Cleaning company for Cedar Rapids libraries gets ax after 1 month

CEDAR RAPIDS - A new janitorial services provider for the Cedar Rapids Public Library got the hook about a month after winning the contract to regularly clean the downtown and Ladd branches after library staff said the properties were not being properly cleaned.

Nationwide Office Care, of Clive, bid $113,976 to provide a year's worth of cleaning, which was about $10,500 less than the next lowest bid and $10,000 less than the previous cleaning service. Almost as soon as they started on Sept. 6, library staff said they began noticing problems.

'Our city staff were closely monitoring the cleaning team after they started and we found lots of issues right away - areas not being cleaned at all or not to the standard,” said Amber Mussman, a spokeswoman for the library.

At its Oct. 4 monthly meeting, the library's board of trustees agreed to authorize a 30 day notice of cancellation if the situation didn't improve, considering it a breech of contract. At the Nov. 3 meeting, the board agreed to award the contract instead to FBG Service Corp., of Cedar Rapids, which had the second lowest bid of $124,536.

Nationwide provides 'expert cleaning services for businesses, apartment complexes, medical offices, schools, and churches all across the Midwest,” according to its website. The company has 650 employees and accounts include Iowa Events Center, Kaplan University, First American Bank and Scheels All Sports, among others.

Dave Shirk, a sales representative for Eastern Iowa, said the Cedar Rapids library job was bigger than the average cleaning account, but not the biggest. They cleaned six days a week, including three janitors and a day porter at the 90,000-square-foot main library, 450 Fifth Ave. SE, and one person at the 20,000-square-foot Ladd Library, 3750 Williams Blvd. SW.

By the second day of the contract, library staff had warned Nationwide they'd be 'watched closely,” and issues continued, Shirk said.

Shirk acknowledged some of the complaints were warranted, but thought his staff deserved more time to 'get to know the building.”

'It's hard to believe we lost that so quickly,” Shirk said, noting their last day is Saturday.

One day a Dr Pepper soda cup was left behind, another day a trash bag among the 40 or 50 in the building was missed and another day granola and raisins were left on the floor in the kids pavilion, he said. The day porter was coming in earlier than the specified hours, and on a 'couple of nights” less than a full staff showed up and regional supervisors came in for backup, he said.

'No one left until the job was done,” he said.

The library staff kept an ongoing list of issues that when looked at in total made it seem worse than it really was when considering it occurred over weeks, Shirk said.

Nationwide made changes to try to improve performance, such as changing the chemical used to clean the floors when they were reported as sticky, and having a meeting with library staff, but to no avail, Shirk said.

The timing of the flood of 2016, which closed the library for more than a week shortly after Nationwide started, made matters worse, he said.

'We were just getting to know the building and the flood came,” Shirk said. 'It closed for a while and you need a day or two to get reacquainted with the building. But right after the flood we got the 30-day notice. I was very disappointed.”

Mussman said no public complaints about cleanliness had been filed, but staff noticed work wasn't getting done, triggering the response. She said some days full rooms weren't getting cleaned, at least one of the lights was left on overnight, staff showed up at the wrong location on the wrong night, and other times garbage bags weren't being put back in canisters.

'There were many instances where the building was not being properly cleaned,” Mussman said. 'As you are well aware, the library is a public building with heavy traffic and we need to be confident that our building is being maintained to a high standard. We did not feel the company was meeting this expectation.”