Using the APPA Rating Scale in Otuvy QM
What is APPA?
The APPA organization, or APPA: Leadership in Educational Facilities, is an organization that sets forth several industry standards for higher education facilities including cleaning standards across the US. As such, the APPA standard has been implemented on several accounts, and not just on educational facilities either.
The APPA cleaning standard outlines five levels of cleanliness to evaluate facility hygiene.
- Level 1: Orderly Spotlessness is where floors, surfaces, and fixtures are clean, bright, and free from buildup.
- Level 2: Ordinary Tidiness may show up to two days’ worth of dust or dirt but is still generally clean.
- Level 3: Casual Inattention shows dust, dirt, or buildup in corners or on surfaces but is maintained to a degree.
- Level 4: Moderate Dinginess presents evident dirt buildup, stained floors, and dusty surfaces, while trash may be old and give off odors.
- Level 5: Unkempt Neglect is the lowest standard, with visible dirt, scuffed floors, dirty surfaces, and overflowing trash. These levels provide a framework for assessing and improving cleaning practices in institutional settings.
Learn more about the APPA Cleaning Standards at https://www.appa.org/bok/cleaning-operations/ and refer to the Custodial Audit section of the page for an overview of how the scoring works.
APPA Job Template
While the APPA standard of cleanliness can be applied similarly to several types of buildings or service points, there is no real standard in place from one account to another. Usually, the APPA standard refers to how a service is scored. The Job Template for the location is determined by the scope of work or contract between the cleaning service provider and the client organization and simply applies the rating template to those services.
APPA Rating Template
An example APPA Rating Template can be found on SP 1569, our Otuvy QM Help Site account. This can be cloned from Otuvy QM System Admin to any account wanting the APPA Rating Template to be used, or created from scratch.
The APPA rating template utilizes a different method of scoring. Rather than using percentages of 100% for perfection down to 0% for an absolute failure, the APPA scores are 100% for perfection up to 500% for absolute failure. This is because a 5 on the APPA Cleanliness Scale stands for “Unkempt Neglect”.
APPA Inspection Averages
Because the APPA Cleanliness Scale uses whole numbers from 1 to 5 for scoring, we don’t want to display the average scores in percentages, rather we want to change this setting at either the client (if APPA applies for all locations of a client) or service location record.
If all locations for an Otuvy QM account will use the APPA rating template, then you can make this change in SP Info and it will apply to all locations and clients unless otherwise overridden.
Account Wide APPA
For account-wide changes, go to the SP Info > Main Information Edit page > Inspections section and set the inspection score type from Average Method - Percentage to Average Method - Number
Client Wide APPA
To only change this setting for all locations in a Client, go to the Client Record > Main Information Edit page > Inspection Scores section and set the Inspection Score Type from Service Provider Level Default to Average Method - Number
Individual Location APPA
To only change this setting for a specific Service Location, go to the Service Location Record > Main Information Edit page > Inspection Scores section and set the Inspection Score Type from Client Level Default to Average Method - Number
APPA Dashboards
Because the rating scale for the APPA standard is opposite that of normal 0-100% rating scales (meaning the higher the worse the score actually is) and the fact that we are using whole numbers rather than percentages means we need to create custom dashboards from our standard inspection dashboards to properly show this information.
Please contact us at support@otuvy.com to request an APPA Dashboard to properly show this information.
This APPA dashboard has been edited to show scores as numbers, not percentages, and has reversed the top and bottom scored locations/services/areas, etc to appropriately have 1 be the best and 5 the worst.
The APPA dashboard will have copied and customized the entire Inspections dashboard collection to make it APPA compatible.
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