Touch-free technology has improved over the years and the resulting products, including automatic flush valves, faucets, and towel and soap dispensers are growing in popularity.

BSCs looking to suggest retrofitting restrooms with some of these products to their customers have many strong selling points to grab a facility manager’s attention. Touch-free products help prevent cross-contamination and improve the public image. In addition, there are cost savings from reductions in consumables such as soap and paper, increased water conservation, and less labor costs because janitors don’t need to service dispensers as frequent.

Selling the service
Bill Romine, director of business development for the Washington D.C.-based UNICCO Service Co., recently added several hundred combination flush valves, touch-free soap dispensers and touch-free faucet units in eight restrooms on the middle floor of the Carr America headquarters building.

”We initiated the project by talking to the facility manager about upgrading their bathrooms as part of a total 650,000 square foot renovation project their building was undertaking. They wanted to improve their restrooms by making them look cleaner and more modern,” says Romine. “Since all of their restrooms had marble counter tops that were in poor condition, we suggested that we hone and polish the marble, but to do that we’d have to unbuckle the plumbing and remove the faucets. I promoted a touch-free retrofit and our customer gave us the job. It was an easy sell.”

The retrofit project satisfied the immediate goals and needs of Carr America, says Romine.

“They needed to have new and improved fixtures and nicer looking restrooms and we had the skill set and the drive to accomplish it. The products we selected were pretty straightforward and installation went smoothly. We scheduled downtime on weekends, the building engineer shut the water off, and same crew that polished the countertops retrofitted the fixtures. We were able to finish work on two restrooms each weekend.”

Since the completion of the project, Carr America has had fewer complaints about people not flushing toilets and urinals, more positive comments about less exposure to germs, and more compliments about the look of their restrooms, says Romine.

Cost factor
Retrofitting costs often fall in the hands of the facility manager, but this cost is insignificant compared to the total cost of renovation, says Carl Costanza, director of facilities for Oakton Community College, Des Plaines, Ill.

Costanza used battery-operated fixtures rather than low-voltage ones that were not only less expensive, but also not as complicated to install.

For Mark Sims, owner of Fikes Puget Sound, Inc., in Seattle, Wash., offering retrofitting has been a popular and profitable service.

“Last year our touch-free retrofitting work grew about 30 percent, but was about five percent of our total revenues,” says Sims. “Overall, we’ve built good will with our retrofit customers. Some of them, especially those with auto towel dispensers, were so happy to have them, they didn’t blink their eyes at the cost involved.”

Smooth Transition?
The positives of retrofitting outweigh the negatives, but there can be some drawbacks. UNICCO’s Romine, for instance, points to one negative that showed up in his retrofitting project.

“The soap cartridges for the automatic dispensers were more expensive to purchase, but that’s balanced by the fact that with a metered application of soap, users are more likely to be satisfied with that one dollop of soap and not use so much of it,” he says.

Sims suggests a proactive approach to training to avoid a problem that his company experienced.

“Initially we learned the hard way how important it was to be adequately trained to do the job on autoflushers,” says Sims. “There were a few different settings that we didn’t know about at first. For instance, we did retrofit work for a high profile restroom downtown. There, one of our technicians erroneously programmed a stadium setting for the autoflusher. It basically ran continuously and overflowed. Naturally, that was a huge issue for our customer. The situation was corrected and we began an intensive training program.”

If BSCs are aware of a future remodelling project, that is the perfect time to propose retrofitting restrooms. However, even without planned remodelling, retrofitting fixtures could be a significant cost savings for the client. These BSCs recommend performing a due-diligence study before committing to the job and purchasing products. Despite potentially large up-front costs, the retrofit will save money in the long run and be worth the investment.

Jordan Fox is a Milwaukee-based freelance writer.




POSTED ON: 2/1/2006