Closeup Selective Focus Of Illinois State On A Geographical And Political State Map Of The USA

Contributed by EnvirOx.

Everyday, Lee Fox and his staff faced a closet full of cleaning products, each with their own instructions and warnings. It made training more difficult and made the daily task of cleaning the Illinois State University campus more complicated than it needed to be. As the Assistant Superintendent of Building Services, Fox knew the job would only get harder.

ISU, the oldest public university in the state, was experiencing a higher enrollment then they had seen in recent years — a 10 percent increase in its freshmen class, with enrollment topping 20,000 students. Given the uptick in enrollment, Lee knew it was time to make a change to stay to top of things.

To help his staff become as efficient as possible, Lee knew he had to tackle two main challenges. First, he needed to reduce the number of overall products used to clean the ISU campus. The more products used, the more time spent performing each task and decreasing overall efficiency. Second, he needed a cleaning program that was simple for his staff to understand and easy to use when training new employees. Complicated cleaning procedures can often lead to mistakes, causing harm to staff and damage to facilities.

Luckily, Fox met representatives from EnvirOx at a conference and saw an opportunity to make a change. By implementing a simplified cleaning system, Lee was able to eliminate several products from his daily lineup and easily train his staff on cleaning procedures.

“Having a product that has multiple uses is great. You don’t have to spend a lot of time looking for other products to do a certain task when that one product can solve just about all your tasks,” Fox said. “We were able to eliminate seven different products from our lineup.”

As a bonus, Lee was able to tackle another facility challenge – residue. His current cleaning products were leaving behind sticky residue, which attracted dirt and built up into layers. This left floors and surfaces looking dirty even after cleaning. He needed something that would cut through the residue and restore the surfaces, as well as provide daily cleaning with no residue build-up.

By implementing this new cleaning system, Lee was able to provide his staff with low-residue products that eliminated the residue issue, restoring floors to their proper condition.

The changeover has not gone unnoticed from the students and faculty who inhabit the ISU campus buildings. That’s something that Fox, who has been with the university for over 26 years, takes pride in.

“It’s a great environment, and I enjoy the service we provide for our customers," he said. "We make a lot of people happy.”

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