Operations Division FY20 Annual Report

Excellent service
excellent stewardship
Operations Division
Annual Report - FY20
Operational readiness while using our time and
resources wisely.
08
efficiency
Custodial team’s new cleaning strategy
modifies the way services are delivered
Quality and efficiency are key when it comes to the
Operations Division providing services for Texas
Tech University. Operations has recently invested
in a training program for the custodial team that
will focus on common areas and classrooms while
creating a healthier indoor environment. Currently,
the custodial team practices Zone Cleaning where
one custodian is assigned one floor or section of a
building. The new Team Cleaning assigns a specialty
to a custodian then, they work together as a team to
clean an entire building.
Aaron Smith, Managing Director for Operations
Services, says the new Team Cleaning practice is
simply a systematic approach to cleaning a facility.
“Historically what we have done in this profession is
a custodian is hired and we say this is your building
and this is your area. Take care of it, “ Smith said.
“With that, what team cleaning does is it creates
specialized divisions of labor that’s systematic.
So, you have a restroom specialist now who just
handles restrooms. Then, you have some one
that’s a light duty specialist that goes through and
empties trash cans and dusts all the horizontal
surfaces. Then, you’ve got a utilities specialist and
they will pick up all the collected trash bags and
spot clean elevators, stairs, and things like that.
Then, you have a vacuum specialist and they do just
that, they’re vacuuming. All these specialists work
together as a team to systematically go through a
building in a very precise way.”
The custodial staff at Operations maintains over
4 million square feet of campus. Which means
currently each custodian services over 30,000
square feet each day. With such a large workload
Smith says Team Cleaning will help custodial
employees not feel overwhelmed or overworked.
“What we do with team cleaning is we right-size
everything,” Smith said. “So we’re making them
more efficient so they know through this process
where they should be by their break time and
where they should be by lunch time. The building
is looked at from a floor plan perspective of what
our cleaning space is. Then, each building is work
loaded so you know where to start and where to
end and how much time it should take.”
Not only is Team Cleaning benefitting employees
but Aaron says the University will see significant
savings, especially with chemical costs.
“So the cleaner that we typically use a lot of around
campus is something called Alpha or Oxivir,” he said
“It is expensive, and that’s no different than from
universities all over the country. What we do is we
move into something called portion pack where
everything is portioned out. Over the course of
years, Team Cleaning can save millions of dollars
to the University because the chemical costs
go way down, and we’re not wasting chemicals
because everything is portioned out and it takes the
guesswork out of it.”
Team Cleaning was implemented back in November
of 2019 and currently services English and
Philosophy, Education, and COBA (Rawls College of
Business Administration). Smith is excited for the
future of Team Cleaning and has many goals for his
custodial team going forward.
AARON SMITH
MANAGING DIRECTOR FOR
OPERATIONS SERVICES
22