We disinfect high touch surfaces every day

Cleaning and disinfecting are not the same job

A surface can be wiped and still carry the organisms that make people sick. Disinfecting is a separate step, one that uses products registered by the Environmental Protection Agency and applies them for the dwell time the label requires, long enough for the chemical to actually kill what is on the surface, not just move it around with a cloth. CLS crews are trained to disinfect high touch surfaces daily, using products that are safe for employees and office equipment while still doing the job the label promises, following the manufacturer's directions on every application.

High touch surfaces are the ones a lot of different hands use over the course of a day: door handles, faucet handles, handrails, shared desks, push bars, drinking fountains, elevator buttons, shared phones. A surface only one person touches, like their own keyboard, does not carry the same risk. Our crews focus disinfection where it matters most, on the surfaces that pass between the most people in the shortest amount of time, rather than spreading the same limited attention evenly across every surface in the building regardless of how often it gets touched.

Two products make up the standard kit. Virex II is a one step disinfectant cleaner that also works as an odor counteractant. Oxivir Tb RTU is a ready to use disinfectant based on hydrogen peroxide technology that disinfects in as little as 60 seconds and meets bloodborne pathogen standards for cleaning up blood and body fluids. Both are registered by the EPA and applied following label directions and safety precautions, so a building is never relying on a product that has not been vetted for exactly this kind of use.

• High touch surfaces disinfected daily: door handles, handrails, push bars, shared desks
• EPA registered, hospital grade disinfectants applied for the full dwell time
• Color coded cloths and mops to stop cross contamination
• One to two years of disinfectant and PPE kept in stock

Day porters and evening crews both run infection control

Disinfection at CLS is not something that happens once a week when a building requests it. Day porters, who work through the day handling spills and restrooms, and evening janitors, who clean after everyone leaves, both follow infection control procedures built to prevent cross contamination and remove harmful dirt and viruses. That means the same standard applies whether a surface gets touched at 10 in the morning or cleaned at 10 at night, with no gap in coverage between the two shifts.

At night, our crews run what we call enhanced disinfection: spraying disinfectant on surfaces like upholstery and the arms of conference chairs, the fabric and touch points that a quick daytime wipe would not reach. During the day, porters focus on the same high touch points, door handles, shared equipment, restroom fixtures, so a building is not relying on one overnight visit to cover an entire day of contact from employees, vendors and visitors passing through the building.

We also use color coded microfiber cloths and flat mops, a simple system that keeps a cloth used in a restroom from ever being the same cloth used on a break room counter. It sounds basic, but cross contamination between areas is one of the easiest ways a cleaning routine can spread the exact problem it is supposed to prevent, undoing an entire night's disinfection work with one cloth used in the wrong two rooms.

What triggers a deeper disinfection

Some situations call for more than the daily routine. When a building employee is out sick, we thoroughly disinfect their workplace and any other known places they spent time, a café, a shared restroom, a conference room. Other situations that call for disinfection include accidents involving vomit, feces, body fluids or blood, bathroom surfaces generally, and specific legally required disinfection in food preparation areas, each of which gets treated according to its own procedure rather than a single generic response.

For situations tied to a suspected or confirmed infection, our process follows a set order. The area is vacated for roughly 24 hours where practical, our crew uses personal protective equipment, high touch surfaces are cleaned to remove surface dirt first, then disinfectant is applied with attention to the highest touch points. Once the work is done, we verify it with an ATP test, checking high touch surfaces to confirm the cleanliness of the surface, not just assuming the disinfectant did its job because the label says it should have.

We keep a supply of necessary infection control disinfectant and personal protective equipment on hand, planned around a one to two year buffer, because supply chains for hospital grade products can tighten quickly during a widespread health event. A building on our disinfection program is not left waiting on a supplier when demand for these products spikes everywhere else at once, which is exactly the situation a lot of buildings found themselves in during recent supply disruptions.

Add disinfection to your cleaning contract

Disinfection can run as part of a standard CLS janitorial contract or as an increased schedule for a building that wants more frequent attention to high touch surfaces, cubicles, and shared equipment. We scope it around your building's actual traffic and risk, an open office with heavy foot traffic needs a different schedule than a single suite with a handful of staff, and we build the plan around the specific way your building is actually used.

We built our procedures by following guidance from the CDC, the World Health Organization, and the Indoor Air Quality Association, and by working with local public health authorities and each building owner's own requirements. That gives a property manager a documented, defensible process to point to, rather than a vague assurance that the building gets disinfected without any specifics behind that claim.

A building that wants daily high touch disinfection added to its contract, or a one time deep disinfection after a specific incident, should call (630) 816-0300. We can walk through what the schedule and product plan would look like for your specific facility, and how it would fit alongside your existing janitorial service.