Strategic Partners
Pride, People, and Performance
At present, Pritchard is evolving its business to the new realities of commercial office occupancy trends that are adding complexity to business operations.
Pritchard Industries is cleaning up in a rapidly changing environment
The pandemic may be in the rearview, but its profound impact on our work environments is still driving change. Advancements in technology, the availability and desire for remote job opportunities, and an incoming generation of workers who prefer flexible workplaces has had a remarkable trickle-down effect on the facilities services industry.
Less than five years ago, building support companies could count on regular Monday through Friday workplace janitorial schedules. While the pandemic initially shifted cleanliness concerns from traditional aesthetics to disinfecting and deep-cleaning for health and safety, those needs have flexed back to pre-pandemic normalcy, or in the case of Pritchard Industries, to a new and thrilling normal.
“What we have is a new reality,” Joseph Tinney, Pritchard’s COO recently told BOSS. “Trend data suggests that people return to the office on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, and Monday and Fridays the places are vacant. It’s transformed our service offering to a peak and valley business, and that’s where we are.”
Established in 1986, Pritchard is the largest privately held facilities maintenance business in the country. It serves commercial office buildings, corporate facilities, financial institutions, industrial and manufacturing plants, data centers, educational facilities, medical complexes, sports and entertainment arenas, and transport and storage facilities nationwide. The record-setting enterprise boasts a 96% client retention rate through providing national resources that are managed locally.
At present, Pritchard is evolving its business to the new realities of commercial office occupancy trends that are adding complexity to business operations. If a single person on one floor in an office building uses a restroom, for example, that area has to be cleaned, changing the cleaning company’s cost dynamics.
“A lot of these buildings are under significant financial stress, their costs escalated based on interest rates, and their revenues are decreasing because people are trying to renegotiate their leases and get out of them,” he explained. “Now we’ve got a whole segment of the business that requires us to be much more collaborative with our customers and come up with creative methodologies to drive the right cost structure.”
By gradually widening their core business of commercial office cleaning to serve diverse industry segments and needs, Pritchard has consistently grown despite market fluctuations. Working with schools, colleges, manufacturing facilities, stadiums and arenas, life sciences, healthcare, and other sectors, they’ve effectively solved the challenges of adaptation. The company is on track to eclipse $850 million in revenue this year and is fast approaching a billion dollars in annual revenue by growing organically and from vigorous M&A activity.
“We’re very excited about the combination of organic and acquisitive growth,” Tinney said, noting that the company was built on customer centricity and that the companies they acquire have similar cultures in that they are highly customer-experience focused. “When you put that together from an acquisition perspective, it raises the probability of acquisitions being much more successful.”
Backed by their financial partners at a private equity firm, Pritchard’s business model enables them to do many different things for a host of different clients. “That’s what makes it exciting,” he stressed. “The opportunity that we’ve been granted through our financial partners, not only through M&A, has begun a sweeping professionalization effort.” From a new ERP system to new infrastructure for finance, safety, human resources, and operational excellence, Pritchard will make those resources available to the local teams that execute their services.
“We’re a guest in someone else’s house for the majority of the services we provide, whether it’s cleaning up at the Golden State Warriors’ (arena) or a Verizon garage in the middle of Pennsylvania somewhere,” he said.
Keeping the service promise
Pritchard self-performs 80-90% of its work and supplements with subcontractors and vendor partners for its success. Each of those partners is vetted, and they become part of the company’s value proposition and unique differentiation in the market, even though they may also support competitors. “When we make a service promise to a customer, we’re reliant on not only our own team but on our subcontract set and our suppliers, so we want to make sure that we engage them in that service promise,” Tinney stressed.
“We need to make sure that those folks are right in lockstep with us or we’re not going to have the same service levels, the same commitment to the service promise that we are committing to. They’re an integral piece of the puzzle for us to deliver world-class services.”
To help others understand that puzzle, Tinney paints a straightforward picture. Pritchard supports other businesses, organizations, and entities by doing three basic things: They clean it, they fix it, or they move it. “In a commercial office building, cleaning means cleaning the offices, fixing it means maintaining the chiller plant and all of the things that break in that building, and moving it tends to be mailrooms and the receiving area where people might receive a computer and we have to deliver,” he said.
Taking that logic and applying it to a manufacturing plant, Pritchard’s functions remain the same in a radically changed environment. Cleaning may mean industrial cleaning, machine cleaning, or maintaining a clean room. Fixing it may mean maintaining utilities out to the manufacturing lines, and in some cases repairing them. The move it function may take place in storerooms, tool rooms, or moving product around the manufacturing floor.
“Our goal is to maintain the ability to deliver those primary functions that enable our customers to execute whatever it is they do. If it’s a manufacturing plant, we want to make sure that whatever they’re making, we help them do it as efficiently and cost-effectively as possible,” he said. “Our future growth is taking what we do well and putting it in different environments.”
Pritchard trains and certifies more than 10,000 team members to apply rapidly changing technology and health knowledge in all aspects of facility services. Their practices are developed in compliance with OSHA, EPA, CDC, and WHO guidance, and their cleaning products follow EPA guidelines. Their unwavering commitment to environmental sustainability is demonstrated by LEED certification, membership in the U.S. Green Building Council, and Green Seal certification.
Company founder Peter D. Pritchard put heavy-duty emphasis on providing superior customer experiences, and that ethos is a powerful element of the company’s success. As Tinney put it, “We have continuous improvement programs, innovating where we can, but our focus is going to be on that customer experience. Focusing on that will turbocharge our growth as we move down the path.”
Erin Meehan, Pritchard’s CEO, describes the company as a new and shiny organization with a very old soul. “That means we have the legacy and heritage of all of the companies that compose Pritchard today, but we’re morphing them into a new and shiny organization to address the needs of the marketplace, our shareholders, and our stakeholders,” Tinney concluded. “This is not your father’s facility service company.”
—
Pritchard provides a full range of sustainable building services including janitorial, engineering, window cleaning, disinfecting and much more …
Our Mission: We deliver the highest quality facility services powered by a dedicated well-trained workforce, led by professional management and committed to developing strong client partnerships. We provide dependable, high quality, customer-focused services with the following value-added advantages:
– Experience and Understanding of Management Expectations
– Proven Flawless and Seamless Transition with Enhanced Performance
– CIMS (Cleaning Industry Management Standard) Operations Philosophy
– PurClean Operation Standards for Training and Work Flow Process
– 100% Sustainability Commitment for a Healthier Environment
– CleanTouch Web-based Portal Providing Support, Quality Assurance, Reporting, and Management Systems
– Expert Emergency Response and Special Service Teams Fully Equipped and Trained to Meet Your Needs
Pritchard looks at each project and develops a comprehensive understanding to provide the most cost effective solution coupled with our value added advantages.
—
Corporate Office
150 East 42nd St.
New York, NY 10017
Phone Number: 212.382.2295
Homepage Link: https://www.pritchardindustries.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/people/Pritchard-Industries
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/pritchardindustries
