There's so much to keep track of at a storage facility that it's understandable to have some blind spots.
Unfortunately, it can take someone else pointing it out for us to finally catch those blind spots. In the worst-case scenario, a customer is the one who points it out.
Nigel Kreft of Storage Structures and Jackie Belau of Everbrite Coatings joined us to talk about maintaining a storage facility. During the conversation, they covered some common blind spots to look out for!
Question: "What are blindspots that owners and managers miss?"
Check out the video clip below to hear their answers:
In this Gabfocus Session: Keeping Up With Your Facility, Tommy and Melissa were joined by Nigel Kreft (Storage Structures) and Jackie Belau (Everbrite Coatings). The topic of the day? Maintaining the form of your facility through cleaning, maintenance, and more.
Check out the full Session to dive deeper!
Don't want to watch the clip? Here's what Jackie, Nigel, Tommy, & Melissa had to say:
For me, what I was saying before, people don't realize how bad their doors are until they have to do something about it, and then they go, "Whoa!"
I think that's a huge blind spot, especially if people have high occupancy.
They're like, "Everything's fine, we're good." And until one day, you're not."
—Jackie Belau
"For me, it's building damage.
Like, I see dented stuff. Obviously, being in the metal business, I'm keyed in on that stuff all the time. So when I see a downspout that's been half ripped off or they didn't put it back on, or someone running into the corner of the building and haven't got around to fixing it and stuff like that.
So I think it's the cleanliness and the security and the brightness, and it's about making sure that your facility represents what you want it to be as well.
And so when you let little things go, they have a tendency to boil up and become bigger things.
And for something that you're looking at, that may be a several hundred dollars fix, but aesthetically it might make all the difference to someone who walks in and sees a dented panel, or a hole in a panel, a hole in a door. They're like, "Well, I don't want to rent a unit. Is my unit going to have a hole in my door as well? What does that look like for me?"
So for me, it's about aesthetics and the cleanliness and crispness of what things look like."
—Nigel Kreft
"[One of my pet peeves is] weeds in the gravel.
Y'all, it kills me.
Not every facility is going to have nice asphalt. Not every facility needs nice asphalt, right? But if you have gravel and you've got weeds all up in that gravel, it kills me. Because it's like, I mean, I know weeds come and go, but it's not that hard to deal with, and it's not that costly compared to some of the other stuff that we're talking about.
We're talking about vinegar. $4 jug of vinegar. Right.
Oh that stinks. That's true. But ultimately, when I drive up to a facility to hang out with a client or to visit, weeds in the gravel or weeds where they're not supposed to be, really gets me.
Because it's just a sign that yeah, like Nigel, like you said it, if you're not taking care of this small stuff, where are the weeds that I don't see? Right?"
—Tommy Nguyen
"Mine is dirty hallways, especially hallways that have just been cleaned with just a push broom, and then all the dirt ends up in the crevices of all the doors.
And it's like you didn't actually sweep at all.
No. You have not cleaned these floors. You just pushed it. You actually are pushing it into other units, and that's not cool.
So that's a pet peeve of mine."
—Melissa Huff
