Tell us about your company?
Chicago Contract Cleaning was started 12 years ago. We are a janitorial contractor specializing primarily in high security government work. We tend to bid only on places where security is an issue. At the airport, all workers have to be fingerprinted and approved by the FBI. This is the same in government court buildings. In Illinois, school employees have to have criminal background checks and fingerprints taken because they work with children. All of our employees are fingerprinted and background checked and have drug screening as well.
What do you do?
I am the General Manager. My primary responsibilities are sales and estimating. My job is to get new clients. I have been here since the company started, in the same position. I was in the janitorial business before I started here.
How many clients do you have?
We have about fifteen to twenty clients, but that is because we only go after large customers. We have customers in school districts and courthouse buildings. They are all in Illinois. We have about 250 employees total. Most of these are janitors. We are a union contractor.
Who is your biggest client?
Midway Airport is our biggest client. There, we clean the washrooms and hallways. Each airline is responsible for its own area. But the public areas — the corridor you walk down, the washroom you use, and the food court you sit in — all of those areas are ours, plus the back offices.
How do you use our system?
We are responsible for cleaning all of the washrooms at Midway. There are 30 very large public washrooms. These are the kind with ten to fifteen stalls in each. These need to be policed, restocked, spot mopped, and checked. They have to be checked at minimum every hour. After midnight, once the airport has slowed down, we block sets of washrooms off and go in and do a thorough cleaning from top to bottom. But, I got The PIPE primarily for the 20 hours a day that the airport is very busy. This is for two reasons — one is to verify when someone is there because so many people use the washrooms. When a flight comes in, it can have 250 people on it and the first thing most people do is use the washrooms. We can have 500 to 1000 people use a washroom in an hour. So, the washrooms take tremendous amount of use. We go through a lot of soap and toilet paper. We can use 800 cases of toilet paper in a month. So, the washrooms can be spotless at noon, but two flights can come in and the washroom will look like it has not been cleaned in a week by 12:30 p.m.
The PIPE is used to verify the last time we had someone onsite. It is also to see how long they stayed there. They punch in and out at each location. We allocate them about ten to fifteen minutes to do the basics to each washroom. Then, they go to their next location. So, we can track when they were there, how long they were there, and how long it took them to get to the next location. In the B Concourse, for example, there are four rooms the worker would be in charge of. So, they would just keep doing the section over and over. The PIPE is our way of verifying if the FAA calls us and says something is wrong. We can verify when we were there and that we are doing our job. It is a management tool to prove to the customer that we were there. It is also a management tool for us to make sure that our people are where they are supposed to be when they are going from one place to another. The important thing is that now we have proven to the FAA that we are doing our job, and our people know that we are watching them.
Where are the buttons?
The buttons are behind a pipe closet door. This is where the PIPEs go behind the toilets and sinks so that they can be easily fixed. The door is about 24 inches and we put the buttons in there.
How many PIPES do you have?
At Midway, we have five and we are buying three more because of areas of expansion. Each person carries a PIPE throughout their whole shift. Each person has a button assigned to them that they have to activate at the start of their shift.
What did you use before Guard1 Plus?
We did not use anything, but now we use Guard1 Plus as a marketing tool. We included Guard1 Plus when we presented to the airport to get the contract. We were looking for things to differentiate us from other vendors. Everyone else uses sign-in sheets in each washroom. Using your system shows a higher level of sophistication and an understanding of computers.
Where else is our system used?
We use your system at the Comfort Stations on the lakefront. These are houses on the beach to shower and change clothes. From Memorial Day to Labor Day, when the beaches are officially open, we run two shifts of people. Rather than walking down a concourse of an airport, they actually drive from one beach to the next. They would have four beaches in row, which would be a three-mile stretch of the lakefront. They continually clean the beach houses for sixteen hours a day from 6 a.m. to midnight. This is a man and woman team.
Where do you have Downloaders?
We have Downloaders on site at the airport where the workers pick up The PIPE, so they can download it easily.
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