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Utilizing Technology to Improve Custodial Operations and Facilities Management

TRAX Analytics

November 9, 2021

Many large-capacity facilities are taking advantage of the benefits that technological innovation presents in maintaining cleanliness. Ensuring that custodial staff is promptly dispatched to the correct location has often been a struggle for facility managers. Because of limited staff and high traffic, custodial teams often struggle to keep heavily-used areas adequately clean and stocked.

The use of technology has corrected many of these struggles.

For example, implementing smart restroom technology has worked to lighten the load of human custodial staff and decrease contamination opportunities in restroom facilities used by the majority of patrons.

Benefits of Custodial Technology

Implementing new technology into facility management is a venture that an increasing number of high-occupancy facilities are embracing.

Utilizing technology to improve custodial operations benefits both facility management and visiting patrons in the following ways:

Automatic maintenance notifications allow custodial staff to save time on inspecting facilities for breaks or other errors. When an issue is detected, the team is notified automatically.

Facility managers receive real-time alerts for areas in need of service so that efforts can be focused on cleaning and repairing facilities as quickly as possible.
Capacity monitoring indicates which restroom facilities are at their highest capacities, informing patrons of alternative solutions and indicating to custodial staff that extra care might be needed in high-capacity areas.
Refill notifications ensure that restrooms are always well-stocked, meaning that empty soap dispensers, empty paper towel dispensers, and overflowing trash bins have become a thing of the past.

In addition to these benefits, smart technology records logs of typical facility behaviors to predict and plan maintenance and cleaning protocols in ways that closely fit real-world facility behaviors.

This means that the technology utilized to keep facilities clean, working order collects information on patron occupancy and predicts when specific facility locations will likely need maintenance. This saves time and labor compared to depending on custodial staff to check each facility multiple times a day personally.

By utilizing technology and data analysis to improve custodial operations and facility management, high-capacity facilities can dispatch custodial staff to complete tasks based on need.

These efforts reduce the time spent by custodial staff on cleaning tasks in general. By using a demand-based approach, facilities can reduce their custodial costs while improving hygiene at the same time.