Getting with the program: organization of maintenance efforts preserves your club's capital assets.

How did this happen? Your clubhouse is looking shabby around the edges. The faux fishing on the pillars in the lobby is chipped beyond repair. There are soil patterns that are ground into the carpeting in living room. It wasn't that long ago that you convinced the board to ante up for a major renovation--and now here you are again.

Your cleaning and maintenance workers have done their best to try and keep things up. But you're just not getting the life cycles you had budgeted out of your clubhouse surfaces. It's not enough to have a maintenance and cleaning program: You need to do your homework up front. And you need to stay ahead of the curve. The first step is to do pour homework and to talk with the pros.

Mel Rex, CCM, general manager of the legendary Duquesne club in Pittsburgh and now a consultant to the club and to private industry, said that the well-known perfection of the Duquesne's massive and historic clubhouse is facilitated by a cooperative effort of top management. "I think one of the things that we did differently was use a team approach to spotting problem areas," Rex said. "When any of us saw anything that looked out of favor, we called called the executive housekeeper."

That title is a misnomer. Jody Fulsher, the Duquesnse's executive housekeeper, heads a staff of cleaners, painters, housekeepers, and room attendants, with crews available to get needed work done in the wee hours if need be. She also calls on the services of carpenters and other craft workers from the engineering staff.

"I've been here 12 years now," Fulsher said. "We do a rotating schedule of cleaning. There are 10 people on the night crew. We work round the clock, six days a week." The club's dining rooms are deep-cleaned during the summer months, at which time painting and repair work is also done.

Fulsher said that in addition to the management team at the Duquesne spotting minor flaws before they become big issues, her crews are excellent at giving her a heads-up on things they spot while performing their jobs. "I came back into the office on Monday morning and I had three notes from them--a paint touch-up, carpet spot, and a slow-running drain," Fulsher said.

The Duquesne Club has one painter who maintains the whole club. Besides its member dining room, the club has 40 corporate suites, each decorated by the suite holder. The suites are each decorated in three or four colors that the staff member must catalog and maintain for touch-ups as needed. About every five years the painter refinishes woodwork where necessary. The house carpenter reports to the engineering department, but Fulsher has him doing everything from replacing the rubber stoppers on doorstoppers (her personal pet peeve) to repairing chair and tightening door hinges.

Getting to the Nicks in Time

For clubs that don't have the facilities, budget, or staff for an inhouse painter, a relationship with a qualified professional contractor is a must. Robert Miller, president of the Painting and Decorating Contractors of America, a 120-year-old organization representing over 3,000 of the country's top contractors, said that setting up a "program" for interiors at clubs can be problematic. That's because--other than Mondays for clubs that are closed on that day--there are very few hours when the public areas of the club are out of use.

"They're always faced with the problems of getting things done when the members aren't there. They must accept that it may be more costly to get it done." He suggested that preventative efforts aimed at protecting delicate surfaces, using heavy-duty coatings for hard use areas, and timely repairs before minor damage can't be disguised and require major redos, are key in clubs.

Miller, whose own company, R. C. Miller Co. Inc., of Peoria, IL, has painted its fair share of private clubs, said that a good relationship with a knowledgeable painting contractor will go a long way toward alleviating deterioration of surfaces. Painting contractors can also recommend materials and techniques that will stand up to wear and abuse, Miller said. "In the high maintenance areas such as the pool, golf, and tennis locker areas, we use epoxies and true urethanes."

"Usually in clubs there have been a lot of wallcoverings and faux finishes," Miller said. On faux finishes you should be sure that you have good clear coatings that resist chips because faux is difficult to touch up.

"You should try to get things as early as possible before there's too much damage. It's the same way with the wallcoverings." Miller said that when damage is caught early it's frequently possible to repaint, repair, or touch up just a small area.

Miller said that it's important to hire a contractor who is truly experienced with the finishes used in your club. "You can have a contractor who says that they can do faux finishes, but when it comes time to touch it up they can't pull it off," he said. To find a qualified contractor, Miller suggested visiting PDCA's "Find a Pro" website at www.pdca.org.

One source of problems with interior finishes--and more insidious things like mold--is moisture penetration from the building's exterior. Since coatings, sealants, and caulking are the primary protections against moisture penetration--besides preventing deterioration of exterior materials--Miller said it's best to have a qualified painting contractor go around the outside of the building every couple of years. "A contractor can see things starting to deteriorate before the average person," he said.

Chuck Mueller, chief engineer for the Missouri Athletic Club in St. Louis, said that his crews of "painters," who also do small taping and carpentry projects for the club's downtown and its suburban clubhouses, are pretty much on the move all the time. While painting and interior contractors are brought in for new construction and major renovation, Mueller's workers tackle small projects and keep areas looking fresh. "With painting it depends on the area," he said. "Some areas we go in every other month. We look at it and see what's needed." For example, Mueller said, service corridors take a lot of abuse and need frequent attention, while painted surfaces in the downtown facility's lobby are above high oak and stone wainscoting and usually just need dusting. The Union League Club of Chicago has three painters on staff, General Manager Jonathan McCabe said. "Two do projects and one does chips, dents, and bumps."

No Sweeping It Under the Rug

Carpeting and rugs looking worn and/or faded before their time can be avoided by proper carpet type and maintenance material selection and by upfront homework. The Carpet and Rug Institute (CRI) suggests beginning by reviewing a floor plan of the clubhouse and identifying areas of heavy soiling. CRI divides such areas into three types:

* Track-off Regions: Areas where carpet collects tracked-in soil from outdoors or from hard-surfaced floors. Track-off regions average six by 15 feet at entries, two by five feet at internal doorways, and five by eight in six-footwide corridors.

* Congested Channels: A concentrated channel of foot traffic, such as a doorway, stairwell, or drinking fountain area.

* Traffic Lanes: Areas with the highest amount of foot traffic.

CRI suggests pre-emptive measures such as the use of mats at entryways and elevators and selecting medium carpet colors and patterns that hide soil. Their recommendation is that heavy traffic areas be vacuumed daily with commercial grade equipment, medium traffic areas twice weekly, and light traffic areas once a week. In addition to vaccuming with heavy-duty wide-track, upright, or backpack commercial equipment with high-efficiency filtration, CRI suggests monthly or as-needed extraction cleaning of high track-off regions, transition areas, and congested channels. Investing in an extraction cleaner and addressing soiling in high-traffic areas at least monthly is also recommended.

The Duquesne Club has Axminster wool runners protecting the marble floors in its public areas. "We just got a new carpet extractor from Windsor. We vacuum the whole club daily. We use Windsor Sensor upright sweepers." Extraction cleaning is done as needed in high-traffic areas and about four times a year in guest rooms, Fulsher said.

The Hard Stuff

Hard-surface floors present a completely different set of issues according to ICS Cleaning Specialist, a trade publication for commercial flooring and interior maintenance contractors. But the basic are the same as with carpets and walls: Understand the material and its maintenance and establish a schedule that maintains the level of finish you want and the flooring material beneath it.

Cutting corners on cleaning or finishing products or on the frequency with which they are applied is a shortcut to disaster, the Cleaning Specialist article said. Cheap cleaning materials will allow particulates to build up and cause floor wear and yellowing. Finishes without the proper blend of ingredients to match the desired finish and frequency of maintenance will end up costing more in labor costs.

Some hard surfaces don't require a finish to show their natural beauty. The contractor who installed the floor and/or the materials supplier both are excellent sources of information on the proper maintenance of their product. Regardless of the finish, hardsurface floors need to be cleaned daily, both to protect the floor, and to prevent soil being tracked into other areas of the clubhouse.

Selection of a finishing product requires an analysis of the level of finish desired and your available labor budget. By using finish repair techniques and regular burnishing, the time between complete stripping and recoating procedures can be extended.

The Duquesne Club's Fulsher makes sure that her crews are well versed in the proper techniques. "I've been fortunate, I've had very good cleaning supply companies. My vendors come in and do the training. My day supervisor who does this has been here 30 years. The night supervisor has 20 years of commercial cleaning experience and five years at the club. He takes care of marble floors and trains the employees. Every day they dress the mop and sweep the floors, then mop them. They clean Monday through Saturday. During month of November on the first three Sundays, they strip and wax the whole first floor." Restrooms, which have no protective carpeting, are stripped a couple of times a year. In addition to stripping and waxing the marble at once a year--more often where needed--the staff sprays and buffs as needed.

Chicago's Union League Club has two employees who are dedicated to floor and carpet maintenance and operate on a schedule. The pair were trained by the club's flooring maintenance supply vendor.

Even if your club has only a fraction of the space of facilities such as the MAC, Duquesne, and Union League, it's easy to find yourself behind the maintenance curve if you cut corners on materials, equipment, or regular scheduling of cleaning, or are less than diligent about addressing minor maintenance items. Training and equipping your staff properly and charging them with being your eyes and ears in maintaining the club's facilities are some of the best capital investments you can make.