Greg Owens 31:32
So and I want to go into like, like, you know, like, electrostatic sprayers flew off the shelves early on in this, I actually was looking at them, I know about them, because we’ve used them for painting and that kind of stuff in the past, right? And we’ve had we have some and that kind of thing. And we kind of I kind of like, what can we do because we were shut down and we were not unnecessary business.
Elias Nacif 31:55
Okay.
Greg Owens 31:55
And, you know, we’re cleaning was or landscaping was yes. And I mean, we were able to do some work because we we had like empty buildings where the client is going to move in. Especially when it came to residential, if the client is like trying to move into their house, and it wasn’t safe, and we were making it safe for them live there. That was a good, that was a good reason to be there painting. And so I was looking at both, I really looked into electrostatic and also looked into looked into some of the chemicals you can use and looked into the light the UVC lighting ABC. Yeah, which turns out that that, you know, you can burn your retinas pretty easy.
Elias Nacif 32:37
Oh, absolutely. Yeah,
Greg Owens 32:38
using that. And that’s become very popular too. But yeah, speak more to like what you’re seeing is actually effective, what works? What’s new? And maybe what’s on the horizon in that way?
Elias Nacif 32:50
Yeah, sure, of course. So we, we have had a lot of success with electrostatic sprayers and foggers as well, depending on the application, right. So the value of that an electrostatic sprayer brings, as you probably know, with painting, okay, it is that it just wraps the product around the surface, right, because it’s charged the particle is charged
Greg Owens 33:09
handrails and things like that, it just wraps that it’ll just move right around it with painting it actually move around the front and it goes right around the back. It’s unbelievable.
Elias Nacif 33:21
Exactly goes around the bag. And then in between I mean just all the surfaces get completely covered, right? So it’s very effective, right, the product is not wasted as well, right? Because it just goes straight into the surface. foggers can be really good at completely wedding surfaces with more product, right? So if you have a product that needs a longer dwell time, which means the product needs to stay on the surface for a longer period of time, right? So that he kills whatever bacteria or inactivate the virus virus, then progress can be really, really good.
Greg Owens 34:00
What kind of surface would that be? Like? I’m trying to think through my head like, like, is it cables, countertops?
Elias Nacif 34:06
It could be tables, it could be countertops? Absolutely. It can be furniture, right with the right product, right? Do you have a soft furniture that has, you know, cloth, rice, some sort of fabric and maybe some wood and a little bit of metal here, you can use a fogger. And it can be pretty effective as well. But choosing the right product is the key here, right? Because some products can be very acidic, right? They can actually deteriorate the fabric over the long term, right? So you don’t want to apply a product that is going to damage that fabric. Because it has some sort of, you know, hydrogen peroxide that is highly concentrated right, or chlorine or something like that. So, so there Yeah, there’s a lot of research UVC, right. You mentioned earlier, we haven’t quite used it just yet, right? Because the customers where we’re operating at have 24 seven operations for the most part. So there’s costs People coming in and out. Right? So then the risk of exposure to the light is there, right? We don’t want somebody in applying this UV light with a proper PP, of course. And then you have an engineer coming into the lab to run a test that, you know, two o’clock in the morning, blinded, yeah, that well, what is that cute little blue light? Right? And then you get flashed. So right, we, there’s, there’s quite a bit of risk. But you know, what I see in the future is because there is a tremendous need for cleaning. And we don’t know what other viruses and bacteria are going to come in the future. Right. pathogens are all so we think that buildings are going to start being designed with specific elements that help cleaning and that is built in foggers. In some areas, right. So for example, in the commercial kitchens right there, there might be piping put out there just like there is right now for sprinklers, right fire sprinklers and make something that releases some sort of chemical right, that helps clean the area or sterilize in some cases, UV lighting built into walls, right for specific applications like medical, right? There’s already technologies like that, right? But what are the ceiling opens up at night? Completely? We just like shutters. Right? Right. And there’s this tremendous amount of light, you know, trying to completely disinfect the space when nobody’s there. And then the shutters close out.
Greg Owens 36:26
Don’t get for security to keep people out.
Elias Nacif 36:29
Exactly. It would be so there are costly solutions at the moment. But there is a need, right. And there will be, again, technologies that are developed for those applications. Even if that is the case, I think the need for the human element and the human touch is still there. Right. So we are currently using robots.
Greg Owens 36:51
Right? I was curious. That was my next question. Yeah, were robots in your competition?
Elias Nacif 36:55
Yeah. Now we’ve used some vacuums, right? reverse exhaust is not quite there. Right. There’s there’s still the need for somebody to come behind the robot.
Greg Owens 37:05
And this is like an this is an advanced Robo. What do they call that the rombo rumble done for the house?
Elias Nacif 37:11
Oh, the the the Roomba? It’s one of those vacuums out?
Greg Owens 37:15
Yeah, it’s like an advanced, much bigger one looks like RTD?
Elias Nacif 37:18
Oh, yes. Like that. Exactly. It looks like an actually one of them looks exactly like an RTD to another one is like three or four times larger than that.
Katrina Hayes 37:26
And they’re their security for slow. Yeah, we toward slack. And they have these little RTX. Two,
Greg Owens 37:34
they’re using them for security. They haven’t made security for airports. But I’ve also seen them for vacuuming and that kind of thing. But I think like you said it’s not a it’s not 100, they won’t get the you know, if the client leaves something on the floor, it’ll think that’s something important not, it won’t pick it up and move it over to the side and vacuum underneath it right or move that garment. If the garbage cans six inches away. It’ll move around that, but it won’t get to the dirt that’s around the garbage.
Elias Nacif 38:00
Exactly, exactly. And the challenge there is that as you know, our facilities are very active, right? So customers are moving stuff all the time. So boxes are here and there. So then this robot, some of them can be mapped out through a facility and they can go around those items. But they’ll they’ll miss this little corner here and there. Right? And then nobody gets to that trashcan, like you said, or underneath that. Right. So I think it’s the secret here is let’s just combine, you know, bring the best that technology has to offer, right? With the human component that is going to add or enhance the cleaning, right? So it’s a combined effort that benefits everybody makes it efficient, cost effective. Right and sustainable in the long term without eliminating jobs. Nobody wants to eliminate jobs, right? It’s a matter of enhancing everything that we do so that
Greg Owens 38:44
it’s by getting rid of the jobs that maybe is too monotonous or can cause too much, you know, injuries or that kind of strain.
Elias Nacif 38:54
Yes.
Greg Owens 38:54
Anything heavy lifting and that kind of stuff that you can get robots to do sounds good.
Elias Nacif 38:59
Yes, yes. Yeah. That’s another reason why, you know, electrostatic sprayers and foggers have been very valuable, right? Because back in the day, right, it was just getting that sprayer by hand with two fingers right and just spray spray spray spray spray. After three minutes your fingers were like I’m done right ready for call a workers call here. Now with this machines, right? You can just cover so much areas so much easily. It’s really effortlessly. They’re very lightweight and effective.
Greg Owens 39:26
Yeah, any other any other resources or apps are things like that, that you guys are using that you rely on within your company?
Elias Nacif 39:35
Yeah, so we uh, we have a system we call medallion 365 Connect which is sort of a suite of all the components that run our business right so we have an an ER p platform does the accounting and yeah, all the all the customer you know, reports from billing and so forth. Then we have the QA part, which is our our technicians out there are operations managers going Now and into the size with an app to measure the quality of the cleanliness in the buildings. Right? So, yeah, there’s there’s two prong approach to that some of them is just a visual approach, right? We just look at an area, if it looks clean, we score it accordingly. And we have customers that require like ATP testing, right? Where we are grabbing a swab, you know, we, we scrub an area, we put in a device, and it tells us, you know, what is the level of contamination in that area? Oh, wow. Based on that, you know, they, the customers can keep us sort of accountable for what we promise, right? So there’s a lot of technology out there. We think one of the most important part is just being being clear and transparent with the customer about when the cleaning is performed, right, at what times of the day, because you can clean a lobby at six in the morning. And then by nine o’clock, guess what? It’s over? Right? The game is over, right?
Greg Owens 40:52
Or with these fires, you can Oh, man, we I just painted a house, and then went back to look at we just finished it and went and looked at it yesterday. And it looks so old and dingy. And it’s just there’s just layers and layers and layers of this, you know, smoke mash on it. Wow, unbelievable. That’s getting inside the houses inside facilities inside buildings everywhere, right?
Elias Nacif 41:19
And so it is yeah. And anytime we we actually have a solution for that just came to the table a couple of weeks ago, about three weeks ago. these are these are indoor air purification systems. That what they do is they use a combination of UV lighting, and some ionizing and other technologies that I can’t really describe very well. And they have lab tests to show that this air purification systems can actually inactivate Coronavirus as well. Oh, yeah. So we’re doing a lot of research on that. And we have, you know, meetings going on with customers, we’re doing some testing, we already bought a few of these units for office as well. Because that’s going to help, right? The idea is that you release all these particles into the air, they land on surfaces. And after so much time, right? Something like six or seven hours, they will just kill everything that is in those surfaces, or the majority of items, right, like 99.9%
Greg Owens 42:21
there’s gonna be a lot of interesting technology winners that come out of this. Yeah, right. Now, sadly, it’d be interesting seeing when the dust settles in a lot of ways what, what, what really was the things that worked? Right,
Elias Nacif 42:33
exactly, exactly, exactly. So um, so yeah, we’ll see how that evolves. Right. And we’re excited about just being part of the being this time, right, we have really the luxury of having an opportunity to contribute to the development of this industry, and to how the services look during challenging times. So that customers can have what they need at the end of the day. So we’re lucky to be here. Happy to be here. Happy to be healthy, right.
Greg Owens 43:01
And we’ll be so ready for that next pandemic.
Elias Nacif 43:07
I know it’s coming, right. It’s just a matter of time.
Greg Owens 43:10
Definitely, probably a matter of time. And like you said, we’ll see how this this winter, this winter goes. Because flu season is coming up. And it will be interesting, for sure to say the least to see what transpires I know, um, there’s been a lot of things that have flown off the shelves, right? Like, the PP early on, was non existent, like we, you know, we can’t even get proper and 95 mass scale, right, like we can get the cheaper versions, but that doesn’t help us if we’re doing some some of the other jobs we’re having to move to the end. 100 you know, which are hard to wear all day.
Elias Nacif 43:48
Yeah, respirators.
Greg Owens 43:49
Yeah, a full respirator. And like, weightlifting items have just flown off the shelves in the US, the market for them is like double what they used to be right, like, even the over and above what you pay for new, and I was talking to some friends, do you see anything that’s like coming in the next three or four months that is going to like a friend of mine said, you know, those space heaters that restaurants have? Yes, like, that’s going to go fast, right? Because everybody’s gonna realize it’s starting to get cold here in the Bay Area. And they’re all gonna sell out. Because how do you extend the season and make it comfortable for the clients? Anything like that, that you see happening within the maintenance industry?
Elias Nacif 44:32
Yeah, good. Good. Good question. So we’ve had our cost for gloves has, you know, significantly increase, right, because all of a sudden, everybody’s wearing gloves, sometimes for the wrong reason, right. As you as you know, we don’t we don’t need to have gloves all the time. 24 hours, and that’s actually counterproductive, right, because we’re spreading stuff all over the place. Wash your hands. That’s really what the CDC says it’s that it’s the way to go and we should have you do that. I see potentially indoor air filters being an issue, because now we’re going to go back to indoors, right? Because it’s cold because it’s going to rain. So we need to make sure that air is as clean as possible and purified, potentially a focus on floor mats. You know, I don’t know how much you’ve heard about floor mats, but they are such a critical component of cleaning, because what is it? What is it dirt come from into a building from the outside, right, we bring that with ourselves, and a lot of it comes from our shoes, right? So we’re stepping on the parking lot, we go to the gas station, the grocery store, whatever, and we bring that into our houses into our facility. So specific floor mats that have disinfecting properties, right, I think are gonna be very valued this this this time a year, and potentially run out on the shelves with large distributors, right. Other than that,
I mean, the mask continued to be an issue, but there’s a lot more PP floating out there. And yeah, a lot has been manufactured rapidly. So
Greg Owens 46:06
and I think that’s just gonna get better as we go into winter. Right, like, because, yes, ramping. They’re just constantly ramping up that manufacturing of that. And, yeah,
Elias Nacif 46:15
yeah, they are, the wipes continue to be a challenge, as you know, right. wipes are difficult to get hold off. And we’ve been very lucky of, you know, having great distributors, and they’ve been able to supply the product that we need. But again, it’s I am planning for the winter to be another sort of April, May, June, you know, curve, right, where things are spiking up just from planning. So I’m not hoping that we’re gonna get there. But I’m just planning for it just in case, right? So that we are prepared.
Greg Owens 46:48
My prediction is two weeks after Thanksgiving, another another around another round, because I’m just watching human behavior. And I’m watching people have this pent up energy and they want to see their friends and they want to do things, right. And if you mix and I’m watching, like, different clients getting their facilities or their houses ready for Halloween right now, and they’re really going the nine yards in a lot of ways. Like I’m seeing some stuff on the streets that I’m like, wow, that’s impressive. They’re gonna have some parties.
Yeah, yeah. And then you add a little alcohol in that. And I’ve seen this at both funerals and weddings, if the masks come down, people are hugging. It’s like, it’s gonna definitely, you know, there’s this pent up energetic release that needs to happen. And it will probably two weeks.
Elias Nacif 47:40
It is it is hopefully, hopefully we keep it safe out there. And we try to, you know, get together with those friends that are really close to our family. And we kept those bubbles, right to prevent the cross contamination and right into those high steep curves. We don’t want to see for everyone.
Greg Owens 47:59
Yes, please. Well, this has been a pleasure talking to you today. A lot of great information Elias in. Yeah, thank you so much for being on the podcast.
Elias Nacif 48:15
It’s an honor, thank you for inviting me, I hope some of this helps. And just know that we are here as a resource. For anything that we can do when it comes to cleaning or building maintenance, check out our website, you know, servicebymedallion.com check our LinkedIn, there’s a lot of activity we post.
Greg Owens 48:32
If you want to like find out more, is that the best place to go to go to your website if they want to? Yeah, opportunities for employment or for just definitely your services are?
Elias Nacif 48:42
Yes, the website is a great resource. And then we have of course, a social media channel channels, there’s always activity, right. So postings informing of the latest projects or opportunities, a lot of education, just in general, so that, you know, we’re all making the best decisions out there with the information at hand.
Greg Owens 49:02
Oh, fantastic. That’s great. Well, this has been the watching paint dry podcast and so honored to have you on it here. Elias Nacif with service medallion. And we’ll put in the show notes information about how to find and get in contact with you and the company worked for and have been a part of all these years.
Elias Nacif 49:23
Sounds great. Thank you so much for appreciate it. Thank you for your time. Again, let us know if you have any questions. Yeah.
Outro 49:40
Thanks for listening to the watching paint dry podcast. We’ll see you again next time and be sure to click subscribe to get future episodes.