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Industrial Revolution
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BSCs Are Finding New Customers By Offering Industrial Cleaning Services
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Dirtier Jobs Can Necessitate Special Industrial Cleaning Equipment
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Advantage Cleaning Services Performs Medical Office Billing in Olean, NY 14760
Part two of this four-part article details the equipment used for industrial cleaning.Industrial customers range from auto manufacturers to pharmaceutical companies. Services include removing paint, cleaning walls and ceilings, and cleaning industrial machines, to name a few. And although some of the equipment used to clean industrial environments is the same as that used for traditional cleaning services, BSCs say manufacturing facilities generate persistent dust, dirt and grime that is usually more difficult to remove.Denver Commercial Property Services, based in Denver, has industrial accounts that include water treatment facilities and a financial services company warehouse that produces credit cards. “We tend to use the same cleaning equipment [as our commercial cleaning services], but what varies is how we use that equipment,” says President Jay Mandelstam. For instance, Mandelstam uses the same autoscrubbers that he would use for traditional commercial cleaning, but instead of a neutral floor cleaner he uses a heavy degreaser. And because the dirt is more persistent, it may take multiple passes to remove buildup instead of just one pass.“In the credit card warehouse, you’re dealing with a lot of paper, and the machines throw off a ton of dust,” says Mandelstam. “You have to apply more pad pressure when cleaning the floors and use more aggressive brushes, because the dust is pretty stubborn. Also, you’re no longer dealing with a desk-side trash can. You’re dealing with a 45-gallon pail with all kinds of material in it, so you have to teach workers proper lifting techniques.”Unlike commercial cleaning, the industrial market often requires cleaning and sanitizing walls and ceilings, as well as machinery, which may necessitate investing in heavy-duty or specialized equipment, such as 1,000-psi pressure washers, foam guns and dry ice blasting, or cryogenic cleaning machines.Approximately 40 percent of Aetna Integrated Services’ business is industrial cleaning. The Columbus, Ohio-based BSC cleans a wide range of industrial environments, from weld shops to cleanrooms, which are typically used in manufacturing or scientific research. Aetna relies on cryogenic cleaning for day-to-day accounts as well as special projects. In cryogenic cleaning, dry ice, the solid form of carbon dioxide, is accelerated in a pressurized air stream and directed at a surface to clean it.“With cryogenic cleaning, there’s no secondary contamination, because there are no chemicals used,” says Aetna Integrated Services President Paul Greenland. “You can use it in regulated industries and in areas where you can’t have water because there’s electricity present or you don’t want moisture or humidity left behind in machines that you’re cleaning.”Like Greenland, Niswonger relies heavily on dry ice machines for cleaning a wide range of surfaces. “Using dry ice is nonabrasive and environmentally friendly,” he says. “You can use it to remove production residue, release agents, contaminants, paint and oil. It also allows you to clean equipment in places without having to disassemble parts.”
