A Plus Kleaning and SlipSafe NW

"In the 30+ years that I have owned my software company, I have been in the care of perhaps seven or eight janitorial services during 20+ years as a tenant and then nearly 10 years in which I have been the owner of two office buildings in the Seattle area. Without question, the quality and reliability of “A Plus Kleaning,” which I have used since January 2013, has clearly been the best. The owner, Ken Maxfield, is not simply an unusually honest and hard-working man, but he’s pretty dang smart as well. Although I presume that he was once a janitor himself, he now has various “crews” for the different buildings for which he manages the cleaning. He makes absolutely sure his staff members appreciate that their job is not just to see how quickly they can get done for the night (what Ken calls the “trash and dash”). He has an extensive check list for them and he randomly and periodically drops in on his crews (especially when they are new) and inspects their work to make sure that they are doing a good job. On a few rare occasions, I have reported some things to him that could have been done better and he personally stopped by to work on these issues with his crew (rather than simply make a phone call to them or send an e-mail or text). Every year or two, Ken has asked to modestly raise his rates. In so doing, he has been totally open about why and laid out for me exactly what he wanted to raise his workers’ compensation to vs. what more (if anything) he wanted for himself. Typically, it has been about his staff members. He seems to actively strive for a reasonable balance between the desperate, trouble-prone worker ready to accept the lowest possible wage (and quit after a few months) and the benefits of actually holding on to somebody that has proven themselves over the longer term in what is, quite frankly, typically a very high turnover field of work. (With regard to the modest raises for his staff members, he always gave me veto power, although I always supported him.) Ken has his own professional-grade equipment for cleaning both carpets and stone tile, and he still sometimes gets personally involved in projects such as these and/or stripping and waxing vinyl flooring. He has even done outside clean-up work on our sidewalks and decks. (He actually has a “Specialty Contractor’s License” for power washing.) What’s more, when I have had him do one-off projects such as these, I stopped even bothering to ask him for upfront quotes (a very unusual shortcut for me). Quite simply, Ken is just a naturally fair man that takes great pride in the quality of his work. I’ve never once felt over-charged by him and I’ve always been happy with the results. As such, bothering with the whole “estimating” process one the one-off projects just stopped seeming a worthwhile use of time. This has been an incredibly low-maintenance relationship in a field in which having to baby-sit the vendor is not at all unusual. I would strongly recommend Ken Maxfield and A Plus Kleaning to any small to mid-sized business. (Given the effusive nature of the above note, I am compelled to emphasize that I met Ken Maxfield through referral from a professional carpet cleaner in 2012 – arguably a “competitor” of his. I know Ken only as a vendor and neither myself nor anybody that I know has a personal relationship with him or any member of his family.)" - Jeremy Seigel, Seigel Scientific, Inc.