Facility services are a daunting task. Hundreds of daily tasks require your attention, and often multiple teams and operating schedules. Your employees, tenants, and guests count on you to keep your industrial facility safe, clean, healthy, and operating efficiently. Managing an industrial facility adds a unique set of considerations. From janitorial services and security to mechanical services, and equipment maintenance, your team has to think and operate differently.
Industrial settings often have higher safety protocols and may require specialized training, skills, and scheduling for services, especially floor care. When it comes to floor care in industrial facilities, there are a few things to keep in mind. From regular cleaning and maintenance to more intensive deep cleans, having a plan is vital to keeping your facility’s floors looking their best. Let’s take a look at some critical areas every facility services team should consider for effective industrial floor care:
Training and Assessment for Industrial Floor Care
Different flooring surfaces require different types of care, so you must identify all the surfaces you’ll be maintaining. Then you’ll need to consider the training your team needs before they start cleaning. Concrete floors, hardwood floors, tile, and carpet, require different floor care processes. In an industrial setting, you are likely to have various surface types, and a one size fits all approach to floor care won’t work.
Most janitorial services teams will understand how to care for traditional surfaces like carpet and tile. However, industrial facilities and warehouses typically have concrete or epoxy flooring environments that may need specialized care. Forklifts, conveyor belts, and industrial operations will create different wear and safety conditions. So, your janitorial services team will need to understand these unique requirements and receive proper training to deal with things like chemical or grease clean-up, which require more than just frequent sweeping and mopping. Areas with heavy foot traffic need more detailed concrete floor care, such as scrubbing and refinishing, to avoid long-term damage. Caring for these surfaces requires proper training, products, and equipment. You may want to consider hiring a professional facility services company like Marsden Services to ensure the job gets done right without facing the training, risks, and required equipment investment yourself.
Industrial Floor Care: Safety, Performance, and Morale
Keeping floors professionally cleaned and well-maintained is an essential part of safety management in every workplace. A properly maintained floor can help prevent slips, trips, and falls, while poorly maintained floors can create a hazard for employees. But in an industrial setting, proper floor care becomes an even higher priority and, thus, one of your most important considerations. One key consideration is the use of floor mats around entryways and transitions between different environments, and this may even require the addition of specialized scraper mats. Scraper mats at transition points will help remove debris, dirt, and chemicals that can quickly degrade surfaces leading to increased maintenance and replacement costs. At a minimum, your matting should allow someone to take 10-12 steps after entry at each doorway and, in some cases, even more.
Safety is just one consideration. Clean floors in your industrial facility will increase morale and make employees feel respected while contributing to improved productivity and fewer accidents. In fact, a clean, safe environment sets the stage for higher productivity. Research indicates that a clean work environment will improve operating efficiency and production in manufacturing or industrial environments.
Scheduling and Special Equipment for Industrial Floor Care
As we have mentioned, forklifts, foot traffic, and materials used in your industrial operations all create unique considerations. Additionally, many industrial settings have combined environments with administrative offices adjacent to manufacturing or warehouse settings. These various environments and surfaces require different scheduling and floor care equipment considerations.
There are three different schedules you’ll need to develop. Each will require unique timing, training, and equipment considerations. The first schedule is daily maintenance. Generally, daily floor care will include vacuuming and scrubbing or mopping to address spills, dirt, and dust particles brought in on people’s shoes or generated from your daily facility and industrial operations. Addressing these daily tasks will often require essential mops, vacuums, and floor-scrubbing equipment. The second schedule is periodic floor cleaning. Periodic care will help extend your floors’ life and the time frame between more expensive restorative care. This includes levels of stripping, scrubbing, and restoring coating materials on your floor for protective, aesthetic, or safety reasons. The frequency of periodic care will vary significantly by flooring type, foot traffic, and other factors in your operation. Periodic industrial floor care is typically done annually or semi-annually. The final schedule is restorative care. Restorative industrial floor care becomes essential when periodic care no longer provides the level of protection needed. Restorative care will often require the use of stripping equipment and chemicals. Industrial flooring restorative care removes the build-up of coatings and gets down to the original surface before the reapplication of protective coatings.
Each surface will require a different frequency and specialized equipment ranging from vacuums to floor sweepers, scrubbers, strippers, and polishers. There are walk-behind, ride-on equipment options and, in some cases, even robotic or automated systems that can help drive greater efficiency depending on the size and scale of your operations. Professional facility service providers like Marsden Services have the knowledge and experience to help you establish the proper schedules and even provide industrial floor care solutions.
Have a Plan for Your Industrial Floor Care
Industrial facility services are complex and require managing teams and countless daily details. If you consider and address all the areas covered in this article: janitorial services training for a variety of flooring types, the impact on safety, productivity, and morale, and the complexity and budget implications of proper scheduling and equipment utilization, you’ll have a plan for success in your industrial floor care.
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