Maintenance of facilities is becoming an important element of preventing infections in both healthcare settings and public grounds. Facility managers can combine approaches oriented towards hygiene that can be implemented in daily operations, including upkeep of HVAC systems, surface disinfection, and smart technologies, to help protect environments. This article elaborates upon how maintenance is turning into a rampart shield.
The conversation regarding infection prevention, in healthcare facilities, corporate premises, and community facilities, has over the last couple of years, changed in a way that is less clinical and more operational. It is no longer a field of specialized practice reserved to healthcare professionals or those staff members involved in custodial work. The ineffective control of infection has become a strategic priority in the facility-management sector. Maintenance, which can be demoted to the outskirts as technical or reactionary, is taking center stage in the fight against the propagation of infectious diseases. Today the stakes could not be greater because the facility manager good could exist in this environment. Routine and preventive maintenance have the potential to significantly impact built environment microbial safety through air scrubbing, plumbing, touchpoint surface care, and floor care maintenance.
It is an evolution that can be defined as a paradigm shift as it requires a new definition of roles, new training, re-assessment of the procedures, and heavy investment in smarter, cleaner technologies. Facility managers now find that they need to combine engineering skills with a sophisticated awareness of science in infection control, regulatory requirements, and human behavior behavioral norms in their facilities.
The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed the frailties of the contemporary buildings to infectious outbreaks. Facilities with superior ventilation, distinguished filtration systems and comprehensive documentation of maintenance procedures were proven to be safer. The lessons, however, are not limited to that sense of urgent times during the pandemic. Norovirus, MRSA, Legionella, the seasonal flu, and more, they all directly bear on the microbial burden of a facility dependent on the way in which such is maintained.
Pathogens will take advantage of badly-run systems unclean ducts are both breeding places of mould and bacteria; idle water in lines may support Legionella; ignored air filters have a way of disseminating a contaminant; and ignored washbasins or washrooms can become the host of infectious microbes. It is here that facility maintenance extends beyond the conventional scope of maintaining equipment and plays a direct role in being a public health and safety infrastructure.
Facility managers are being called upon to not only ensure that it is running but it is running clean.
Preventive maintenance is a long established pillar of an efficient building operation, avoids down time, prolongs life of equipment and saves.” However, when looked at in the perspective of infection control, preventive maintenance would morph into an active hygiene tool.
This involves planned servicing of air handling units to eliminate the possibility of biofilm formation, flushing water systems to eliminate the possibility of Legionella growth, regular calibration and cleaning of UV-C disinfection systems and stringent floor cleaning regimes to curb fomite transmission. All these tasks that have traditionally focused on performance efficiency, have also a new meaning as an epidemiological one.
As an example, the air quality monitoring and HVAC filter maintenance is no longer limited to temperature regulation processes, but it is also about viral and bacterial load reduction. The same goes with drain traps and plumbing conduits that were previously examined primarily by the chance of leakage are now also examined by the potential risk of backflow and aerosolized pathogens.
The transition requires a two-fold tactic: efficiency paired with safety among the microbes will now be required concomitants within maintenance guidelines.
The combination of smart building technologies and the need to address infection control is proving to be particularly synergistic. To have a possibility to track the purity and the threat of the microbial danger on the go, facility operators are adopting the use of the sensors, based on IoT, the building management systems (BMS), and AI-based analytics.
By way of example, sensor-based systems can warn facility teams of humidity or temperature changes that can promote mold growth. Automatic flushing valves take care of the water outlets that are infrequently checked during manual inspection. Smart toilet dispensers may be able to provide data on the frequency of their use, thus realizing the necessities of high traffic areas that require more frequent disinfection.
Moreover, robotics and electrostatic spray machines are being formed into the maintenance protocol, which will provide thorough, contactless, and regular cleaning. The use of the machines that are capable of providing antimicrobial solutions and real-time tracking enables a record and traceability which is a crucial element of compliance and auditability requirements.
The field of maintenance has now become firmly integrated with the digital transformation, not only to optimize operations but also to increase the infection resilience quotient of the facility.
Maintenance of the facility does not stop with the equipment and air system. The walls, floors, the doorknobs, and the countertops all these are the surfaces in a building; we use them and they can transmit the disease. In long-term infection control, surface engineering and material science play the most significant role and this should be manifested in the maintenance strategy.
Antimicrobial paints and copper-impregnated sanitary fixtures, and non-porous materials that do not hold microbes are being more commonly utilized in both new constructions and retrofits. Nevertheless, the advantages will only be achieved when maintenance personnel are trained systems to clean and maintain them accordingly. Cleaning agents that contain abrasives, such as, may remove protective layers, or make antimicrobial layers ineffective.
Facility managers need to thus calibrate the maintenance SOPs with the material specifications so as to make them compatible increasing the functional integrity of these designed surfaces in terms of life. In this regard, it is necessary to narrow this knowledge and implementation gap by combining the efforts of manufacturers, infection control officers, and facility teams.
Even the most modern infection prevention technologies and superior materials cannot form a facility and a trained workforce are needed, otherwise, the effectiveness of these interventions dissipates in a blink of an eye. Maintenance staff in the facilities are likely to be the unsung heroes because they maneuver through technical systems, exposure hazards, and hour lock.
The typical approach used in the training programs is to concentrate on operational parameters - how to clean, how often to inspect, how to report anomalies. Now, that has to be augmented with the why. The best way to foster a feeling of purpose and precision is by learning the infection transmission dynamics that are needed to complete each task. In another example, informing custodians on how long SARS-CoV-2 lasts on stainless steel and plastic surfaces can change the priority and frequency of particular cleaning.
Also, training of cross-functions that involves introducing the maintenance teams to the concepts of public health and the levels of infections control (like CDC, WHO, or OSHA recommendations) can the compliance and safety levels radically. This is most especially so in the medical environment where areas posing considerable risk such as the isolation wards, ICUs and operation theaters require highly developed protocols and zero errors.
Events have evolved in the present regulatory climate, as infection prevention should not be a matter of action but also of traceability. Managers of these facilities are becoming held to a higher expectation since they are now expected to prove that not only is maintenance work being done but also that it is being done in a manner that falls in line with the standards of infection control. Included now in compliance ecosystems are digital logbooks, sensor data, video records, and audit trails.
With the maintenance gaps not being talked but rather proven and acted upon, this data-driven practice has become the way of making sorting out maintenance gaps. It also enables real-time alerts, benchmarking and predictive modelling, and ways of allowing the facility managers to avert the situation before a slip turns into a full-scale infection.
More to the point, documentation and accountability frameworks will suffice the point of mutual responsibility. No longer is infection control simply the domain of the clinical department or the housekeeping department - it becomes a layered, interconnected process and then maintenance becomes not only the centerpiece but also the obvious part in controlling infection.
The growing awareness that maintenance is a core element in infection prevention is transforming anticipations in a number of businesses; this is not confined to hospitals and eldercare environments, but also includes corporate offices, airports, schools, and manufacturing facilities.
The companies that had previously outsourced maintenance without much monitoring are now engaging in some in-house strategy, products upgrading and frequent auditing.
Surface disinfection procedures and air circulation inspection have become part of the daily cleaning routines in such areas of high population movement such as shopping malls or transport hubs. In industry, communal areas and shared equipment need special interventions in their hygiene. The custodial staff of educational institutions is also being made aware of the indicators of mold or pest outbreaks that may affect the respiratory health.
Such changes highlight a new industry sentiment - the future of facility management is not restricted to uptime and efficiency any longer - it becomes all about infection resistance and popular belief.
The task of facility managers is getting a radical change. They are no longer pushed in the backstage of operations as they are now at the forefront of preventing infections. Maintenance that is conducted with foresight, precision, and with a hygiene mindset in mind is an effective tool against the infectious diseases.
Because the world will be further trying to cope with emerging infections, antimicrobial resistance, and climate-related health risks, the emphasis on maintaining hygiene will only heighten. Facility managers will have to transform into operational managers to infection prevention planners, armed with equipment, education, and information.
The ability to prevent infection is as much the work of those who flush toilets, clean surfaces, maintain ventilation and pipework, as well as doctors who prescribe antibiotics or nurses who bandage infected sores. Maintenance, in the new integrated framework, is not upkeep anymore; it is guardianship.
Debi Jones, part of the Editorial Team at American Hospital & Healthcare Management, draws on her deep experience in healthcare communication to produce clear and impactful content. Her dedication to simplifying intricate healthcare topics helps the team fulfill its goal of offering relevant and influential information to the international healthcare sector.
