Cleaning a building can be a big task. Depending on the size of your building, it can involve many people and many man-hours to accomplish. Reviewing and updating the "how to clean specs" for your building is very important as budgets are squeezed and the number of available staff members dwindle. Keeping a building clean and healthy is very important and should be done correctly.

To clean properly for health, safety, and appearance there must be a plan. If after reading the title of this blog you thought to yourself, "I don't even have How to Clean Specs for my building," you are doing yourself a disservice, and it's time to correct this. If you do have a cleaning plan, periodic review and potential updates are very important. Changes in traffic flow, increases or decreases in the number of employees, or outright physical changes within a building can render older specifications obsolete. Reviewing and updating the cleaning specs for your building is as important to the building supervisor as it is to the cleaning contractor of the building. Keeping these cleaning specs current can decrease costs for the facility and increase profitability for the contractor.

A plan for cleanliness does not have to be overly complicated. It simply needs to include how, what, and when everything in the building should be cleaned.

Start by determining the desired cleanliness level and consider how much time is available for cleaning. To determine the level of cleanliness that is required for each area of the facility, consider the disinfection level necessary and the soil level present. It may seem obvious to some, but spending time disinfecting a ceiling may not be a valuable use of your time. Highly used areas of your building will collect the most visible soil and should be cleaned the most frequently while other less utilized areas can go longer between cleanings. A lot of time and money can be spent on cleaning areas that aren't utilized often, especially if something has changed within the building and the cleaning specs aren't up to date.

Once the desired cleanliness level is determined, figure out how much time can be allotted for cleaning. A lot of study and science has been devoted to figuring out how long it takes to clean. The international sanitary supply association (ISSA) has developed a very useful tool to help with this.

Keeping the cleaning specifications for your building current is important because they give a measurement to determine the success or failure of your cleaning program. There are plenty of ways to improve efficiency, decrease costs, or increase profits, but first you must ask the question, "when were the How to Clean Specs for this building last reviewed?"