One of Elite’s Large Scale Window Cleaning Projects

Located in La Mesa, California is one of Fairfield Properties’ prized gems. These condo’s are located on Fletcher Parkway between Trolley Court, and Grossmont Blvd. This was the very first time they have had the windows cleaned since the LEED Silver Certified buildings were finished with construction.

This project was expected to be completed in 7 working days at 10 hours per day with 6 team members divided into two teams with 1 on-site foreman and one jobsite manager.

Methods Used

Two boom lifts were utilized for the exterior perimeter of both properties. One 60 foot, and one 80 foot articulating knuckle boom.

Two scissor lifts with “diapers” were used on the interior perimeters of both properties as well as stack ladders.

The original plan of execution was to essentially spread out the men and work in sections where one team would be responsible to the corresponding area. Initially, this looked as though it would be the best way to work.

Those of you who either have ran a large scale project or have managed a large scale property can understand when I say that each property has its own “personality” and methods that work on one property may not work on another even if they are from the same builder using the same glass manufacturer.

So, the method of execution changed within just an hour or two when it simply wasn’t working at all. Many reasons why this is the case, I will mention only a few such as:

A. The properties were so large that our teams were too far apart for the leaders/foremen to be able to gauge progress and quality control while maintaining a safe work zone.

B. It was impossible to work as a unit if the team is not working together.

Using both booms in tandem kept morale high, lowered the risk of accidents or near misses due to better supervision and a healthy competitive spirit, and actually shaved 6 hours off of the projected completion on this phase.

This action freed up 2 team members so that other areas of the project could be completed that we couldn’t use the boom lift on.

For the interior perimeter of the all 6 buildings, there was no access for a boom lift, and our choices for scissor lifts were limited because there was only one area for access and the width was only 2 feet. The majority of the work was done using stack ladders, which is no easy task even for light weight ladders such as these.

Results

Injuries: 0

Near Misses: 0

Complaints: 0

At the end of this project, after 2 days passed, we followed up with both managers to find out if there were any complaints that came in after we left the site since there was none during the work.

Usually, there is at LEAST one. This project had ZERO complaints! Our teams did an excellent job.