Any housekeeping veteran knows that “clean” is a relative condition. How one defines it may just depend on which hat he or she is wearing at the time: custodian, operations manager, property manager, tenant or visitor. No doubt, public restrooms represent a double-edged sword for property owners.

If restrooms don’t meet the cleanliness criteria of a cross section of building players, management’s in trouble. Similarly, savvy housekeepers appreciate that prize-winning restrooms require elbow grease, systematic attention to detail and wise restroom product choices.

Manuel Gomez, regional manager of environmental services for Broward General Medical Center, Fort Lauderdale, Fla., suggests that restroom maintenance efforts can have a subliminal effect on the public: Shiny, immaculate restrooms with high-performing amenities encourage users to treat their surroundings with a higher level of respect. The reverse is true for neglected restrooms: They invite abuse and indifference.

Traffic flow
Frequent restroom use rapidly impacts a facility’s state of cleanliness. It is not hard to understand that the more users a restroom has, the greater the potential for unsightly conditions and health risks. The Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., receives about 30 million visitors a year and keeping up the restrooms’ appearance level is a constant challenge.

“A lot of our visitors are enthusiastic kids and they are not always the neatest people in the world,” says Alan Pride, associate director of the systems reliability division at the museum.

Restrooms commonly are littered with paper towels, toilet paper, candy wrappers and museum brochures. The Smithsonian is a prime example of a venue with heavy traffic and a large amount of daily debris.

To counter this unusually high potential for littering and general abuse, Nancy Bechtol, the museum’s director of the office of facilities management, instituted a cleaning program based on lessons learned from McDonald’s and Marriott Hotels. Utilizing one of the program’s key strategies, the management staff makes random spot checks and grades each restroom on a scale of 1 to 100. The Smithsonian shoots for a cleanliness level of 95 at all times, but many restrooms average in the 80s. Even so, this is a vast improvement over the grades of 5 to 15 some restrooms were receiving at the start of the program.

“Employees are being more conscientious now than they were in the past because they know how they are being graded,” Bechtol says.

Custodians at the Broward General Medical Center also face a steady flow of visitors. In the restrooms surrounding the McDonald’s inside the medical center, it was not uncommon to find large amounts of trash including paper towels, McDonald’s bags and diapers scattered on the floor.

Since there was no way to curtail restroom traffic, Gomez decided to increase cleaning frequency. Rather than adding staff, Gomez changed the schedules and timing of the cleaning. Instead of six times in an eight-hour shift, the restrooms are cleaned eight times and are attended to every hour from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m.

“We police the bathrooms continually,” Gomez says.

In addition to implementing additional cleaning cycles, Gomez recently replaced covered waste receptacles with new ones that don’t have lids.

“Now we don’t have to force the customers to touch the lid,” Gomez says.

Though the new receptacles are only a few weeks old, they already are proving to be more efficient. Hours go by before any litter is found on the floor.

Vandalism
While dirt and wear and tear in a restroom are unavoidable, housekeepers can do something to minimize restroom abuse. Vandalism traditionally takes place in the form of graffiti and destruction to bathroom furnishings and fixtures.

Chuck Hollar, director of buildings and grounds at Columbus (Ohio) Public School District, says that graffiti is a big problem in school districts across the country.

“If you leave graffiti alone, it grows. It’s an invitation for people to try their shot,” says Hollar. “[But] if you clean it immediately, you’ll reduce it. You can’t eliminate it, but you certainly can control it.”

Graffiti has become so problematic in the Columbus public schools that restroom cleaning has increased from twice a week to daily. Restrooms are now as high a cleaning priority as the classrooms.

Terry Major, facilities manager for the Southeast Missouri State University in Cape Girardeau, Mo., agrees that graffiti has to be addressed as quickly as possible.

Custodians at the university first try to remove the graffiti with their daily arsenal of products. If these cleaners can’t handle the job, a supervisor is brought in to help. If the problem still remains, then a work order is submitted to the maintenance/engineering department for the damaged area to be painted.

But destructive student tagging is not the only vandalism problem in schools today. For years, students have targeted paper products and toilets.

Hollar installed retrofit flush valves on the toilets to prevent them from overflowing by repeat flushing during clogs. Students have to wait before they are able to flush again, but Hollar did not disclose this new operational detail.

Now, with the added delay, if students plug the toilet with paper towels, they are unable to flush continuously.

On the other hand, Major felt that the toilets weren’t the primary problem and went straight to the source — the towels. Five years ago, the university had pull-towel dispensers that made it very easy for users to grab more towels than they needed. One such user, dubbed “The Nester,” went around the campus vandalizing the men’s restrooms with the excess hand towels.

“He would pull a handful of towels, build a nest on the commode and then do his business,” Major says.
But when the university switched to a lockable roll-towel dispenser with a timer, the “nesting” problems stopped. The new dispensers distribute a towel every five seconds, reducing the time and temptation for vandalism.

Out with the old problems, in with the new
While most managers are well aware of the challenges, some of the more exasperating problems are difficult — if not impossible — to remedy. Some restrooms’ appearance levels don’t have much chance of improving, especially when the restrooms are old. No matter how hard custodians clean, the restroom still won’t look its best.

“The biggest problem is making the old look decent,” says Tom Parrish, custodial manager for Washington State University, Pullman, Wash. “It can be clean, but it still looks worn-out.”

Parrish deals with restrooms with a variety of ages, ranging from the 1920s and 1930s, up to new. Many restrooms have old metal partitions covered in graffiti, paint scratches and rust. Parrish says it’s hard to make the partitions look nice without painting them, but unfortunately there isn’t enough maintenance staff to keep up with the painting needs.

“All custodians can do is try to keep graffiti off and remove it, but they can’t do anything about the scratches,” Parrish says.

Some newer restrooms have fully colored plastic partitions. These partitions make Parrish’s job easier because the color doesn’t come off when scratched. Since they are made of plastic, the partitions don’t rust.

But not all of Parrish’s problems are a result of aging restrooms. Modern facilities can present their own problems, as well. Some of the freestanding sinks have been replaced with large counter sinks. With the increased cleaning area, it takes custodians longer to clean them. Also, most countertops are either black or white — two colors that are not ideal for custodians.

“The black counters show dust and water spots,” says Parrish. “If someone washes their hands and drips on the counter, the water dries out to a spot and it shows.” White counters don’t fare any better because they show fingerprints.

Another big problem for custodians is cleaning around all the obstacles on a floor and getting into all of the floor’s nooks and crannies. Depending on the cleaning frequency aimed at floor maintenance, dirt can easily build up around the edges of the floor and in the grout lines.

Major says the best solution for this is a poured-in-place resinous floor. This type of flooring is installed in one piece without grout lines making it much easier and faster to clean.

As time goes by, new restroom challenges will no doubt test the cleaning mettle of housekeeping crews and housekeeping managers. Restroom housekeeping is an inherently challenging task. The key, now and in the future: work hard — and smart — in tackling perennial problems.

—By Dan Weltin, Products editor




POSTED ON: 6/1/2003