Data-Based

Are you one with your buildings’ essential data? Do you have the following information at your fingertips?: total square feet, number of restrooms, number of toilets in each restroom, various flooring types, number of square feet of each flooring type, room types — offices, classrooms, restrooms, patient rooms — and number and total square feet of each room type.

With this information in tow, housekeeping managers will have the tools they need to support budget requests, calculate employee workloads, request products and equipment, and specify building materials. They also will use this data to add up cleaning costs, execute “what-if” scenarios, track complaints and pinpoint trends in employee performance.

“Organizations that [collect and use building data] are the well-run ones,” says Steve Spencer, facilities specialist in cleaning and interior maintenance, State Farm Insurance, Bloomington, Ill. “Managers who don’t collect data are just winging it.”

Mining data
To get the most accurate picture of their organizations’ buildings, cleaning managers should have a detailed map of their facilities.

“The cleaning department should have a facility plan document that shows rooms and walls, floor-covering identification, square footage and furniture, if possible,” Spencer says.

There are a few ways to get this information.

The engineering department or the planning department in most organizations should have the original drawings of buildings for locating sewer lines, electrical access and so on. If not, then the original architect should have the plans for the building, Spencer says.

Another option, although not as complete, is to survey your buildings measuring rooms and drawing the building on a CAD (computer-aided design) program. Some organizations have CAD programs or a CAD provider. If so, the engineering or planning department should have CAD documents. If not, CAD documents would have to be created from original building plans.

Sometimes managers find they need to use a combination of CAD documents, drawings and tape measurements to get the most accurate data.

“We actually had the CAD drawings on file,” says Barry Meyer, manager of housing services, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Md. “Some of our residence halls are 80 years old. Fortunately, I have the architectural drawings for those buildings. We went through buildings with hard copies of drawings and changed anything that didn’t match the drawing.”

Meyer then instructed his supervisor to give each room or area a name, identify room types, note the floor covering, as well as the tasks required to clean the room. This information was entered into a software program.

The University of Nebraska-Lincoln custodial department collects similar data and also includes annual frequencies of cleaning, density of cleaning (heavy, medium, light), minutes per 1,000 square feet to clean the area (based on the International Sanitary Supply Association (ISSA) standards), and the worker assigned to that area. “It is important to us that we keep it simple,” says Ron Bailey, associate director of custodial services for the university. Bailey adds that because area types and uses change from time to time, it is important that areas are surveyed and data is updated annually.

Managing data
Once building data is collected, it can be entered into a customized software program or a basic spreadsheet application commonly included among PC software: Microsoft Excel® or Microsoft Access®, for example.

Bailey, who uses Microsoft Excel^®, started collecting building data 20 years ago when he started at the university. “For the first five years we did everything on paper,” he says. “We finally got a word processor, then our first PC. The first version of Excel was pretty rough.”

The spreadsheet program has been updated over the years, and although it is working well, Bailey says he is considering a possible transition into a different program designed especially for the university in the future.

Other organizations have purchased software programs designed for cleaning operations.

Meyer uses a custodial software program that is also spreadsheet-based, but already is set up for entering specific cleaning information. The program includes ISSA cleaning times and also computes the time it should take to clean any given area. “If your situation is different, you can change times up to 100 percent more or 50 percent less in each task or area,” Meyer says. He also uses handheld PCs to gather data and download to his desktop PC.

Some software programs are designed for educational facilities and include ways organizations can benchmark with the APPA (the Association of Higher Education Facilities Officers) “five appearance levels of cleaning.” According to APPA, managers who use these programs can determine if they have the proper number of full-time employees or if cleaning frequencies are at a satisfactory level.

There are also programs geared toward health-care environmental services. Software features include bed tracking, as well as cleaning times and requirements for patient areas, operating rooms, lobbies and so on. Programs also help environmental services managers assign work daily to employees.

“The program shows the number of empty beds on the mainframe and how many discharges there are that day,” says Louise Grieme, director of environmental services, Longmont (Colo.) United Hospital. “It also tells me that I might need to pull staff from different areas to help a housekeeper get the number of rooms done that day.”

Cleaning-product manufacturers also offer software programs for managing cleaning operations data, often as a value-added service with product purchases.

“My local distributor did all the work,” says Steve Mack, director of university custodial services, Ohio University. “They do all the data entry and generate reports. I can generate a report anytime I want.”

Mack works with generally the same data other managers with basic spreadsheet programs might collect. But some managers might prefer to gather building information on their own. Also, manufacturer software often is tied to the manufacturer’s products. “I looked into software from chemical companies, but I didn’t want to use one from a chemical company because the product was imbedded in the program,” Meyer says. Switching products later on would most likely affect the data already entered in the program because it would be based on one brand of products, he adds.

Data entered and organized correctly gives managers answers to important questions regarding staffing, costs and cleaning frequencies.

Workloading
With square footage, cleaning times and tasks, and worker data, managers can note areas where their facilities might be overstaffed or understaffed, using benchmarking tools like APPA’s levels mentioned earlier. Housekeeping managers who keep track of facility data admit that at one time they simply took a guess based on their experience and how they knew other buildings were staffed when it came to developing workload strategies.

“If someone were to ask me before ‘Why are there four workers in the administrative building and only three in this building?’ I used to say, ‘Well, there are four floors in that building so we put one FTE on each floor,’” Bailey says.

After analyzing employee workload and determining that certain areas have too many or too few workers, managers can shuffle staff around to increase productivity. Even if managers find they have the right number of staff in the right areas, this closer look at staffing helps verify that they are on the right track.

By taking a look at employee workload and having a printed report to prove it, managers can show workers why one employee might be cleaning twice as much area as another employee, for example. “Employees have better morale after completing the [workload] study,” says Vogelsang. “People feel that it’s fair.”

Proof in numbers
Workload reports, in addition to building data, are essential tools when talking to upper management and organization administrators — especially when it comes to justifying a budget request or backing up the need for an additional FTE.

“The days are gone when I can say, ‘Trust me, I have 20 years of experience. I know it takes three people to clean [a certain area],’” Vogelsang says. “Now my boss says ‘Prove it. Show me how you know.’”

Providing detailed reports can make a significant difference in the outcome of budget meetings. When presented with a reduction in budget, managers can show exactly how the cut is going to impact cleaning.

Once faced with a reduction of approximately $50,000, Bob Hodnik, director of environmental services, University of Pittsburgh-Shadyside hospital, used facility data and his expertise to show his boss and CEO what losing that amount of funding would mean to cleaning standards.

“You can’t find that kind of money in cleaning supplies — it’s mostly labor — so I performed a task analysis and kept reducing frequencies until I was down 10 FTEs,” Hodnik says. “Then I went to [administration] and said, ‘are you OK with lowering standards in these areas in order to meet your request?’ They said ‘No, we will find the money somewhere else; We don’t want to lower the standard that much.’”

Housekeeping data also helps managers plan for taking on additional space created through building changes and new construction. Grieme and her housekeepers recently became responsible for cleaning operating rooms, once cleaned by operating-room staff.

“By using my software program, I figured out how much time it would take and the staff needed to clean that area,” Grieme says. “Then I said, ‘OK, I can take on this area, but this is what we are going to need daily, weekly, monthly and annually.’”

Johns Hopkins University is planning for a $65 million building that includes a Barnes & Noble and 600 student living spaces. Meyer says he has been heavily involved in the planning process. “We already have the architect’s drawings,” he says. “We can workload the building before it’s even built and tell administration to budget for a certain number of custodians.”

What-ifs
When dealing with a change in equipment, floor covering or area application, managers who know their buildings can use data to run through hypothetical situations to find out how to best approach the change.

For example, cleaning managers can easily compute the difference between vacuuming a large carpeted hallway using a 14-inch machine versus a 28-inch large-area machine. Similarly, managers can see how a change in an area’s surfaces affects cleaning.

“Let’s say you have restrooms with vinyl flooring that you have to strip, buff, scrub, etc., each floor,” says Spencer. “But you know that with ceramic tile, you just clean it. Knowing how much time it takes to maintain certain types of floor coverings with a workloading program will give you more professional, concrete data.”

In addition to equipment and surface types, facility operational changes impact cleaning staff and resources. Hodnik once had a 1 million-square-foot out-patient facility switch to an in-patient facility. “The number of square feet hasn’t changed but what you’re doing in that area has changed,” he says. “The entire dynamic and labor associated with that area is different.”

Similarly, when areas change, managers often have to remind other facility management how the changes impact cleaning.

Serious managers tune in to buildings for basics
Housekeeping managers often use building and workloading data to justify housekeeping strategies or justify budget requests. But gathering an exhaustive, detailed database keeps managers in tune with their facilities and ensures they are running their cleaning department in the most effective manner.

“You need this information in order to be taken seriously,” Spencer says. “Determining the chemicals you need, the difference in floor surfaces, comparing buildings … it all takes off from knowing basic information.”