What to Expect From a Free Facility Assessment

A free assessment sounds simple: someone from a cleaning company walks your building, looks around and sends a quote. Done well, it's more useful than that. It's a chance to put the real condition of your building on paper, hear an outside opinion, and see how a company thinks before you sign anything.

Here's what a typical walk-through involves, how to get ready for one, and what to ask. It applies to any company you invite, and it ends with how to request one from ParCou.

What a walk-through usually looks like

The format varies, but a good assessment is a physical tour with notes, not a phone interview. The visitor walks the building with you or your designee, usually starting at the main entrance and working through the spaces in the order people use them. They look at floors, surfaces, restrooms and storage, ask how the spaces are used, and write down what they see.

Expect a lot of questions. When is the building occupied? Which rooms are used after hours? Where has cleaning been a problem before? A visitor who asks nothing and just takes a square footage number is going to quote from a template.

The rooms that matter most

If time is short, make sure the walk includes these:

• The main entrance and front hallway, because that's where visitors form their impression and where the most grit comes in.
• The cafeteria or break room, where spills, food and heavy traffic combine.
• Restrooms, ideally more than one, including the one everyone complains about.
• A typical classroom or office, to see desk surfaces, floors and trash handling.
• The gym, auditorium or other large floor space, which calls for different equipment and scheduling.
• The custodial closets and storage rooms, which show how supplies are handled today.

Walking the custodial closet may feel odd, but it tells a visitor a lot about the current routine and what's missing from it.

How to prepare

A little preparation makes the visit far more productive. Before the day, pull together the following:

• A floor plan, or at least rough square footage and room counts.
• Your floor types, and when the floors were last stripped or refinished, if you know.
• Current complaints from staff, students or parents, written down in specifics.
• Your current cleaning schedule and agreement, if you have them.
• The hours when a crew can have access, and any security procedures.
• A list of who else should join the walk, such as a head custodian or a principal.

It also helps to decide in advance what you want from the service: a better look, fewer complaints, relief for your own staff, or a schedule that fits the school year. Different goals produce different scopes, and the visitor can only tailor a plan to a goal they've heard.

Questions to ask any cleaning company

• Who will clean my building, and are they your employees?
• Are your technicians trained and insured, and can you show it?
• What equipment will you use on my floors?
• How do you plan around the school calendar, breaks and summer?
• What does your written quote include, line by line?
• How will I know the work is getting done?
• What happens if something is missed?

Write down the answers. Asking the same questions of each company gives you something solid to compare later, instead of an impression you have to reconstruct from memory.

What you should walk away with

After a good assessment you should know what the company saw, what it recommends and what it needs from you. A detailed written quote should follow, listing areas, tasks and frequencies. If you receive only a number, ask for the breakdown. A company confident in its scope will provide it.

Treat the assessment as information gathering. Even if you hire no one, an outside opinion on the state of your floors, restrooms and schedules can be useful to your own team, and it gives you a baseline to measure any future provider against.

Requesting ParCou's assessment

ParCou offers a free assessment and detailed written quotes. The company is locally owned, was founded in 2014 by Jerry Parker and Mark "Gopher" Coulter, and serves educational institutions and facilities in the Greater Memphis Area as well as many facilities across Western Tennessee.

To request an assessment, call 901-504-9150 or email parcoullc@par-cou.com. Tell them about your building and what's been bothering you, and bring your questions.