CMM Weekly News Recap-January 17, 2020

National Clean Your Desk Day started off the week on a positive note with the goal of creating a clean and germ-free workspace. Then we learned of some pretty dirty places we wouldn’t want to work in, like the Washington, D.C. area transit garages, where it was exposed that contracted cleaning staff were not performing their garage-cleaning duties 84% of the time. Although the Washington, D.C. Metropolitan Area Transit Authority spent more than US$2.2 million for cleaning services, these tasks were routinely not completed, and some contract employees were not working their full eight-hour shifts, which led to unsafe and filthy conditions over a 20-month period.

And if that story wasn’t grimy enough, Washington, D.C. further made negative cleaning news this week by topping Orkin’s list of 2020 Top 50 Bed Bugs Cities List, knocking the reigning three-time list-topper Baltimore down to No. 2. Chicago came in third. On another list sure to make your skin crawl, New York state has been identified as the state with the largest concentration of superbug Candida auris (C. auris) in the country, accounting for 427 of 911 confirmed cases.

 Getting back to the positive, ISSA and other industry organizations announced several initiatives and events for the cleaning industry this week.

• A working group, which includes Patty Olinger, executive director of the Global Biorisk Advisory Council (GBAC), a division of ISSA, has developed a biorisk management system to help organizations identify, control, and manage the risks related to this task, according to the International Organization for Standardization (ISO).
• The Institute of Inspection, Cleaning, and Restoration Certification (IICRC) ) has opened public review for the revised draft of its BSR/IICRC S500 Standard for Professional Water Damage Restoration.
• Hotel bookings for the second-annual Clean Buildings Expo (CBE) are underway. The two-day event, a joint venture between ISSA and Trade Press Media Group, will take place March 17-18 at the Baltimore Convention Center in Baltimore, Maryland.
• Restoration Strategies TURBOCHARGED, a one-day conference and workshop to help disaster restoration companies get more work and increase revenues, will hold a session on Thursday, March 19, at the Baltimore Convention Center, directly following Clean Buildings Expo.

Whether you have the day off for Martin Luther King Jr. Day or will be attending to your daily work as usual, we hope you meet us back here Monday for more news and tips from around the cleaning and maintenance industry!