The irony of many service industries is that when you’re doing your job exceptionally well, no one notices. If you walk into the lobby of a commercial building, for instance, you expect the marble/granite floors to look as good as the day they were installed and the stainless steel/brass elevators to be scratch free with a reflective shine. You only notice these surfaces when they aren’t in tip-top shape.
But if you take a minute to think about it, you realize that it’s not magic that keeps these surfaces looking great… or luck, or happenstance, or serendipity. More often than not, someone along the chain of command has made this taken-for-granted element a high priority, which completes the “Class A” experience of the entire building. That person realizes a one-time refinishing only lasts so long, and a priority needs to be placed on scheduled, periodic maintenance.
You might call it priority, but we call it passion. A passion that is enduring, not temporary; one that’s foresighted, not shortsighted. And if you don’t have that passion, maybe we can supply it for you.
Refinishing and maintenance of metal, stone, wood, glass, tile, and the exterior facade of buildings are the primary services we provide at Edge Architectural Restoration. But passion informs everything we do, so what we restore remains in freshly restored condition year in and year out. This passion maintains a new status quo that stays ahead of unavoidable wear-and-tear, so that “no one notices.”
Can You Fit Passion into the Budget?
The key to maintaining decorative and functional architectural surfaces in optimal condition is to maintain them before anyone notices they need to be maintained. In that perspective, our work is “behind the scenes.”
When we consult with clients in the cities we service, we argue it’s counter-productive to look at a maintenance budget and just “check the boxes.” That’s why we work with our clients’ budget to prioritize initiatives and devise plans that deliver a tailored program specific to their building. Not every building is the same, and we understand that.
We’ve been lucky that property managers usually recognize our passion pretty quickly. Every member of our team cares just as much about the outcome of the job as the property/facility/hotel manager we are contracting with. Apart from earning trust through quality work, we also earn trust by erring on the side of over-communicating. It’s critical to lead by example, but it’s also critical to keep everyone informed of the progress of each project’s goals.
We take pride in the work we do, whether it’s the grit of the actual refinishing work or the thoroughness of project planning in an advisory capacity. Since so much of our work depends on unsupervised follow-through, our formula for success is forming partnerships and over-communicating every step of the way.
How Do You Maintain Passion?
The obstacles to committing to passionate maintenance can be many. Property managers often have a limited budget, and they have limited time to get these tasks completed. As part of our expertise, we anticipate wear-and-tear and recommend a maintenance schedule that sustains a new, elevated status quo. We gauge the amount of traffic, or wear of any kind, against the durability of the finishes we are maintaining and schedule accordingly.
Our passion is making our clients look good in their jobs and to their superiors—and proving our value time after time. We make architectural surfaces shine and, as a result, we make property managers shine.
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