Page 28 - College Planning & Management, June 2018

Facilities CAMPUS SPACES
How Clean?
Meeting cleaning expectations on campus involves various factors, from personnel to products and even artificial intelligence.
BY ROBERT KRAVITZ
WHEN IT COMES TO who cleans public and private colleges and universities throughout the U.S., the answer typically falls into one of three categories:
• Custodial workers hired directly by the institution; this is re- ferred to as “in-house” cleaning.
• Custodial workers work for a cleaning contractor that has been hired to clean and maintain the facilities; this is referred to as “outsourced” cleaning.
• A combination of both is used, with some custodial workers who are in-house and others who are outsourced.
Whatever program your institution has in place, if cleaning expecta- tions are not being met, you as an administrator should not immediate- ly assume this is the fault of the cleaning workers. Instead, take a close look at what the cleaning workers are expected or have been told to do.
What is the Scope of Work?
What we are referring to here is called the “scope of services” or the “scope of work” agreement. According to Ron Segura of Segura & Associates, a cleaning consulting firm that works with schools and universities in North and South America, a scope of services agreement can be defined as follows: “A listing of all custodial ser- vices to be performed by the cleaning workers on a daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annual basis.”
This includes everything from nightly vacuuming to cleaning carpets or light fixtures every few months. It can also be used to create a “cleaning culture,” ensuring that all cleaning workers know the focus of their job is to keep the campus clean, healthy, and safe.
“If cleaning expectations are not being met, it is very likely there is no scope of services or the ‘scope’ in use is outdated,” says
28 COLLEGE PLANNING & MANAGEMENT / JUNE 2018
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