Cleaning Up Corporate NY
by Joseph Dobrian, Contributing Editor
Real Estate New York - December 2000.

In most businesses - from real estate management to retailing to farming - bigger is almost automatically better from a corporate standpoint. The bigger company has more people, more money, more buying clout and more ability to weather temporary reverses. Inevitably, they consume - or at least marginalize - the "mom-and-pop" operations.

Every so often though, a smaller firm can find a way to out-maneuver the big guys and develop a growth strategy despite the odds. One of those is Harvard Maintenance, Inc., which in just the past four years has grown from a small janitorial company into one of Manhattan's important players, providing cleaning services to some 120 building's in New York City, and another 40 in New Jersey and Philadelphia.


Harvard® also offers such related services as security; concierge and mailroom/messenger center services, marble and wood refinishing, door service; and hotel maintenance.

Company president, Stanley K. Doobin, attributes the company's recent growth to two main stratagems: basing growth on client demand, and employing a style of management he calls the "Inverted Pyramid®." The latter, he claims, is particularly crucial in a unionized environment where employee morale can make or break a building maintenance operation.

"In this industry, standard procedure is to discipline your employees strictly," says Doobin. "According to our strategy, you make the environment as pleasant as possible for them, give them the best equipment and constantly ask them what they need to do their jobs."

This 'Inverted Pyramid®' system empowers the employees at every level. Instead of giving power to the manager, and instilling the belief that the employees serve the manager, the idea is to have managers serve the employees, providing them with support, equipment and assistance."

"They do a great job in our buildings"
- Gene Cannataro
ABC/Cap Cities

"A company is only as strong as its management, with leadership that exemplifies and stresses the importance of the word 'service' in the operation of a service company," says Gene Cannataro, director of facility management for ABC/Cap Cities, a Harvard client. "They do a great job in our buildings."

One of the oldest companies of its kind in the New York area, Harvard's pedigree goes back to the beginning of the 20th Century, although it wasn't incorporated until 1961, by Leo Doobin. The company had 80 employees when Stanley Doobin came aboard as Vice President in 1984, and had grown to about 140 people in 1992.

"We try to listen to our customers [and look for] growth opportunities."
- Stan Doobin

"In that year, the various estate problems were cleared up and we were able to do what we wanted to do," Stanley Doobin recalls. "We try to listen to our customers, so when they were complaining about their vendors in other areas, such as security, and suggested that we get into that business ourselves, we took that as a growth opportunity."

Indeed, Harvard Protection Services, LLC was launched in December 1996. Shortly thereafter, a client that Harvard Maintenance, Inc. took on in 1997 asked the company to get into the message center/concierge business. Then, Harvard acquired Bronze-Tone Elliott Metal Maintenance of Brooklyn in June 2000, to form the company's new Metal, Marble and Wood division, and has since added door maintenance to that division's menu of services.

"We've grown the metal maintenance business by 600% so far," says Doobin. "We've also just acquired Supreme Building Maintenance Corp., specialists in window and hotel cleaning."

"The next thing we might start up is mechanical maintenance," he continues. "We won't do it, though, until we can find the right person to bring on board. If I don't have the expertise in a given field, I will go out and look for the right person."

"At present, Harvard Maintenance, Inc., employs just over 3,000 people, and it's still growing."

"We've grown by customizing and modifying our business to suit the client's needs and requests," Doobin points out. "You have to understand each individual client's unique needs and personality. The same goes for our employees. We've had many of them tell us that their previous employers never talked to them except to discipline them, and didn't give them the tools for the job."

"All maintenance companies can provide the same janitorial services," asserts Denis Muzio, director of management for the Winter Organization, one of Harvard's clients.

The difference lies in the management and ownership. Harvard runs it the old-fashioned way: hands-on and tightly controlled. "I can always pick up the phone and have someone available. I don't get lost in voice-mail hell, nor do I get a secretary saying someone will call back."

"We have some tenants in our buildings who consider themselves to be involved in sensitive industries," Muzio continues. "They have schedules that must be adhered to, plus high levels of security and control, and Harvard® has been able to work with them."

Winter's relationship with Harvard is fairly typical of that of many clients. Harvard was in place at 220 West 42nd St. when Winter acquired the property; soon thereafter, Winter gave Harvard a further opportunity on a small Downtown building. That, ultimately led to yet another 400,000 square feet of space to service, according to Muzio.

Likewise, ABC/Cap Cities' Cannataro gave Harvard® a chance on one building:

7 Lincoln Square.

"I go to the gym in that building very early in the morning, like 4 a.m., and one morning I saw Stan [Doobin] in the facility," he recalls. "I often see him there when I'm checking my staff at night. I never saw that kind of support from previous cleaning companies." Today, Harvard takes care of the whole ABC complex, just under 2 million sq. ft.. "In addition to cleaning, they handle some of our metal and marble, and exterminating. Stan's positioned himself very well, combining all these services."

"One New Year's Day, we had a storm that backed up the storm drains at a facility on 66th Street off of West End Avenue, backing up into the lower office space of some of ABC's soap operas," he continues. "Harvard was there with an emergency truck in 45 minutes. I'm not sure if other cleaning companies even have a special truck for flood control."

"Harvard not only finds enough people," testifies David A. Raylor, property manager for 575 Fifth Associates, "they can also get people on the scene, even if the scene is unfolding at a building to which they're not even contracted."

"I prefer not to name names," he says, "but I can tell you about a flood situation where the building's cleaning company didn't have a single piece of flood control equipment that wasn't defective. Harvard came in and took care of it."

Raylor also gives the company high marks for the people it hires, and for trying to keep employees motivated.

"The cleaning business is heavily unionized, so you usually have to work with the crew that's in place when you contract to clean a building." Raylor explains. "What you need is good supervision, good quality supplies and good equipment. When you use inferior paper products, when the vacuum cleaners don't get fixed, staff morale goes down."

"Our security, cleaning, metal maintenance, and concierge services all know they're on the same side," Raylor continues. "It's almost an unhealthy situation using one vendor for all those services, but Harvard's a one-source company. Their growth is fueled by client's requests for more and different services."

Raylor expects 575 Fifth Avenue to present an early challenge to Harvard's new Metal, Marble and Wood division. 'This building's a bit like Trump Tower in that it has a huge amount of brass and bronze, with a four-story atrium that's very hard to clean,"he explains. "The marble has to be polished regularly, and the metal needs a lot of treatment to prevent tarnishing."

"At 565 Fifth Avenue and 33 Whitehall Street [the NASDAQ building], we have marble walls and flooring that require tremendous amount of maintenance," agrees Wayne A. Lang, director of property management for the Kipp-Stawski Management Group. "Harvard cleans five buildings for us, and one thing we like is the accessibility to top management when we have a problem. We find it easy to negotiate with a private firm like Harvard®, because you deal directly with the ownership and they're not tied into corporate pricing."

The Vice President of the Metal, Marble and Wood division and founder of Bronze-Tone Elliott, explains that his new division represents Harvard's first venture into what can be a highly specialized, artisan's business.

"We just picked up the Sony Corp. building," he points out. "There, the previous occupants had painted over the bronze; we're now in the process of stripping it down. And I just signed a Chase Manhattan Bank contract, involving maybe 400 branches."

Harvard's door repair business covers revolving doors, swing doors and transoms, storefront installation, wood doors, and solid bronze doors. "In this highly competitive specialty," Mullin explains, "a company normally bids for a three-year contract on a building."

Liability is a huge concern as well, when it comes to doors, because 10,000 people might pass through the doors of any given Midtown building in a single day. And Heaven forbid any one of those 10,000 people should fall down, get a finger pinched, have something spilled on him or something else.

"About 27 companies repair doors in Manhattan, and prices are generally similar, although sometimes a company will go way down in price just to get into a building," Kiplyn notes. "Once you're in, you keep the customer with high-quality work. Doors require lots of maintenance, especially revolving doors."

"We just finished restoring the doors of St. Patrick's Cathedral, which entailed a lot of highlight work," she continues. "One of the cathedral's doors is made of solid bronze, with some welded-on decorative design work. There, we darkened the background and lightened the decoration, all by hand. That project took us about six weeks."

"Rather than dictate what we want, we support what the on-site supervisors need from us," he says. "They have the authority to make decisions on the spot. We fix the situation and talk about payment afterwards. Newer customers, who are more accustomerd to the traditional way of being dealt with, especially seem to appreciate our style. We try to 'saturate' our clients. An account might see our top people two or three times a week. It's good for clients to see our President on the job."

"Pretty much whatever customers need or expect, they get," asserts Dan Crowley, Vice President of Sales. "We'd rather have the Supervisor make a decision and do the right thing, and if it costs us a couple bucks, so be it. Some companies have lost sight of the core business and have become more bottom line-oriented than service-oriented.

"All companies are in busines to turn a profit, of course, but customer service is the heart and soul of the business,"he continues. "We're in a highly competitive industry. The customer can go to any other company. A lot of the business in this city is relationship-driven; that's why we're out and about and seeing our clients all the time. We don't believe that if you're not hearing from them, all's okay."

This hands-on approach wins high marks from employees, too. Both Crowley and Doobin agree that a team spirit leads to top performance by contented personnel.

"It's not uncommon for employees to come up to our headquarters at 570 Seventh Ave. to visit, to talk about something, or to drop off some food they've prepared at home," says Crowley. "Because we're in a union environment, our employees tend to stay at the same building for ages, and they talk to the clients about how we treat them compared to their previous employers."

"One of our little secrets is the Crown Award, which fosters team-building"
  - Stan Doobin
     President

"One of our little secrets is the Crown Award, which fosters team-building," Doobin adds. "We select one building, based on quality of service, customer satisfaction, letters of recommendation, low absenteeism, etc., and everyone at that location gets a $100 bonus. A program like that gets everyone working together as a team, helping each other out so they can win the award."

"Our supervisors try to make the field people feel that they're part of the family," Crowley attests. "Most companies don't tell them when things are going right; we do. We try to promote from within, to recognize the field workers who have the ability and skills to oversee a building or an area."

"When we do lose an account, it's generally because that particular building has been sold," Crowley notes. "And often, our employees involved with the building want to stay with us. We lay it all out for them, what they might be giving up by doing so, such as seniority, and thankfully some decide to stick wth us."

"We've made significant investments in communications equipment, including beepers, cellular phones and e-mail for everyone," adds Dominick Ripillino, Vice President, Protection. "Fast delivery has to be a top priority. Simply put, you don't want anyone to have to make a second phone call."

"Every time we take on a new building, we try to expose our new employees to our own corporate culture," Ripillino continues. "We set up meetings with everyone, expressing our goals and hopes, presenting them with an open door policy, and letting them tell us what the issues are in that particular building, and what they need."

Mullin remarks that the addition of various services, in response to client demand, is also a way to attract new employees and gain their goodwill.

"Our messenger/concierge service, for example, presents a great opportunity for an employee to work their way up, into customer service, or even into the management of several message centers,"he notes. "This service isn't that hard to put together; it's pretty cut-and-dry."

"The key is to hire dependable people,"Mullin says. "In a lot of buildings, in order to control who gets past the lobby area, people look to us to provide a service by which a package is dropped off at the message center, a signed receipt is handed to the messenger and the package is then delivered internally. This prevents graffiti and vandalism in elevators caused by people who shouldn't be there, as well as other problems."

Adding services also helps build the client base, since client testimonials can be a strong sales tool.

"We have to be the go-to company for any service, and we have to be ever more flexible," Mullin says. "More and more companies now operate around the clock, seven days a week, and for some of them, we have to change the times we clean, perhaps going in mid-day or early morning whenever we're least likely to disturb the workers."

"This seems to work," he continues. "At any rate, I let our customers be our pitch. We like to have people come and look at the buildings in our portfolio, and let them see how we run our system. Our customers tend to be honest with other people they speak to, and will tell them if there is something that needs improvement."

"Cleaning, and staying out of the way of the client, is difficult sometimes," Crowley admits. "The most challenging situation we faced was the cleanup for the grand reopening of Radio City Music Hall, where we had only a short time in which to get the place pristine, and do it alongside the tradespeople who were getting ready for opening night."

"We're planning to expand in the city and beyond," Crowley concludes. "Our metal and marble division has taken off tremendously, and so has our door division. Now's the time for more growth."