Saving money on your facilities service

Are you aware that you can save a lot of money on facility services and increase the overall quality of your building by implementing a proper walk off mat system?

The key word is a proper system. I see many companies that invest in having walk off mats in their facilities, but often they are not the right kinds for the areas that lay on the floors, or there are not enough for the results the facility requires.

Let start outside the building.... that's correct outside the building. Most companies in the Northeastern part of the USA either use rock salt or some sort of ice melt on the sidewalks and parking lots, others sand. As a person walks from their car to your facility these particles find their way into the tread on your footwear and then into the building. Therefore the first line of defense is to have what is generically called a scrapper mat outside of the facility leading to the doors. This mat is normally made from a hard rubber material that scraps the bottom of footwear to remove the big items outside of your facility.

The next faze of matting comes in the entryway hatch. This is commonly know as a transition mat. This mat still has scrapper mat qualities along with absorption qualities too. This mat continues to remove the particles in the tread of the shoes, while starting to dry the bottoms to prevent slip/fall incidents, these mats maybe wall to wall, or part of a grid system.

Once a person now enters a lobby they step onto an absorption mat, these mats are usually rubber backed, beveled edges to prevent trip/falls, and with yarn fibers that finish drying the bottom of the shoes. These mats should allow for 10 total steps to effectively dry the shoes again to reduce the slip/fall on any hard floor surface you may have in the lobby.

These absorption mats are also effective in different areas in the facility near restrooms, vending areas, break rooms, and copy centers. These mats also aid in being a filter to reduce dust and collect and moisture where it is more likely to collect (spills).

By having these mats in the proper places and the correct amounts, aids in the longevity of the flooring surfaces whether they are hard floors or carpets. It will reduce the high cost of strip-and-wax of hard floor surfaces which is the most costly cleaning process. It will also reduce the number of times secondary and low traffic carpets need to be cleaned.

Additional things to consider to reduce your cost and increase your very all quality is consider the porter services you require and that all hard floor services are dust mopped numerous times a day to reduce the amount of dirt walked into your flooring surfaces. In addition to spot mop up spills and other wet or sticky substances that attack the flooring reducing the overall quality that you are looking to obtain.

Consulting with someone who has been in the business and can help you identify your needs is another step in the right direction, because we are all good at what we do, and surrounding yourself with someone a little more knowledgeable than yourself can pay big dividends.