It seems, no matter how long you have been a maintenance manager, some parts of the job are just unpleasant. Every maintenance manager faces the daunting task of maintaining hard floors on top of an already varied and complex workload. Here are the four worst things about maintaining hard surface floors.
1. Keeping Up with Daily Soil Loads
From the moment the doors open in the morning, you know that the soil is coming. What’s less clear is how to manage labor to maintain the soil load while juggling all of the other tasks that need to be done. Different types of flooring present different challenges, like grouted tile that traps soil and bacteria in the grout lines, making it difficult to remove. If the soil load is not fully removed by the end of the day, the floors start to deteriorate.
2. Worrying about Slips and Falls
Many popular methods for maintaining hard floors also leave the floors wet and unsafe for roughly a half-hour afterwards - not to mention accidents and spills during the day that also create unsafe conditions and require cleaning. Do you shut down those areas from use? Or do you allow people to pass, hoping that they see the wet floor sign and take caution? As bad as it is to worry about a slip-and-fall accident, dealing with the aftermath of one is even worse.
3. Scheduling Stripping and Recoating
When daily hard surface maintenance is not up to snuff, soils become embedded. Unfortunately, the process of removing the embedded soils is usually abrasive and often removes or degrades the finish. Then the floors must be stripped and recoated. If it’s difficult to find time for routine maintenance, it can be even harder to find time to strip and recoat floors.
4. Calculating Replacement Costs
This part is the absolute worst and hopefully very rare. When wear and tear, often from poor maintenance and cleaning practices, damages the flooring surface itself, it’s time for a flooring replacement. Hopefully replacement funds have already been allocated in the facility budget, but necessary replacements don’t always align with the projected schedule. Then you have to calculate the costs and find the funds – which is never pleasant or easy.
Kaivac Makes it Better
Maintaining hard surface floors is always a challenge. When labor falls short and cleaning falls behind schedule, hard surface maintenance can become a huge headache. Hard floor cleaning with Kaivac makes the worst parts about maintaining hard floors a lot better. Find out how Kaivac cleaning systems save labor, ensure efficiency, and improve safety for maintenance workers and building occupants alike.
See the Best Hard Floor Care Systems from Kaivac >
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