Skip to main content
Add as a preferred source on Google

Team Cleaning Creates Consistency

  • 09/01/16

Forty-two schools comprise Aiken County Public School District in South Carolina. Up until recently, every school approached cleaning tasks differently. Inconsistency in process, products, and training led to inconsistent cleanliness from building to building. So the county set out to make a change.

In pursuit of creating the best environment for students to learn and achieve, Aiken County Public Schools chose to implement a standardized cleaning system based on team cleaning with efficient ProTeam backpack vacuums. Blaine Riley, education program developer for Augusta Janitorial, has shepherded the transition. He helped blend the styles of team cleaning and zone cleaning to maximize efficiency for cleaners during the day.

In a K-12 setting, a cleaner must be present during the school day to clean as needed. In Aiken County’s hybrid system, those cleaners also tackle cleaning work by area type to stay as productive as possible. For example, an Aiken County day cleaner may clean offices or common areas in a zone concept. They would perform all cleaning tasks within that building, including vacuuming with an upright vacuum. The ProTeam ProForce 1500XP fits on the cart with all the other supplies and works best for Aiken’s zone cleaning approach.

At night, the staff bands together as teams of specialists. There are four types of specialists on a team, the vacuum specialist, the restroom specialist, the light duty specialist, and the utility specialist. The vacuum specialist uses a lightweight backpack vacuum, the Super Coach Pro 6, that cleans three times faster than an upright and vacuums for about two hours continuously, improving vacuuming efficiency.

“We’re going to see a reduction in labor costs. But our goal is not to reduce staff. We just want a standardized and efficient approach to cleaning,” says Kip Gunter, the district’s director of maintenance and custodial. “This consistency will lead to cleaner and healthier environments for students, enabling them to both learn and achieve more.”

www.proteamnextgen.com

This article originally appeared in the issue of .

Featured

  • Campus Safety Requires Using Every Resource Available

    Across the U.S., school and campus leaders are facing a security landscape that has changed dramatically over the past decade. Incidents on school property have increased in recent years, with several consecutive years setting record totals. According to analysis of data by CNN, dozens of shootings now occur on school grounds annually across K-12 and higher education environments.

  • Montclair State University Starts Construction on $120M STEM Building

    Montclair State University in Montclair, N.J., recently broke ground on a new $120-million Interdisciplinary Science Building, according to university news. The university partnered with HoK Architects for the project’s design, and it’s scheduled to open in time for the 2028–29 academic year.

  • Classical building columns display digital data streams

    The Campus Nervous System: Why Facilities Risk Is Now a Leadership Issue in Higher Education

    Facility performance now intersects with safety, compliance, on-campus experience, institutional reputation, and financial resilience. That places it firmly on the leadership agenda.

  • GeoCam and UCLA: Modernizing Campus Accessibility Mapping

    In early 2025, UCLA partnered with GeoCam to capture and modernize its pedestrian infrastructure data. The goal was ambitious but clear: to produce a high-accuracy, imagery-backed digital map of every sidewalk, pathway, ramp, and ADA-related feature on UCLA’s 419-acre campus.