Floor Care Tips for Office Buildings

Perhaps nothing works harder in a busy office building than its floors. With the year-round traffic from employees, visitors, and delivery drivers, lobby and hallway floors see their fair share of dirt, scuffs, and stains. The following tips, along with our general hard floor care maintenance guide, can help you preserve the life of your floors while keeping your office building safe, clean, and welcoming to all.

1. Know your flooring. Each floor type requires different cleaning products and procedures, and a typical office building has multiple flooring types. The most common floor materials found in a commercial office setting are vinyl composite tile (VCT), terrazzo, ceramic tile, and carpet. View our Floor Types & Treatments chart for a list of the products you need.

2. Develop a routine floor care program.

• High-traffic areas, such as lobbies, hallways, elevator landings, breakrooms, and common areas, should be vacuumed and mopped daily.
• Periodic hard floor maintenance, including floor scrubbing and burnishing, should be scheduled in advance for periods of low occupancy to maximize dry time and ventilation.
• Labor-intensive restorative projects - floor stripping and refinishing or carpet extraction - should be conducted as needed during holidays or other times when building occupancy is lowest. Areas should be well-marked and secured, and maintenance times should be clearly communicated to management well in advance.

3. Protect your maintenance staff. The chemicals and equipment used in routine floor cleaning procedures pose risks to humans, and often personal protective equipment (PPE) is required to prevent serious injury. Arm staff with chemical-resistant gloves, protective eyewear, respirators, and hearing protection, and ensure they are well trained on proper dilution ratios for chemicals and safe equipment handling. Consider closed-loop chemical proportioning systems that dispense precise quantities of chemicals while preventing chemicals from coming into contact with skin.

4. Choose products and equipment that promote occupant health and safety. Water-based and low-VOC floor and carpet chemicals keep harmful fumes to a minimum, and high-quality vacuum bags and filters improve indoor air quality. Durable, absorbent entrance mats, along with high-traction floor finishes, can help reduce the risk of slips and falls, which OSHA has identified as the most common causes of serious workplace injury.

Sources
http://www.greenseal.org/Portals/0/Documents/IG/PHA%20Manuals
/Chapter1_Green_Building_OM_Manual_PHA.pdf
https://www.osha.gov/SLTC/fallprotection/index.html