Deferred Maintenance: Turning Crisis Into Strategy

This article was originally published in Facilities Maintenance Decisions.

Maintenance and engineering managers know all too well that deferred maintenance never went anywhere. In the last five years, many people inside and outside of institutional and commercial facilities were understandably preoccupied with fallout from the nation’s financial crisis.

While all that was occurring, managers were continuing to address the mounting backlog of maintenance needs many facilities have faced for decades. So while the issue of deferred maintenance might seem like it has only recently become a problem again, managers know that it never really stopped.

Read the full article here to learn more about the costs of deferred maintenance.

Developing A Winter Floor Care Program

This article was originally published in Contracting Profits. 

On a blustery January day, a building service contractor, responsible for upkeep and maintenance at an office building in northern Wisconsin, spends hours shoveling and blowing snow away from building entrances. After clearing the snow, the BSC notices patches of ice and compacted snow remain in spots and decides an ice melt will be needed to mitigate the risks of slips-and-falls.

The problem with these products, however, is that although they remove the ice and snow hazard, they also pose a hazard to facility floors if they are tracked in.

So, what’s a BSC to do? The answer lies in developing a winter floor care program with damage prevention at its core.

The elements of a preventative winter floor care program include entrance matting inside and out, increased frequencies for dust mopping and damp mopping, and regular use of floor neutralizers to remove build-up as it occurs.

Check back next week to learn how to protect floors.