Healthy Facilities

Boise Idaho – The Healthy Facilities Institute (HFI) is pleased to support the two most recent books of Michael B. Ward, field advisor to HFI’s healthy facility outreach:

  • The Ultimate Procedural Handbook for School Custodians
  • The Ultimate Safety Handbook for School Custodians

“As someone who has been on the custodial front line for 30 years, Mike speaks to his peers with both authority and respect,” says Allen Rathey, principal of HFI. “Since ‘clean’ is a metaphor for healthy indoor spaces, Mike views the cleaning staff as among the school’s most important workers; directly affecting conditions for living, learning, and working.”

The Ultimate Procedural Handbook for School Custodians is an insider’s guide to maximizing efficiencies, step-by-step methods, correct product applications, equipment use and care, and inspiration.

The Ultimate Safety Handbook for School Custodians provides a guide to employees on commonly raised safety questions.

Both books are available on the Who Swings Your Mop website.

About HFI

The Healthy Facilities Institute (HFI) strives to provide authoritative information for creating and maintaining clean, healthy indoor environments. Since buildings are ecosystems, HFI works to address the many interrelated aspects of built environments — such as air, water, energy, materials and resources, green cleaning, indoor environmental quality, waste management, people and more — as an integrated or holistic system.

Featured

  • Designing for Every Mind

    Learning environments have the power to shape not just what students know, but who they become. When a school is designed with genuine empathy—for the full range of ways students think, sense, and engage with the world—it becomes more than a building. It becomes a catalyst for growth, confidence, and belonging. That is the animating idea behind neurodiverse design, and it is one that is transforming how more architects and designers are thinking about school design.

  • Virginia Tech Tops Out New College of Engineering Building

    Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Va., recently celebrated the topping out of Mitchell Hall, which will soon stand as the largest College of Engineering building on campus, according to a news release. The university partnered with Skanska on the 285,500-square-foot facility, which has an expected completion date of winter 2028.

  • Q&A: How to Prevent Kitchen Grease Fires in Commercial Kitchens

    School cafeterias and university dining halls serve thousands of meals daily, relying on high-heat equipment like fryers, grills, and ovens. While these operations keep students fed, they also generate significant grease-laden vapors. Without proper controls, this grease becomes a silent fire threat. As a certified exhaust cleaning specialist and business coach who has helped hundreds of institutional facilities achieve NFPA 96 compliance, I emphasize that proactive grease management isn’t optional; it’s a core fire/life safety practice.

  • Tomball ISD Opens New Tomball West High School

    Tomball Independent School District in Tomball, Texas, recently celebrated the official opening of Tomball West High School, the district's third comprehensive high school, with a community ribbon-cutting ceremony, according to a district news release.