Streamlining Your Cleaning Operations by Workloading
Back in the day, many building service contractors (BSC's) would simply visit with the prospect, do a quick visual inspection of the facility, take a few measurements, and through experience, guesswork, or the use of a crystal ball, assess the cost of cleaning that building.
Technology and innovation has allowed BSC's to streamline their cleaning operations by workloading.
What is workloading? It is a system in which you analyze the amount of time it takes to complete certain cleaning tasks. It is through this analysis that BSC's can correctly schedule the appropriate number of staff needed for the building and estimate how long it will take for the cleaning staff to perform the cleaning specifications over a set period of time.
But workloading is much more than just adding up the minutes it takes to empty trash, vacuum, sweep and clean restrooms. There are variables involved that affect workloading estimates including non-productive times. The time it takes your cleaning technicians to pick up/ clean up equipment, gathering and restocking supplies and taking breaks are all considered non-production time. Even though it is not initially figured into the workloading time, it does need to be included in the total time to clean and final proposed price.
Variables that can affect cleaning rates:
- Building classification (Class A, B, C) and hours of occupancy/operation
- Population density
- Weather conditions
- Cleaning tools and equipment used
- Types of surfaces (tile, stone, carpet, wood, glass, stainless steel…)
- Public/off street traffic and customer access
- Customer quality expectations
By implementing a workloading system, cleaning business owners have a much better understanding of their labor costs and time involved to clean individual facilities. And is definitely a big plus when it comes to planning, scheduling, and bidding on new accounts.
What is workloading all about?
It used to be that cleaning contractors had to put pen to paper in order perform workloading analysis and create production rates, which was a fairly time consuming task. Technology has modernized the process by cutting down the time and complexity of the workloading process using software programs. Workloading has become a popular method because it is now a much easier process which makes it attractive for the end-user. It is through workloading that production rates are created. Production rates are simply a measure of productivity.
There are cleaning production rates available today from resources such as The Janitorial Store or from trade associations such as ISSA (International Sanitary Supply Association). Remember, these are only industry estimates. It is of utmost importance for you to know your company's production rates simply because no two companies are going to have identical rates.
Workloading Example
Let's use restroom cleaning. Using The Janitorial Store's Cleaning Production Rates Calculator, cleaning a toilet from top to bottom takes about 2.5 minutes, cleaning a urinal top to bottom about 2.25 minutes, and cleaning the sink about 1 minute. If you have an average size restroom with one urinal, two toilets and two sinks – it should take the cleaning technician just under 10 minutes to clean the restroom fixtures.
Let's also say the bathroom is 12x12 (144 sq.ft.) and has tile flooring. Using an 8" synthetic house broom and 16 oz. mop head w/bucket wringer to sweep and mop the floor, these tasks together will take an additional 5-6 minutes to perform. That is a total time of around 15 or 16 minutes to complete the restroom cleaning tasks.
If you now included the non-production time it takes for the cleaning technician to retrieve the cleaning equipment from the janitors' closet, mix the mop water, clean up and put away equipment, you might want to include an additional 10 minutes. The total time to complete the restroom cleaning example above is estimated at around 25 minutes. If the customer wants their bathroom cleaned 3 times a week, you would multiply 25 x 3, giving you a total time to clean the bathroom of 75 minutes each week.
We exaggerated the non-production time in this example somewhat for sample purposes only. But we wanted to stress the fact that non-production times do have an effect on production rates and need to be considered on every job.
Workloading the facility means creating a list of cleaning specifications to be performed, assigning frequencies to each, and applying production rates for each of those tasks. Be sure to provide a copy of the cleaning specifications at each location and/or provide one to each member of the cleaning staff assigned to the location.
Streamlining beyond workloading
BSC's can increase productivity and thus, decrease production rate times by implementing a variety of strategies. Improving training procedures, providing the appropriate tools and equipment, and establishing cleaning routes, to name a few, can make a big difference towards improving production rates.
The restroom example above used a house broom and string mop/wringer for the workloading sample. By implementing a backpack vacuum with 20” floor tool and flat mop with bucket wringer, the production time can be reduced by 30%. Not only was there a reduction in the time to clean, but by using a backpack and flat mop, the tile is likely much cleaner.
Although there is an initial investment cost to upgrade the equipment, the reduction in cleaning times and labor costs will be returned 10-fold. Investing in newer and highly efficient equipment is just one way to get cleaning technicians to max out their efficiency and effectiveness and shorten cleaning times.
It is the BSC's job to constantly monitor and analyze their company's productivity and continually attempt to improve upon them in order to clean more efficiently.
Conclusion
Workloading the individual tasks and adding them up will provide you with an accurate estimate of just how long it should take your cleaning staff to clean the building. It allows you to manage both productivity and staffing levels, which equates to profitability.
Workloading will allow you to break down the workload of the building using detailed analysis that will assist you in determining the optimal plans for your customer's facility.
Read the following article for a more in depth look at workload analysis:
How to Analyze Employee Workloads
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