In Placer County, California, the local government relies on PRIDE Industries to keep its buildings clean and safe.
Stretching from the town of Roseville (just outside of Sacramento), to Lake Tahoe on the California border, Placer County is home to some 350,000 people. Since 2008, PRIDE Industries has provided Cleaning Industry Management Standard for Green Buildings (CIMS-GB)-certified custodial services throughout the county. Buildings cleaned include libraries, healthcare facilities, and offices. PRIDE Industries also provides LEED Silver-compliant cleaning for the South Placer Adult Correctional Facility.
Situation
When COVID-19 struck, Placer County’s facilities managers implemented new cleaning requirements to keep building occupants healthy. These new requirements included frequent sanitization of high-touch points, using deep cleaning technologies such as electrostatic disinfection.
PRIDE Industries was already providing county-wide janitorial services for a variety of Placer County facilities. Since 2008, the company’s highly trained cleaning teams had provided CIMS-GB certified janitorial services for over 728,500 square feet across 53 county buildings, including Placer County libraries and the adult correctional facility. Janitorial services included general and detail cleaning, kitchen cleaning, carpet care, floor maintenance, restroom cleaning, recycling, trash removal, and window washing.
Now that cleaning needed to be taken to a new level.
Solution
The PRIDE Industries cleaning teams were ready for the challenge. Since 2008, these teams had been cleaning county buildings using a mix of proprietary and commercial green cleaning products, and applying the latest disinfection techniques.
To keep these buildings free of coronavirus and other infectious agents, PRIDE Industries implemented new cleaning protocols that increased the cleaning frequency, and used only cleaning products that were shown to kill coronavirus and other dangerous germs. Electrostatic cleaning, in which an electric charge is used to ionize the disinfectant so that it will cling to surfaces, was more widely used than ever. These deep cleaning techniques were used three times a day at 12 county facilities located across an 85-mile stretch of land from Lake Tahoe to Auburn.
Services Provided
- Trash removal
- Recycling
- Kitchen cleaning
- Floor maintenance
- Carpet cleaning
- Restroom services
- Policing escalators
- High dusting with lifts
- Window washing
- Metal polishing
- Hospital-grade, aseptic cleaning
Results
During the pandemic, PRIDE Industries workers not only stepped up their cleaning to combat coronavirus, they also successfully tackled several unexpected cleaning assignments.
- When COVID-19 protocols arrived, it looked like the county would need 12 additional employees to perform the specified disinfecting services, one for each location, which would have raised costs by 35 percent. PRIDE Industries brought in its supervisory team to review all options and was able to adjust work schedules to implement the protocols without hiring additional personnel, keeping costs within budgeted levels.
- When the county began to remodel its Finance and Administration building, an enormous amount of debris was left behind. The PRIDE Industries team took it in stride. “They arrived to find a filthy, dusty mess in our downstairs office due to all of the furniture being demoed and removed that afternoon,” Placer County Custodial Services Supervisor Danny Reynolds said. “They stepped right up and cleaned, dusted, and vacuumed the area, which I’m sure took them longer than a regular night’s cleaning. I want to thank them for being so positive and helpful in the situation.”
- A Health and Human Services Administration building faced a similar scene. “We had filled all three of the large recycle trash cans with paper, filled three large trash cans in the break room, and had broken down several boxes of recycled cardboard, filling every trash can in the building,” Reynolds said. “I came in the next morning, and everything was perfect. And they did it all in the pouring rain.”
- The county’s buildings include 11,975 square feet of public health facilities that require environmental cleaning of treatment rooms, nursing stations, exam rooms, laboratories, restrooms, and administrative areas. PRIDE Industries provides aseptic cleaning of all surfaces, including walls, ceilings, fixtures, floors, beds, trash containers, doors, light fixtures, curtains, dividers, counters, and cabinets.
Highlights
- A bonus for Placer County is that PRIDE Industries, which is based in the Placer County town of Roseville, specializes in creating jobs for people with disabilities. Hiring local residents with disabilties allows the county to improve the area’s economic and social health while receiving critically important services at a reasonable cost.
- PRIDE Industries’ innovations include developing proprietary, eco-friendly PRIDEClean® products designed according to the EPA’s Safer Choice program standards. The company’s custodial services and cleaning protocols are all certified to the Cleaning Industry Management Standards for Green Buildings (CIMS-GB), which supports LEED-compliant buildings.
- Nationwide, PRIDE Industries provides janitorial services for 26 million square feet of facilities, including 3.6 million square feet of LEED-compliant buildings. The company is a recipient of the DEAL Award for Leadership in Sustainability, is ISO 9001 Quality Management System-certified, CIMS-GB- certified by the International Sanitary Supply Association, and is certified by the International Facility Management Association for its Sustainable Facilities Professionals.
“I came in the next morning, and everything was perfect. And they did it all in the pouring rain.”
Services Provided
- Trash removal
- Recycling
- Kitchen cleaning
- Floor maintenance
- Carpet cleaning
- Restroom services
- Policing escalators
- High dusting with lifts
- Window washing
- Metal polishing
- Hospital-grade, aseptic cleaning
Highlights
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