., the building houses the state’s department of ecology, as well as the local Environmental Protection Agency office. More than 1,000 employees work inside the 332,000-square-foot-building. Almost all of them are involved, to some degree, in the business of environmental monitoring. Most are well educated. Some are activists. All of them were concerned about what they perceived as poor indoor air quality at the Ecology Building.

“The complaints were essentially the same,” says Joe Jimenez of Jimenez & Associates. “People simply felt there was something odd in the air, loosely categorized as bad air. It was unpleasant and possibly unhealthy.”

Jimenez & Associates is a public-relations firm headquartered in Seattle. The company specializes in high-profile reputation management and communication. In business since 1996, Jimenez has represented biotechnology companies, government agencies, labor unions and non-profit organizations. In short, Jimenez was hired to restore employee trust in the building management.

Built in 1993, tenants had been complaining almost from the beginning of various health effects. Although less than 1 percent of the building’s population reported problems, Jimenez believes those complaints may have helped “sensitize” the entire workforce about environmental concerns.

The complaints ranged from sore throats and eye irritation to headaches and laryngitis. Burning eyes, sneezing, and hot and cold spots in the building were also at issue.

Steve Strope, facility manager at the Ecology Building, was stumped. He’d had several experts investigate over the years but no one could identify a problem or stop customers from complaining.

“Joe came in as a consultant to help us decide where to go from here,” he says. “We needed assistance identifying any stone we may have left unturned.”

The problem, Jimenez explains, is that people doubted management.

“When that happens, they start coming up with their own solutions,” he explains. “Frustration sets in. It moves to a loss of confidence or blame in whoever is responsible. Then you have credibility issues. They won’t believe anything you say.”

Jimenez recognized the building population was highly educated about environmental issues and developed a strategy that capitalized on their knowledge.

Create a team of experts
Jiminez started by developing a team who would thoroughly audit the building inside and out. Jimenez was careful in his selection. Because building tenants had rejected information gathered by experts in previous years, he was looking for individuals with solid experience.

“They had to have iron-clad reputations,” he says. The consultants and scientists also had to be able to back up their claims with proof.

The group included chemists, biologists, facility managers and systems experts. Each specialist had a particular auditing assignment.

“The purpose of the audits was to determine the condition of major building systems which could potentially affect the building’s indoor air quality,” Jimenez says.

The audits included the exterior site and surrounding area, building structure, HVAC equipment and HVAC controls. Facility management operations, planning and utilization, custodial and housekeeping were also evaluated, as well as floor coverings and overall indoor environmental quality.

Jimenez started with the facility audit and ended with the cleaning evaluation. Researchers practically turned the building inside out, taking dozens of dust samples and even using infrared cameras to search for hidden moisture.

“We’ve definitely gone over and above in our efforts to address the issues,” Strope notes.

Analyzing the results
When the data came back, Jimenez wasn’t surprised. The recommendations centered around three areas:

• The building and its environmental systems
  
• Maintenance and cleaning
  
• Building occupants and their activities
  

Scientists backed up the belief there was nothing inherently wrong with the building. Mold and microbials were virtually nonexistent. Engineers recommended some changes to the building’s HVAC system and controls. Now, the employees were ready to turn their attention to what Jimenez already suspected: a housekeeping link.

“We had to have a consistent philosophy,” he says. “If we’re looking at the building from a comfort and health point of view, cleaning also had to reflect that basic strategy.”

The custodial audit was conducted by The Ashkin Group, from Bloomington, Ind. President Stephen Ashkin is a chemist and wrote the ASTM cleaning standard for non- industrial buildings in the United States. He is perhaps best known for introducing the concept of “green,” or environmentally preferable, cleaning, to a wide audience.

Ashkin’s job was to analyze the custodial and housekeeping programs and procedures being used in the Ecology Building and how they related to maintaining an acceptable indoor environment.

He was also charged with determining whether any of the chemicals being used were harmful to occupant health.

At the end of his audit, Ashkin made 22 recommendations that included changing vacuum frequencies, improving entrance matting, and using micro fiber dust mops and wiping cloths.

“It definitely pointed us to areas that needed more work,” Strope says. “We found out where the dust was hiding and what we needed to do to get to it.”

“People assume that cleaning always helps remove the cause of filth,” Jimenez notes. “That’s not necessarily the case. Sometimes you need to clean differently, in a way that was beneficial to people and building.”

Now that the recommendations were in place, Jimenez needed someone to tell his client how to accomplish that. Enter John Walker.

Developing a cleaning protocol
Walker, president of Salt Lake City based-ManageMen, was recommended by the company Jimenez hired to manage the dust sampling of the Ecology Building.

“We were trying to find someone that could really give them the nuts and bolts of cleaning. We wanted to get away from the philosophical discussions,” Jimenez recalls. “We couldn’t scare him away from the project.”

“We weren’t scared because this is what we do all the time,” Walker explains. “We take on projects other people don’t want to get involved with.”

The reason? “That’s where we get our best data. We’ve grown our company based on data in problem organizations,” he says.

Walker says the difference between an average operation and one with real problems is basically one thing: The organization with the real problem admits it. The others don’t even realize they’re in trouble.

Walker’s role was two-fold. First, he evaluated the situation and provide a protocol to deep clean the complaint area. That would mean meeting with scientists, dealing with their concerns, and providing a procedure that would be scientifically defensible.

Second, he put the protocol in place and supervise the cleaning.

The Ecology Building occupies approximately 11 acres. The three-story building is divided into two wings. One contains offices. The other houses service areas. Each of the office areas is divided into bays.

Jimenez and Walker decided to clean one bay, or rougly 1,500 square feet, at a time.

Under the current cleaning contract, janitors were forbidden to move employees’ personal items in order to clean. Consequently, office cubicles and upholstered walls hadn’t had a thorough cleaning in years.

Walker changed the rules.

“The biggest challenge was moving the workers out of the area and moving them back in,” Walker recalls with a laugh. It took more than 1,700 file storage boxes to relocate 150 workers.

With people and their belongings out of the way, he was ready for a full-scale assault. Essentially, he threw out everything old and started from scratch, introducing cleaning workers to new chemicals, tools and work procedures.

“We found the workers didn’t understand how to clean,” he says. “They had too many products, used too much chemical and left too much residue. They weren’t paying attention to the filters on their vacuums.”

The approach was a surprise to Strope. Compared with other state facilities, “We were already at the forefront of how janitorial was done, allowing vendors to spend more time and have more manpower.”

Walker says there were no standardization and no process.

“There was total confusion in the closets,” he says. “Workers had three different kinds of glass cleaners. They were allowed to decide which chemicals to work with. Carpet cleaning left tremendous residues. They’d actually been building up soil into what I call glue.”

He spent approximately 20 hours training 13 cleaning workers how to use their new materials, incorporating videos, workbooks and charts as well as hands-on training for each new tool and procedure.

Walker’s approach was to clean everything that had been missed for the last 10 years.

“They did very little ceiling, wall, vent and cubicle wall cleaning,” he recalls. “We thoroughly vacuumed all of that and captured the soil in near HEPA filter vacuums. We cleaned from ceiling to floor, from dry to wet. We were focusing on what had been missed or left behind as a result of the cleaning process.”

Cleaning green and cleaning blue
During a two-day presentation, Walker explained to building occupants what types of cleaning processes and chemical would be used.

“Everything we used had to be presented to the environmental scientists that worked in the areas we were cleaning,” Walker says. “They had to approve everything.”

The approach Walker took was to look at both the “green” and “blue” issues involved in cleaning.

“Green looks at the earth. Blue looks at water,” he explains. “It wasn’t just a matter of chemistry; these scientists were also interested in the dust and humidity. We had a rigorous examination.”

An important aspect of green cleaning is the methodology for controlling chemical use, Walker adds.

“We were able to guarantee that almost nothing that was poured down a drain was in a quantity or an exposure to the cleaning worker that was in any way dangerous,” he says.

Even the carpet-extraction protocol included cleaning with a neutral chemical, with a pH of 7.

“You have to make sure the process of what you’re doing in the building is in no way contributing to the problems,” Jimenez says. “The quality of the process has a lot to do with the outcome.”

After three days, the bay was clean.

Good housekeeping
With the mechanical systems fine-tuned and the deep clean complete, Jimenez moved to the final phase of the project — educating Strope’s tenants.

“It’s a touchy area,” Jimenez states. “The problem with janitorial service is people feel a disconnect. Somebody else does the cleaning. In fact, their own procedures can have a lot to do with how well cleaning occurs. 1,100 people equals 1,100 potential sources of contamination.”

Despite their education, employees had to be taught not to bring cleaning products from home or sick plants they hoped to nurse back to health. They needed to learn that while recycling was important, it was equally important to get rid of leftover food that sometimes lay for days in the bottom of trashcans office workers were supposed to empty. Even personal items, such as lotions and colognes, may be potential contaminants for an extra-sensitive coworker.

Tenants also needed a better understanding of cleaning processes. When crews used high-flow carpet extractors, Jimenez says the thought of putting more water on the carpet terrified them.

“We had to use moisture meters to show them that water was being sucked up as fast as it was put down,” he says.

Building managers took extraordinary steps to keep employees informed. They installed more than 400 environmental sensors and seven LED screens. Placed at strategic points in the building, the touch screens let employees instantly learn the temperature, humidity, and even the cafeteria menu.

A new tracking system allowed employees to report health concerns or environmental problems to a 24-hour service provider who would then report back to the customer. Jimenez says all the feedback is designed to let employees know the building is functioning within designated environmental parameters.

Clean first, questions later?
Could the remediation project have been avoided in the first place if deep cleaning had been done first? Jimenez says no.

“Whenever you’re dealing with indoor environmental issues you have to consider the two together — always,” he says. “One has to do with what the owner will do. The other has to do with what the occupants do.”

Of the $3 million spent on the project, roughly $2.5 million went to mechanical improvements. Deep cleaning made a dent in the total cost, but could not completely have eliminated the mechanical improvements.

On the other hand, proper cleaning for the last 10 years might have eliminated the need for the deep clean, Strope speculates.

“You wouldn’t have to do a deep clean if you started a cleaning process that never let you get to the point you had a build up,” he says.

“It’s a whole new way of cleaning carpet, dusting and vacuuming,” Strope adds. “If we adopted it right now, we would specify this new method and the vendor would have to be qualified and trained in order to bid on the project.”

Strope is in the process of evaluating the cost differences between his old way of doing things and the new cleaning protocols.

“We’re certainly going to take a hard look at evaluating our janitorial processes,” he says. “We could end up seeing some cost savings as far as labor goes.”

The new carpet-cleaning method may help him salvage carpet he previously thought was too severely soiled to keep.

Jimenez says Washington officials now see cleaning as an investment.

“They want to keep deep cleaning,” he says. “They want to be sure that the cleaning they do is the most beneficial cleaning they can do for the people as well as the building.”

A lesson for contractors
Walker says building service contractors can learn from what happened in Washington.

“There’s a product out there for sale and nobody’s talking about it,” he says. “If you cold sell a deep clean every ten years as part of an indoor air quality improvement it would be a dandy tag job. That could be a huge additional billing for contractors.”

He says BSCs should recommend a deep clean before a remediation project gets underway, in order to help their clients save money later on in the project.

As far as communication goes, Jimenez says contractors don’t need to hire a firm in order to have strong public relations. They should educate their customers as to the advantages and disadvantages of continuing without a deep clean. Then talk about the problem and the solution.

“Be careful never to even introduce the discussion unless you have a thorough, well thought out solution for owners to consider,” he says. “When customers ask, ‘What do you suggest we do?’, you better be prepared to answer that question.”

Jennifer C. Jones is an industry writer in Layton, Utah. She is a frequent contributor to Contracting Profits.