A Collaboration Between Cleaning Industry Sectors

The cleaning industry ecosystem is comprised of many different yet interwoven sectors: public health, janitorial, sanitation, disinfection, distribution, equipment and chemical suppliers, service contractors, cleaning services, facility management, commercial/industrial end users in a wide range of verticals, in addition to residential. Within these sectors are specialties, such as floor care, restoration and remediation, as well as subcategories like sustainability and green.

The following case study is an example of collaboration between cleaning sectors that resulted in greater efficiency and performance for one customer.

Bill Sivori, project manager at Able Services San Francisco, runs a contract cleaning business devoted to the largest landowner in San Francisco, with a four-building complex totaling 3.2 million square feet of Class A offices and 1.2 million in retail space — and the tallest building west of the Mississippi is located a few blocks away. Sivori’s office is based in those very same buildings, and he regularly walks all 141 floors to be proactive rather than reactive in the event of a problem.

In addition to taking care of tenants’ offices, Sivori’s team also handles kitchen and private restroom detailing, as well as cleaning about 15 tenant-specific gyms and locker rooms throughout the four buildings. Though prepared for any illness or outbreak, Able Services’ other concern is economically addressing the needs of their more health focused tenants who request more frequent cleanings and disinfection services to prevent outbreaks from occurring in the first place.

Sivori is known for going beyond the pale to do everything he can possibly do for his client and tenants, from continuously bringing in new innovations to acting as Able Services’ company trainer. He even produces road shows demonstrating the best products so other Able Services operations managers can benefit from his discoveries.

Paul Giamona, an account consultant for WAXIE Sanitary Supply, is another such rare individual. Giamona knew his Able Services customer was always looking for the latest and greatest. So when he happened upon a new kind of disinfection and sanitization system he hadn’t seen before, he made sure to introduce it Sivori.

What initially piqued Giamona’s interest in this new system was that it was cordless, it had electrostatic handheld and backpack sprayers, and its sanitizer and disinfectant was in tablet form. Other systems use pre-mixed gallons, requiring much more labor and storage space, whereas tablets are compact, easy to carry and dissolve without having to return to the janitor’s closet during a job. Another key consideration was the safety and multipurpose efficacy of the chemistry. At different dilutions, the tablets could act as a surface disinfectant, a food contact surface safe sanitizer, an odor neutralizer and even a water purifier, all without exposure to harsh chemicals.

Meanwhile, Sivori liked how much the new system’s ease and speed of application would cut costs and save labor, which is the most expensive commodity in the cleaning business. Instead of four or five people spending 30-37 hours to disinfect an entire office suite and incurring astronomical labor charges, one person with a backpack sprayer could disinfect a 25,000-square-foot floor plate in about two and a half hours. Efficiency like this can have a big impact on performance and profitability.

Jeremiah Gray is the co-founder and chief operating officer of EarthSafe Chemical Alternatives in Braintree, Massachusetts. Gray is a dedicated father of two and a green technologies adviser whose passion is developing less toxic cleaning and infection control solutions.