In 2018, Buck Services, a building service contractor (BSC) in West Chicago, Illinois, with numerous schools and churches among its client base, tried a new disinfecting technology at the time—an electrostatic sprayer. One of their client high schools was experiencing an outbreak of hand, foot and mouth disease that started with the football team and spread to 60% of the student population over two weeks, recalled Dominick Buchholz, director of internal operations at Buck Services.
“We disinfected the school a few times with our electrostatic sprayers and that was it for a while, until COVID-19 hit,” he said. “All of a sudden the sprayers became a big thing.”
Because Buck Services adopted the technology early, it had connections in place to purchase more sprayers and disinfectants during the pandemic, when cleaning supplies were scarce. “We were on lists that allowed us to get the chemicals necessary to disinfect for COVID-19,” Buchholz said. “We went from two sprayers to two to three dozen in the hands of our staff.”
Buck Services staff underwent training with the Global Biorisk Advisory Council, a division of ISSA, The Association for Cleaning and Facility Solutions. They disinfected schools and churches, allowing them to reopen, along with 170 polling places for the 2020 election, Buchholz said.
“Out of our 300 employees, we didn’t need to furlough anyone,” he explained. “We were able to keep our people employed and our business profitable while providing our clients the comfort of knowing their buildings were safe.”
Determining tech value
Cummins Facility Services CEO and President Jill Frey believes that employees and clients should always be the top priority for BSCs implementing new technology.
“What excites me most is not technology itself, but the outcomes it creates for our employees and clients,” she said. “We are using these tools to improve productivity, increase transparency, generate better data and make more informed decisions about how facilities are cleaned and maintained.”
Based in Marion, Ohio, and providing services across the U.S. and Canada, Cummins Facility Services has implemented a variety of technologies in its operations during the past several years, including autonomous cleaning equipment, dynamic QR code technology, indoor air quality monitoring, sustainability reporting tools and client-facing dashboards that provide greater visibility into facility performance.
“Among these, there isn’t one technology I would point to as the clear winner because each creates value differently,” Frey said. For example, indoor air quality monitoring tools provide real-time insight into the building environment. “It expands the conversation beyond cleaning to overall building health and performance,” Frey explained. “And our autonomous cleaning equipment has delivered strong return on investment (ROI) by increasing productivity and allowing team members to focus on higher-value cleaning tasks while equipment handles repetitive floor care.”
Approximately one quarter (23%) of respondents to CMM’s 2026 BSC benchmarking survey have adopted or piloted autonomous cleaning equipment in the last five years. Jesse Cash, vice president of operations at AK Building Services, a BSC in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, had the opportunity to try out autonomous scrubbers and found they worked best in larger areas. “Autonomous scrubbers worked great in airports and large spaces where you had the room (and client budget) to implement them,” he explained. “They didn’t reduce your labor greatly like some [manufacturers] claim, but they did allow you to redeploy labor to areas that were frequently overlooked or serviced less.”
Austin-Bergstrom International Airport in Austin, Texas, recently purchased autonomous scrubbers and facility management software, according to airport facility supervisor Michael Bocanegra.
“Both technologies offered potential benefits, but the experience helped us recognize that our facility was not fully prepared to maximize them,” Bocanegra said. “For example, the facility management software placed greater demands on our Wi-Fi and network infrastructure than we had anticipated. With the autonomous scrubbers, we found that the equipment we selected was not appropriately sized for our facility and operating environment.”
Although Buck Services has interest in autonomous cleaning equipment, the company currently does not have the right clients to justify the expense. “We don’t have high-dollar clients, so we can’t buy high-dollar tech,” Buchholz said. But he did not rule out trying autonomous cleaning tools in the future. “Autonomous equipment is the future, so if you have the means to purchase it and if you believe it has the ability to make your company better, adopting it is not something you would regret,” he said.
Analyzing hits and misses
In addition to autonomous equipment, AK Building Services also tried automatic dispensers, ultraviolet (UV) disinfecting lights and aqueous ozone water. Cash noted mixed results with automatic dispensers, depending on facility size and the need for immediate refills. “Smart dispensers were great for on-site leadership at large buildings or conference centers where immediacy was paramount, but if you didn’t have someone monitoring the system on-site, it lost efficacy due to response time,” he explained.
Cleaning and disinfecting technologies were a better fit, Cash said, explaining that the BSC used UV lights in hospitals to disinfect during terminal cleanings after patient discharge. “Having this tech in an acute healthcare environment added another tool to the environmental services arsenal to ensure the reduction of healthcare-acquired infections,” he said.
Cash found aqueous ozone to be a good alternative to chemicals in areas with sensitive populations. “In addition to being cheaper over the long run, it was nontoxic, nonallergenic and, aside from the cartridge costs, a great way to reduce product spend and simplify training,” he said.
Frey agreed that technology should simplify processes. “One of the biggest lessons we’ve learned is that not every technology is right for every facility,” she said. “If it creates unnecessary steps, requires excessive intervention or fails to deliver measurable value, it may not be the right fit.”
Despite the Austin-Bergstrom International Airport’s disappointing experience with autonomous scrubbers and facility management software, Bocanegra didn’t consider the technology a poor fit. “We would consider both technologies again in the future,” he said. “However, before making that investment, we would spend considerably more time on preparation, planning and testing to make sure our facility and workforce are ready to fully utilize the technology.”
Before purchasing and implementing the technologies, Bocanegra said, airport decision makers held internal discussions and evaluated the potential benefits. “Looking back, a pilot program would have been extremely beneficial,” he said. “Many of the challenges we encountered were fairly basic issues involving our existing infrastructure. A trial period likely would have identified those issues before we made the full investment. That experience changed how we approach technology today.”
Cummins Facility Services relies on pilot programs to test technology. “Technology can look great in a demonstration, but every facility is different,” she said. “A pilot helps us understand how technology performs in the real world, whether it delivers meaningful value to the client and how employees interact with it.”
Overcoming staff reluctance
Employee buy-in is a necessity for technology to succeed. But employees are often slow to embrace new cleaning methods.
“Change is hard, and people get set in their ways,” Cash said. He suggested recruiting tech savvy staff members to try the new equipment first. “They can help spread the word among their co-workers and encourage engagement,” he said, adding that once employees discover a technology can make their job easier, they’re usually on board.
Although Austin-Bergstrom cleaning staff were slow in understanding how to use the facility management software and to understand why the information it collected was valuable, they were quicker to accept the autonomous scrubbers. “Employees could more immediately see the value of technology that could assist them with repetitive floor-cleaning tasks,” Bocanegra said. “That experience showed us that staff buy-in is often easier when employees can clearly see how a new technology supports their work rather than simply adding another step to their existing responsibilities.”
Buchholz recalled staff skepticism regarding the electrostatic sprayers. “Germ kill times were suddenly faster; they were used to 10-minute dwell times, and when it went down to one or two minutes, they were questioning whether the sprayers were actually doing what they claimed to do,” he recalled. “Ultimately, through training we were able to teach our staff how the science worked, and they became truly confident in the sprayer’s effectiveness.”
“Training is important, but communication is just as critical,” Frey said, explaining that new technology can make employees question their job security. “Any time you introduce automation, robotics or artificial intelligence, employees naturally wonder what it means for their role. We make it clear that technology is there to support our teams, not replace them.”
Offering advice
Investing in technology is a large commitment that should involve contemplation, planning and possibly a bit of advice from colleagues. Frey advised to “start with the problem, not the product.”
“It’s easy to get excited about the latest robot, sensor, platform or AI tool, but the first questions should always be: What problem are we trying to solve? What outcome are we trying to improve?” she said. “Once you’ve defined that, determine how you’ll measure success.”
Bocanegra recommended seeking out similar facilities that are already using the technology you’re considering. “Speak with those organizations, learn from their experiences and, when possible, visit their facilities to
see the technology operating in a real-world environment,” he said. “A trial can tell you a great deal, but seeing how the technology performs over time in a comparable facility can provide another level of insight.”
As technology purchases are often tied to specific clients, Cash cautioned BSCs to evaluate the technology against their current contracts. “Coming out of pocket for something expensive like an autonomous scrubber looks very different on a year-to-year contract versus a five-year contract,” he said. “If you spend dollars on the tech, have a backup plan on what you are going to do if the primary client you purchased it for is no longer your client.”
Although staying within budget is crucial, Frey advised cleaning organizations to consider more than their bottom line when determining technology ROI. “Labor savings matter, but so do productivity, safety, sustainability, client satisfaction, transparency and access to better data,” she said.
“Technology is not the goal,” Frey added. “Better outcomes are. Technology is simply one of the tools that helps us get there.”
