What building owners and facility managers don’t know about the changing world of the professional cleaning industry may be costing them. For instance, cleaning contractors still see requests for proposals (RFPs) that specify that hard-surface floors be “stripped and waxed on a monthly basis.”
The industry rarely uses the term “wax” any longer. Nowadays the preferred term is “finish” or “refinish.” It’s possible that these RFPs were created from old RFPs.
More important than the terminology, however, is the requirement itself. Stripping and refinishing a floor is one of the most time-consuming tasks in the professional cleaning industry. And time is money in cleaning, making this a costly requirement for the building owner.
Also, most floor finishes and other chemicals have advanced to the point that it simply is not necessary to strip and refinish a floor so often. Besides, stripping and refinishing a floor can have a negative impact on the environment, which is why this cleaning task should be performed as infrequently as possible.
Plus, older RFPs commonly leave both cleaning contractors and facility managers in the dark. Contractors lack information about a facility’s specific cleaning needs; managers are stumped on how to select one of the companies involved in the bidding process.
The manager typically does some research, checking references and visiting facilities cleaned by the bidding contractors, but the success of the final choice is hit or miss. And often this is no fault of the contractor; rather, the RFP was not clear about the facility’s cleaning requirements.
