Q&A

How many housekeepers should be deployed to service 50,000sqft area of a university or school?

For an area of 50,000sqft, we must first decide the activities and frequency. If it has clear floor area of roughly 35,000sqft, and considering it needs to be scrubbed clean once a day, we can deploy an auto-scrubber drier to do it in three to five hours depending on the time available for the activity. This means, one janitor and one machine. Out of the balance area of 15,000stft, we must identify how much is the area covered by office, toilet blocks, etc.; how many toilets are of gents and how many of ladies. This would decide how many lady janitors are required.

If the lobbies and reception area are to be maintained through the operating hours, we need damp and dry mopping to be done at a frequency of every two hours. In such a case, the toilets and other areas can be maintained by the same janitor(s). Glass cleaning and outside area cleaning could be managed by one janitor – again, depending on the measure of the area and frequency desired.

The janitor operating the machine can also be given additional tasks to cover the duration of the shift. Further, the number of shifts required would decide whether specific areas need to be cleaned once a shift (S1) or once a day (D1). A sample compilation of these would give us the following results with the assumptions:

Janitor 1: Scrubbing four hours and supervision, customer interaction

Janitor 2 (gents) : Toilet touch up, deep cleaning, office cleaning and mopping in between

Janitor 3 (lady) : Toilet touch up, deep cleaning and mopping of lobbies alternately

Janitor 4 : Clearing the waste paper bins and setting up liners, glass cleaning activity

This deployment can suffice weekend periodical cleaning schedule as well. The occupancy and requirement would decide whether these activities could be staggered or need to be multiplied for the second shift and third shift.

Vinay R Deshmukh

CEO, Forbes Facility Services Pvt Ltd