APPA Effective and Innovative Practices - Implementing an Interactive Campus-wide Office Cleaning Schedule

Sep 25, 2026

Upload by Franzy

APPA Effective and Innovative Practices presents how The University of Texas at Austin, Facilities Services created an interactive campus-wide office cleaning schedule to solve budget pressure in 2010. The program shifted from daily office checks to monthly cleaning by using client-managed waste placement, detailed cleaning on service days, and an electronic schedule accessible online. It aligns manpower with limited funds while maintaining or improving service quality and satisfaction, and it strengthens sustainability awareness through a flexible, trainable solution built with Excel and planned web delivery.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryPresentations

FormatPDF

Pages7

Reading Time3 min

AccessFree to download

Statement of Program

Planning Stages

Data Gathering

Work Route Development

Excel Office Cleaning Schedule

Training the Trainers

Client Communication

Program Launch

APPA Effective and Innovative Practices The University of Texas at Austin, Facilities Services Implementing an Interactive Campus-wide Office Cleaning Schedule Statement of Program In 2010, Custodial Services sought creative ways to address their ever-shrinking budget. Various cost-cutting measures were implemented , but reducing cleaning frequency for the approximately 9,500 campus offices (roughly 1.9 million sq. ft. ) proved to be the most challenging and innovative effort. Previously, custodians checked every office, every day, to empty trash and recycling. Now, clients can be conscientious in placing items inside their waste and recycling receptacles , or place receptacles outside their office doors for service during nonservice days. On service days, custodians detail-clean offices and empty receptacles. A key innovation allowed this effort to succeed. Custodial Services developed the cleaning schedule so it could be posted electronically for easy access by custodial crew leaders and clients. Clients can view the schedule for their office online—past, current, and future. Now in its fifth year, the program is a proven success that combines stewardship with innovation to address a complex situation using a flexible, teachable solution that meets clients’ needs. The office cleaning schedule program aligned manpower to the budget, while maintaining or improving service quality and client satisfaction. As a byproduct, the initiative also raised personal awareness of sustainability. Planning Stages Custodial Services planned to communicate the transition to once a month office cleaning to campus clients well in advance of the program’s launch date. Internally, they planned to reduce the office cleaning frequencies from once a week to approximately once every 20 business days using a Microsoft Excel-generated Office Cleaning Schedule. Once the program was fully implemented, the vision was for the schedule tobe automated and a web application developed to make the schedule available to office occupants from Custodial Services’webpage , all without incurring cost. Data Gathering Custodial Services has 24 cleaning crews on campus. Each cleaning crew is split into several teams, which at the time totaled 66 teams. An office cleaning schedule for all 66 teams needed to be created for the entire calendar year, but first space information was needed to start developing the schedules. The office space information was extracted from WORQSpace 1 and exported into a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet. The spreadsheet was then sorted by building, floor, office number and square footage. With a few edits to the spreadsheet, it was ready to sort by the 66 teams. To determine how many offices each team would clean per night , an average of the total office square footage assigned to each team was used. For example, if team‘A’ had 100,000 square feet of office space to clean in 20 days, then the calculation would be 100,000sqft / 20days = 5,000sqft per day. In this example, team‘A’would have to clean on average 5,000 square feet of office space a day. Work Route Development The project to determine work route assignment was divided up among Custodial Services’ seven building services supervisors and three training specialists. Each were given printouts of the office information and asked to develop the best possible work routes for the teams they were assigned. They also walked all the buildings and sequentially numbered the offices in the order they were to be cleaned , ‘number one’being the first office on the route. So the genesis of the office cleaning schedule program began with an Excel spreadsheet containing building information and some good walking shoes. Excel Office Cleaning Schedule Once all 66 work routes were completed , an actual office cleaning schedule template had to be developed based on the 20 office cleaning business days. Using Excel, Custodial Services developed a template with the capability

FAQs

What problem did the custodial services face and what change did they introduce?

In 2010, shrinking budgets made it difficult to sustain frequent cleaning for about 9,500 campus offices. The program reduced cleaning frequency to roughly once every 20 business days and moved clients to manage waste placement, while custodians performed detailed cleaning on service days.

How was the cleaning schedule made accessible to both custodial leaders and clients?

Custodial Services developed a schedule that could be posted electronically for easy access. Clients could view the schedule for their specific office online, including past, current, and future information.

How were office routes and daily cleaning loads determined?

Supervisors and training specialists developed work routes by walking buildings and numbering offices in cleaning order, then Excel-based calculations estimated how many offices each team would clean by dividing assigned square footage by the number of business cleaning days.

Sep 25, 2026

Upload by Franzy