Benchmarks: Cleaning As A Class Act

Tom Keating, a self-employed educator from Decatur, Ga. says his children always hated the restrooms in their public school. His son, Jeffrey, used the facilities in the nurse’s office just to get some privacy while his daughter, Stephanie, never won a battle to have feminine sanitary products added to girls’ restrooms. And the children’s friend, Ty, would run straight to his home’s restroom each afternoon after having held it in all day.

Finally, Keating had enough. He interviewed other parents and learned that the problem was universal. Every child he met had a complaint about the restrooms, from obscene graffiti and other vandalism to a lack of hot water, soap and privacy.

Although Keating was a life-long educator, he never had worked a day as a custodian. He decided he should see the restrooms for himself.

“I decided I needed to clean some restrooms,” Keating says. “So I put on some gloves and cleaned a high-school restroom. When I returned the next day, it was just as dirty as when I started.”

That’s when Project CLEAN (Citizens, Learners and Educators Against Neglect) was born. Since 1996, Keating has worked with schools across the country to help them clean up their bathrooms. His work has earned him the nickname, “Bathroom Man.”

Sparking School Spirit
For a fee, Keating will visit a school, write a plan for improving the appearance of the restrooms, and then offer suggestions on how to get student, faculty and community support. He also makes himself available by phone and e-mail for follow-up questions.

Currently, Project CLEAN is helping a 10-building school district in New Mexico and advising an 880-restroom renovation project for a Georgia district.

His efforts are getting results. In one high school, students painted bathroom walls red, decorated the ceiling with ribbons, and hung artwork and flowerpots on the walls. Although most transformations are less dramatic, they all have the same aim — to create a clean and pleasant environment.

Keating often tells school officials to place dividers between urinals, put doors on every stall, add more and better lighting, and install vandal-proof toilet paper dispensers.

Keating says custodians should lead the charge for change. But they shouldn’t try to take it all on themselves. Restroom renovation projects are too cumbersome for one person to tackle.

“One of the first things I learned is that custodians cannot win on this issue by themselves,” Keating says. “There is no way a custodial crew can keep up with high-school kids who are being disrespectful of property.”

A team approach is key. First, arrange a meeting with the principal. Explain the problems and offer to help with an improvement effort. Inspect the restrooms together and come up with a restroom improvement plan for the school.

“Des Moines high schools are not the same as the southside of Chicago,” Keating says. “Tailor suggestions and solutions to the individual building. This is a national issue with building-by-building solutions.”

Parents, teachers and students should be involved in the project. Ask janitorial-supply vendors to adopt a restroom. Get the restroom clean and well-stocked and then ask student groups to decorate the restrooms as an extracurricular activity. This will help students feel pride and ownership.

In addition to cleaning restrooms, Keating is trying to establish standards for public school restrooms. He was surprised to learn that many states have none (Florida and Pennsylvania are notable exceptions). So far, he has helped write the School Health Act, which will go before Georgia legislators this year.

More information about Project CLEAN or Keating’s state standards initiative.

Robots:
The Future Work Force?

The one thing predictable about human beings is that they are predictable. The “here today, gone tomorrow” labor force common in the cleaning industry is an example of the predictability of people. It’s only natural that more and more institutions are exploring the use of robotics in housekeeping.

Steve Spencer, facilities specialist with State Farm Insurance, is the man in charge of keeping 3,320 buildings in the United States and Canada clean and maintained. He says contract cleaners do 100 percent of the cleaning, but they’re currently testing a robotic floor scrubber as a way to cut labor costs and the training of new cleaners on the company’s dime.

“I’ve been looking at robots for a number of years now,” Spencer says. “The industry is scrambling to get labor, so we figure robots are a plus. We don’t worry about vacation, or sick days, and it does same thing every night — no shortcuts. Once it’s paid for there are no ongoing labor costs.

“Ideally, we’re looking to get a payback in less than two years. In our Maryland facility, we’re figuring [the robot] will clean 75,000 square feet of carpet a night, which replaces the man-hours to pay for a machine in 18 months. The life of the machine is seven years, so hopefully we’ll have over five years of labor savings with just minor repairs.”

Weston Thiss, CHESP, Director of Environmental Services at Bon Secours St. Mary’s Hospital in Richmond, Va., has successfully eliminated one full-time position with his robotic floor scrubber, which operates between 48 and 60 hours per week. “Management said if I could find a way to put it in my budget, then it was OK,” Thiss says. “I have it as a line item in my budget and pay $1,000 per month.”

Programming is a one-time proposition. The robot is walked down the middle of a hall and sends out sonar to capture flooring dimensions, assigning a code to each mapped area. The sonar also allows a robot to be used safely during business hours because it senses obstacles that weren’t there during programming. If obstructed, the robot stops, remains immobile a number of seconds, then travels around the object.
Thiss’s operator places the robot in the prescribed launch spot, keys in the code, then leaves to prepare the next section for cleaning. Water is cleaned and recycled in the 26-gallon recovery and dispensing tank, eliminating frequent changes. It automatically pages the attendant when it completes an area, and the attendant moves it to the next area.