lowering the expenditure on standard cleaning chemicals by US$50,000 annually per district.

Inevitably, the numbers your higher education custodial department wants to pinpoint will include those that relate to the bottom line. In fact, the more they do, the more you can justify your department’s budget.

Factors that affect the monetization of your department include:

• How things look and smell (appearance metrics)

• The happiness of your customers (customer satisfaction metrics)

• The cost of cleaning (fiscal metrics)

• The hygiene and health of the school facilities (sanitizing and health metrics).

Let’s examine each of the five performance metrics mentioned above to define them in broad terms, help drive clarity of purpose, and organize our operations for results.

Appearance Metrics“How do things look?” is a question we may ask of administrators, staff, and students, but it hardly provides a numerical goal to work toward.

Since this metric relates to customer satisfaction, it can be determined by a simple inspection, cleaning evaluation software, and customer surveys with assigned points for task results. The goal is high-point scores indicating customer satisfaction.

Ask the customer or tenant to rate the level of cleanliness on a scale from one to 10, with 10 being best. While this is indeed subjective, the nature of customer perception is subjective; they will judge the quality of your cleaning based on what they see and smell. This metric measures these impressions in a fair and objective way by averaging the viewpoint of perhaps 25 percent of facility users, plus a third-party auditor or assessor (via an unannounced visit).

Strive for daily, weekly, or monthly inspection, assigning points from one

to 10 for each item, with 10 being best, and performance receiving rates of nine or 10.

Customer Satisfaction MetricsThis metric (like appearance data) specifies end points for aspects of the quality system required for operations that are certified by the ISSA Cleaning

Industry Management Standard (CIMS). Strive for regular surveys of customers, using the same point scale as above.

For example, on a scale from one to 10, with 10 being best, is the customer happy with the cleaning and the cleaning staff’s responsiveness to input or complaints? This metric is no more

Reprinted with permission from May 2015 CM/Cleaning & Maintenance Management® magazine. ©Copyright 2015 ISSA. For a free subscription, visit www.cmmonline.com/subscribe.

complicated than that. While this is indeed subjective, perception is reality, and if customers are generally happy with the service, the surveys should reflect that.

Fiscal MetricsAccurately knowing, optimizing, and often, lowering, the cost of cleaning comes from understanding several numbers:

• Cleanable square feet or meters

• Overall cost of cleaning

• Cost per square foot of cleaning

• Square feet cleaned per full time custodial worker.

American School and University (AS&U) magazine periodically surveys schools and compiles data on costs associated with facility maintenance, including cleaning and custodial departments. For example, the 38th Annual AS&U Maintenance & Operations Cost Study determined on average, 32,100 square feet per shift are cleaned by each custodial worker.

AS&U noted with increasing pressures on custodial departments to clean more with fewer labor resources, “facility directors must look continually for ways to improve productivity so that staff can work smarter, safer, and more efficiently.”

Well-defined cleaning systems consistently raise the number of square feet cleaned per full-time custodial worker, while reducing the costs of cleaning and increasing customer satisfaction. One system reports productivity as high as 35,000-

40,000 square feet (or more) cleaned per full-time custodial worker.

Asset preservation also fits into a fiscal metric. Clean surfaces last longer, so factors should be developed to measure this for better targeting and organizing of efforts.

Sanitizing MetricsA useful sanitizing metric shows reduction of ATP levels as an indicator of organic soil (microbes or food for microbes) presence. ISSA’s Clean Standard: K-12, “a framework to help schools and other institutional facilities objectively assess the effectiveness of their cleaning processes,” uses this metric.

Proper and consistent use of handheld ATP devices (including a repeatable swabbing technique) for measurement is important to identifying trends and best practices (see ATP Meters - Six Steps to Proficiency, published by the Healthy Facilities Institute). Less germ-promoting soil as measured by lower ATP levels means fewer points of disease transmission.

According to ISSA’s How Dirty is Your Child’s School infographic, “Cleanliness is usually defined by visual inspection.” However, “When standards are used to measure cleanliness, health can improve.”

ISSA’s Clean Standard is an emerging standard that defines lower target-levels of ATP after cleaning. Achieving these target numbers, or getting closer to them, should equate to healthier school environments.

Health MetricsBeyond the common-sense knowledge that measurably cleaner surfaces can help prevent transmitting infectious disease, it is also believed that better cleaning leads to lower absenteeism, translating into more funding for schools and better learning for students.

While anecdotal data supports this belief, hard data associated with cleaning reducing absenteeism is harder to pinpoint because of confounding variables, such as ventilation, individual differences among people, and preexisting conditions, but it only makes sense that a cleaner indoor environment supports better health, attendance, and learning in schools. Controlled studies are needed before correlated metrics can be provided with scientific assurance, but meanwhile, we should keep looking for supporting trends and related information to drive healthier methods.

For example, if trying to implement either sanitizing or health metrics to build customer satisfaction, create an average score based on:

1. The healthiness of the facility based on customer and auditor-walk-through surveys

2. The healthiness of the facility based on average daily attendance (ADA) numbers, where available

How Well is My Team Cleaning?

Surveying customers is one way to find out how well your team is cleaning. But what items should you list in the survey?

Visit www.cmmonline.com/online-exclusives to access a sample of a service assessment/inspection form, which can help to determine the effectiveness of your cleaning in schools, and how your customers feel about the results.

Inevitably, the numbers your higher education

custodial department wants to pinpoint will

include those that relate to the bottom line.

In fact, the more they do, the more you can

justify your department’s budget.

Reprinted with permission from May 2015 CM/Cleaning & Maintenance Management® magazine. ©Copyright 2015 ISSA. For a free subscription, visit www.cmmonline.com/subscribe.

3. The healthiness of the facility based on average ATP post-cleaning numbers.

Additionally, settled dust levels are an indicator of what is airborne and inhalable. Lower levels of settled dust equates to lower levels of airborne dust as a possible trigger of asthma and allergies. Again, while customer perception is subjective, human visual acuity, olfactory, and other senses are quite sensitive and can detect dust, odor, and other contaminants without the need for scientific devices. This perception, when averaged across enough users of the facility and unannounced third-party audits, can contribute to the accurate sense of clean and healthy, with more scientific assessments pending further development of the Clean Standard.

The health metric also needs a disclaimer that states it is not a scientific measurement, but reflects customer and auditor impressions and sensibilities. There can be a requirement for meeting certain Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) metrics for use of green, sustainable products, but this, like other metrics, is from a customer-centric view. Involving operations staff in discussion of HVAC filtration and other indoor environment factors enables true collaboration for cleaner, healthier environments with greater customer satisfaction and well-being.

Systems Govern The guiding principle to correct disorganized operations was stated by Dr. W. Edwards Deming as, “People do not fail, systems do.” How can we successfully apply a systems-model to organize a custodial department?

Several of Deming’s 14 key principles for management, which can be found on The W. Edwards Deming Institute’s website, apply:

• “Improve constantly and forever the system of production and

service, to improve quality and productivity, and thus constantly decrease costs.”

• “Cease dependence on inspection to achieve quality. Eliminate the need for inspection on a mass basis by building quality into the product [or service] in the first place.”

• “Institute training on the job.”

• “Institute a vigorous program of education and self-improvement.”

The business axiom, “What is measured gets done,” applies with equal force to higher education custodial operations seeking measurable ways to define and target improvement. Organizing and reorganizing custodial departments using key metrics or numbers can help professionalize cleaning efforts, help operations do more with less, and help them succeed in the fiscally disciplined environment of higher education facilities maintenance.

Process Cleaning for Healthy Schools® (PC4HS) is a 501c3 nonprofit organization with a mission of “schools helping schools.” The process optimizes efficiency, cleanliness, ease of deployment and health factors through a carefully designed and documented system tailored for early learning centers, K-12 school districts and higher education.

www.pc4hf.org

PC4HS Advisory Board

Gary Allread Ph.D.Program Director, Institute for Ergonomics at The Ohio State University

Carla BurkeAttorney-at-Law, Baron & Budd

Martin Chapman Ph.D.President, INDOOR Biotechnologies; Professor of Medicine, University of Virginia

Charles P. Gerba Ph.D.Professor of Environmental Microbiology, University of Arizona

Jay Glasel Ph.D.Managing Member and Founder, Global Scientific Consulting, LLC

G. Victor Hellman, Jr. Ed.D.Research Project Director, Education Facilities Clearinghouse (EFC) funded by the U. S. Department of Education

Russell J. KendziorPresident and CEO, Traction Experts, Inc.; Founder, National Floor Safety Institute (NFSI)

Dr. Jason Marshall ScDDirector, UMass Toxics Use Reduction Institute (TURI) Surface Solutions Laboratory

David Mudarri Ph.D.EPA Senior Analyst, Indoor Environments Division (retired), United States Environmental Protection Agency

Field Advisory Board

Tony AlmeidaCustodial Leader, Elk Grove (CA) Unified School District (USD)

Kalli M. ButtCustodial Quality Assurance Coordinator, Facility Operations, Facilities & Asset Management, Portland Public Schools (PPS)

Ryan DoschadisCustodial Services Supervisor, Pella Community School District, Pella, IA

Michael JonesDirector of Custodial Services, Columbia Public Schools

Reprinted with permission from May 2015 CM/Cleaning & Maintenance Management® magazine. ©Copyright 2015 ISSA. For a free subscription, visit www.cmmonline.com/subscribe.