Why It’s Important to Ensure Your Industrial Flooring Is Cleaned and Maintained

An indus­tri­al busi­ness’ suc­cess is direct­ly tied to the con­di­tion of its facil­i­ties, equip­ment, and assets. Com­pa­nies that neglect even the most basic main­te­nance duties are tak­ing a major and unnec­es­sary risk. Of course, facil­i­ty main­te­nance is a mul­ti-faceted, inten­sive endeav­or — every inch of a facil­i­ty and its con­tents requires atten­tion, though some ele­ments require more than oth­ers, like indus­tri­al floor­ing. Let’s go over why it’s par­tic­u­lar­ly impor­tant to ensure your indus­tri­al floor­ing is cleaned and main­tained on a rou­tine basis.

How Clean Floors Help Your Indus­tri­al Business

Employ­ee and Cus­tomer Safety

Unlike vir­tu­al­ly every oth­er part of your indus­tri­al facil­i­ty, your floors are in con­stant use. Dur­ing oper­a­tions, there isn’t a time when shoes or machin­ery aren’t press­ing down on your floors. In order to with­stand this con­stant pres­sure, your floors must be durable, well pro­tect­ed, and prop­er­ly suit­ed for the imme­di­ate envi­ron­ment (i.e. chem­i­cal resis­tant and ESD floor­ing in caus­tic envi­ron­ments, antimi­cro­bial floors in med­ical facil­i­ties, etc.). Addi­tion­al­ly, your floors must pro­vide a safe, even, anti-slip sur­face for per­son­nel, cus­tomers, and guests to walk upon with­out the risk of slips, trips, or falls. To ensure floor safe­ty, indus­tri­al floor clean­ing ser­vices must rou­tine­ly remove dust, debris, liq­uid spills, etc. from the sur­face. More­over, when floors expe­ri­ence dam­age and/​or dete­ri­o­ra­tion, these issues must be resolved imme­di­ate­ly to main­tain a safe work­ing envi­ron­ment. Sim­ply put, fail­ing to reg­u­lar­ly clean and main­tain your indus­tri­al floors puts your peo­ple in harm’s way, increas­ing liability.

Main­tain­ing Your Reputation

Your busi­ness’ rep­u­ta­tion can be a major asset or lia­bil­i­ty depend­ing on how well you care for it. Your facility’s appear­ance cer­tain­ly con­tributes to the way in which cus­tomers (and employ­ees) per­ceive your com­pa­ny. If your indus­tri­al floor­ing is in dis­re­pair, then, this will neg­a­tive­ly impact your rep­u­ta­tion, which will harm your bot­tom line. So, while invest­ing in indus­tri­al clean­ing and main­te­nance for your floors isn’t cheap, you’ll like­ly end up los­ing more mon­ey in the long run by neglect­ing this cru­cial task.

Com­ply­ing with Indus­try Regulations

Though the term ​“lia­bil­i­ty” can be used casu­al­ly, it has a stricter legal def­i­n­i­tion. In this sense, when a busi­ness is liable, it is legal­ly respon­si­ble or oblig­at­ed for some past action/​inaction and/​or to rem­e­dy said action/​inaction. What does this have to do with indus­tri­al floor­ing main­te­nance? Var­i­ous reg­u­la­to­ry bod­ies such as the Occu­pa­tion­al Safe­ty and Health Admin­is­tra­tion (OSHA) require that busi­ness­es in cer­tain indus­tries com­ply with par­tic­u­lar stan­dards regard­ing employee/​customer health and safe­ty. As it turns out, OSHA has spe­cif­ic require­ments for the con­di­tion of indus­tri­al floor­ing, found here. Upon rou­tine inspec­tion, if your facility’s floor­ing is found to be non-com­pli­ant with these stan­dards, your busi­ness may be legal­ly liable and face fines and oth­er penal­ties as a result.

Pre­vent­ing Small Prob­lems from Becom­ing Major Liabilities

In addi­tion to safe­ty, rep­u­ta­tion­al, and legal con­cerns, it’s impor­tant to reg­u­lar­ly clean and main­tain your indus­tri­al floor­ing to avoid major, cost­ly repairs and replace­ments down the road. The small­est issues can grow expo­nen­tial­ly with­out prop­er pre­ven­ta­tive main­te­nance. This is why your floors and con­trol joints should be fre­quent­ly cleaned, inspect­ed, repaired, and re-sealed. If you’re lack­ing the skills, per­son­nel, and/​or resources to per­form these impor­tant tasks, part­ner up with the floor­ing experts at Kaloutas. We pro­vide floor­ing instal­la­tion, clean­ing, repair, line strip­ing, aisle mark­ing, and main­te­nance ser­vices for every type of facility.

To learn more about us and all that we do, con­tact us online or give us a call at 978−532−1414.