Q: Polishing a marble floor looks so simple. Why can’t everyone maintain these floors to the same degree and quality?

Q: If I hire Stuart Dean to maintain my floors, can I get a tailored service package to fit my budget instead of an automatic monthly program?

Q: I have asked three companies for bids to maintain my marble floor. Is there a common industry standard for maintaining floors? Does everyone use the same method at the same frequency? Am I comparing apples to apples?

Q: Why should I consider a metal maintenance program for the building I manage?

Q: “Why should I have a maintenance contract, running one or more years, with regular service provided for specified items on a relatively fixed schedule?”

Q: Do all architectural metal items need to be included in a maintenance program?

Q: Why is it common for the property manager to get bid prices for the same item or items that are very dissimilar?

Q: What types of wood restoration services does Stuart Dean offer and can you give a brief description of what that service entails?

Q: What must be done to wood wall panels when there is cracking in the veneer?

Q: Do I need to have a complete refinish job if my wood looks dull and streaky?

Q: Would I have to close the work area down until project is completed?

Q: Is Stuart Dean strictly a wood maintenance and refinishing company?

Q: Does Stuart Dean have off-site facilities to handle a large job?

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Q: Polishing a marble floor looks so simple. Why can’t everyone maintain these floors to the same degree and quality?

A: Experience plays a substantial role in enabling the technician to know precisely what methods to employ to quickly and effectively service a floor. Marble and granite surfaces differ in their responses to similar methods, often markedly. There are at least one hundred fifty different types of granite and marble that are commercially available. While the general method of restoring a floor is the same across these different stone types, the precise method used to efficiently restore a particular type of stone varies considerably because the stones vary in their responses to the methods. For example, Negro Marquina marble typically requires much less aggressive honing than White Carrera. This usually means that less time is required to hone Negro Marquina than White Carrera both because the very low grits may be unnecessary for Negro, and because less time may be required for each level of grit (60, 120, 220, 400, 800, etcetera.) Knowing which grades of abrasive material to use, for how long, when to hone or to simply vitrify is an acquired skill.

Q: If I hire Stuart Dean to maintain my floors, can I get a tailored service package to fit my budget instead of an automatic monthly program?

A: Yes! Please keep in mind that the normal monthly program is by no means an extravagance, and that it has been tailored to fit the needs of a demanding marketplace. In that sense you should realize that our standard monthly program would give you what we believe, and what most of our customers believe, is the best value. We can also customize a program for your specific needs.

Q: I have asked three companies for bids to maintain my marble floor. Is there a common industry standard for maintaining floors? Does everyone use the same method at the same frequency? Am I comparing apples to apples?

A: NO. There is no generic program in use by everyone. This can be readily seen in the difference in quality between a typical Stuart Dean maintained floor and those maintained by some of our competitors. The fundamental difference in most cases is that we direct our technicians to continuously re-hone and polish all the areas that are badly worn on a monthly basis, unless the contract specifically states otherwise. Most competitive programs restore the surface of the floor in the first month, and then use polishing compounds in successive months, ignoring the steady build-up of scratches on the surface that gradually erodes the polish. Others may spend time each evening honing partial areas of the floor that result in an uneven appearance. Sometimes, an in-house janitorial staff that often lacks the expertise and overall ability to do a high quality job may also carry out this honing.

It has been our experience that these methods are generally ineffective at maintaining a high quality finish on a floor. Recall that the shininess of a floor is a function of the extent to which the surface is smooth. If a floor is subject to heavy traffic, no amount of chemical treatment will enable you to maintain the smoothness of the floor. The constant wear and tear created by the friction of shoes, dirt and dust will rapidly create the microscopic peaks and valleys on the surface that ruin a polished appearance. When this happens, the stone must be re-honed to reestablish a smooth finish, and then re-polish in order to recreate the appearance the floor had at the outset of the maintenance program.

Similarly, there is simply no substitute for having an experienced, savvy stone restoration expert honing your floor. We train our technicians for a minimum of two years before we allow them to run a stone restoration crew.

Q: Why should I consider a metal maintenance program for the building I manage?

A: All architectural metal oxidizes. Oxidizes is a fancy way of saying it rusts, or pits or rots. In other words, if the metal is left alone, it will deteriorate in appearance. The four most common architectural metals: bronze, stainless steel, aluminum and copper. The precise way they deteriorate, and the extent to which this deterioration can be reversed or halted altogether, varies greatly. This disparity in the manner and degree of deterioration has profound economic implications. Let’s look at these four metals individually.

Bronze

Bronze is a copper-tin alloy. Brass, which is often mistaken for bronze, is a copper-zinc alloy. Most of the architectural metal in use today that is a copper alloy is 60-40 blend of copper and zinc. For reason unknown to this writer, it is almost universally called “bronze” by architects, real estate developers and metal refinishers, though technically, it is a brass. For the balance of this paper, we will use the term “bronze” to describe this metal.

There is good news and bad news about bronze. First, the bad: left untreated, bronze oxidized and turns an ugly, blotchy, brown color within weeks, if not days. Consequently, in most architectural settings, bronze is cleaned and then immediately spray-coated with clear synthetic lacquer (the lacquer prevents oxidation). This process may need to be performed multiple times per year on high wear items, such as doors, or as infrequently as once each several years on low wear items, such as interior light fixtures. The finish on the bronze, which can be mirrored, statuary (dark brown) or satin (grained with the natural color) will also impact the longevity of the period between services.

Bronze is relatively expensive to maintain. This is both because it required more elaborate methods (spray coating) and because it is difficult to clean. There is no “abracadabra” method to cleaning bronze. A skilled metal refinishing mechanic simply scrubs the surface with an acrylic pad and water (in the case of the grained finishes) or buffs the surface with powders and soft clothes (in the case of mirror finishes). After a thorough cleaning, the appearance of the surface (satin finish or mirror finish) is then made uniform by a variety of means.

At this point it is worth mentioning one of the key facts about metal refinishing in general and bronze refinishing in particular: it s extraordinarily demanding physical work. As mentioned, there is no simple way to clean bronze. The oxidation and build-up of dirt in the grain of the metal must be scrubbed out by hard physical force. Progress is relatively slow; a good metal refinisher can clean and lacquer one standard sized elevator entrance in eight hours. This should give the reader an insight into how demanding the work is. Furthermore, bullish physical stamina is a necessary but not sufficient component of good metal refinishing. The quality worker must also be very careful in protecting the areas adjacent to the item he is working on, and must be able to execute detail-oriented work, such as the refinishing of tiny items or difficult areas.

The physical difficulty of metal refinishing leads to a second general point: the quality of metal refinishing can vary dramatically. Very few people have the physical stamina and the patience to spend eight hours cleaning a single door. Finding people who can do this type of work efficiently and with high quality is not easy. Our technicians earn, on average, twice the wages and benefits, of a janitorial service worker. Yet, in spite of these relatively generous wages and benefits, seventy- five percent of all new hires wash out within sixty days. They simply can not take it. This is not meant to be a disparaging remark: the simple fact is most people cannot endure this type of work. This is a very important point to keep in mind when considering the value of various metal refinishing services.

The good news about bronze is that, even if ignored for sometime, it can usually be restored to a close approximation of its original appearance. This is because as bronze oxidizes, it usually builds up a patina of oxidation that protects the substrate. It’s almost as if the metal were growing a protective coating. Unfortunately, the growing ubiquity of pollutants in our air, particularly in city-centers, has resulted in an acid etching of the surface of many bronze items that permanently discolors them. Mirror finish items subject to such etching can almost never be restored to a close approximation of their original appearance. Any property manager or business owner with mirror-finish bronze (brightly polished metal that you can readily see your reflection in) in a city center or other high pollution area should immediately arrange for a maintenance schedule with a metal refinishing company. Without a maintenance program, such a finish can be permanently scarred in as little as four months.

To summarize, bronze always needs to be maintained (by maintained I mean regularly scheduled cleaning that involves the re-application of a synthetic lacquer coating). In between these services, it is generally a good idea to wash the surface of the lacquer-coated bronze and lightly buff-wax it. This helps to maintain the longevity of the lacquer coating. This also prevents the build-up of unsightly soot.

Aluminum

Aluminum is the most common architectural metal in the United States. Many of the skyscrapers in this country have an anodized aluminum skin. Others have painted aluminum curtain walls, or aluminum window frames, doors, panels, etc. In the US, it is almost impossible to not see aluminum on one stripe or another if you are in a major city of one of its suburbs.

It was not always this way. As late as 1900, aluminum was considered a precious metal. Although it is the third most abundant element on earth (after oxygen and silicon), aluminum does not occur in nature as a pure element. It must be refined from its compound form (bauxite). Such a process was not commercially viable until the early part of the 19th Century. Now the stuff is ubiquitous.

This is good news for metal refinishers: most architectural aluminum is generally inadequate to the task of withstanding the rigors of the modern industrial environment. For this reason, most of the news regarding aluminum as an architectural metal (so far as maintenance expense is concerned) is not good; it corrodes in most forms, it cannot be restored once it has corroded, it usually very expensive to replace. The good news about aluminum from the standpoint of construction expenditures is that it is relatively inexpensive. Some painted aluminum surfaces are quite durable. We will discuss painted aluminum a little later.

Much of architectural aluminum comes in one of two forms: anodized or mill finish. Mill finish aluminum is raw, unprotected natural “aluminum—colored” aluminum. It is rarely used in architectural settings today because it is completely inadequate to withstand modern industrial pollution. It was commonly used on buildings constructed from the late 1940’s through the middle 1960’s.

Mill finish aluminum “pits”. That is, the surface is almost immediately penetrated by nitric acid, usually the residue of auto emissions, and a hole, or “pit” is literally burned in the metal. Dirt, soot and grim coagulate around this newly formed pit. When one runs one’s hand over the surface of an old aluminum door or window frame, one can feel the bumps and rough spots all over the surface. These are pitted areas that have corroded further and now have many such lumps. While these rough spots can be sanded smooth, the underlying metal surface will have been complete and permanently destroyed by the nitric acid corrosion. The only solution to such damage is painting. IN many cases, the aluminum has been so severely compromised that it is too brittle to sand and re-paint. Such metal must be replaced.

Metallurgists gradually realized that in the ultra-polluted environment of the 1960’s (when air pollution in major metropolitan areas was actually much worse than it is today) mill finish aluminum was impractical. A new product or a new technique for protecting aluminum finishes was required. The anodizing process, originally invented in the 1920’s, was hailed as the solution.

Anodizing refers to a special electro-chemical bath that provides a tough oxide coating for greater resistance to atmospheric corrosion. The anodizing process also allows aluminum makers to color the metal to different shades. Most anodized aluminum is either black or brown. Anodized metal, with this new tough coating, proved to be far more resistant to the perils of pollution. Today, in almost every major town and city in this country, you can walk down any street, walk up to a storefront, and you’ll see window frames or a door made of dark metal with a slight grain: anodized aluminum.

Unfortunately, in most cases and particularly in big cities, the anodized coating simply slows down the process of corrosion. The same problems of pitting and corrosion that plagued mill finish aluminum bedevil anodized aluminum. The only difference is that where exterior mill finish aluminum might deteriorate as quickly as one month, exterior anodized aluminum that receives no maintenance service might take a year or sometimes, depending on its location, several years to deteriorate.

The location issue is very important. As a general rule, areas plagued with heavy automotive congestion or traffic are most prone to anodized aluminum deterioration. Doubly damned are items that are subject to such pollution and that are protected from rainfall; the rain helps to wash away the pollution that causes the pits and burn marks. Carports, recessed windows and doors, exposed ceiling panels and fascia panels are items that are frequently damaged almost immediately after installation.

Anodized aluminum curtain walls are also subject to these problems. Many of the 1960’s era skyscrapers in Chicago, New York, Los Angeles and other cities across the country have been badly scarred by the effects of pollution.

Anodized aluminum therefore requires protective maintenance. The most straightforward method is to clean the surface, usually with pumice stone and water, then coat it with a protective lacquer. High wear anodized items, such as revolving doors and swing doors, will gradually show numerous cuts and dents, exposing the silver colored aluminum beneath the anodized skin. In such instances, the item usually has to be painted with a matching color. This can be troublesome from an aesthetic point of view; the newly painted finish on the frequently used revolving door (located at the building’s main entrance) will begin to chip and scratch almost immediately. For this reason, many upscale properties prefer to use bronze or stainless steel for main entrance architectural appointments. Through much more expensive, these metals tend to wear better and required no painting. On the other hand, anodized aluminum is probably more sensible for entryways to businesses such as fast food restaurants, convenience stores, shopping malls, etc.

To conclude, the rule of thumb for any exterior anodized aluminum, whether it is as small as a single window frame, or as large as an entire curtain wall, is maintenance. If the metal is not maintained with a protective coating or very frequent cleanings, far more costly painting and repainting will be inevitable consequence.

Painted Aluminum

Not all architectural aluminum is of the anodized or mill finish variety. Many buildings constructed after 1975 have painted aluminum panels and frames on the curtain wall, or have painted aluminum doors and frames at their entrances. I am here referring to aluminum that was painted in the factory. Often these painted finishes are baked on. That is, the newly painted item is literally heated in an over-like device to strengthen the molecular bond between the aluminum, the primer and the paint itself.

Painted aluminum of this type (assuming the factory finish was properly applied) usually withstands the rigors of industrial pollution better than anodized aluminum. This is particularly true on “non-wear” areas such as window frames, fascia panels and curtain walls. Painted aluminum will chip and scratch on high wear areas such as revolving doors and swing doors, and consequently will require periodic repainting.

As good as it is, painted aluminum is not completely maintenance free, nor does it last forever. As already mentioned, doors and other high wear areas will need to be periodically repainted. The frequency depends on the usage rate. Non-wear areas probably need to be repainted once each ten to fifteen years, either because the paint will eventually begin to peel, or simply due to ultraviolet fading caused by sunlight. The latter will “bleach out” the appearance of paint, fading it from its original color. It is a good idea to periodically wash off the surface of painted aluminum. This will remove the build up of soot and auto pollution that can fade or discolor paint.

Stainless Steel

Stainless steel is a silver colored metal that usually comes in either of two finishes: mirror finish or satin finish (with a grain). Stainless steel is sometimes confused with aluminum, but is easily distinguished by its more lustrous appearance: the silver color is usually deeper and richer, as is the grain.

Stainless steel is not always stainless: it sometimes rusts. This is more common in wet climates, such as those found in the northeast or north central (Chicago, Detroit and Cleveland) parts of the country. When used on the interior of a building, such as on the operating wall of an elevator, stainless steel will not rust, but it will gradually begin to show a greasy film from frequent hand contact.

Generally speaking, exterior satin finish stainless steel should be cleaned and spray coated with synthetic lacquer. Interior satin finish stainless steel may be spray coated, or it may be cleaned and frequently rubbed with a product such as “Sheila Shine”, a polish that helps to keep a uniform appearance on the metal. The decision as to whether to use the lacquer or simply allow the janitorial crew to frequently wipe the metal with a stainless steel polish is usually a matter of aesthetics. The lacquer coating tends to be more uniform in appearance; the polish is usually a little shinier. One drawback of the metal polishes is that they tend to attract dust and they can leave a residue on clothing or fingers. The lacquer finish does not have these problems, but it probably needs to be re-applied once each two years, and can be relatively expensive.

Mirror finish stainless steel does not require a lacquer finish in any setting. The metal must be cleaned monthly (at least) on exterior applications, or it will usually look quite unsightly (pollution and soot become very noticeable). High wear items, such as revolving doors, need the constant attention of the janitorial crew in order to remove the instantaneous build-up of oil from human perspiration. A thorough monthly cleaning by professional metal refinishers is usually a good idea, particularly on items such as the interior walls of revolving doors.

Stainless steel is a very hard metal. Consequently, the mirror finish variety of stainless steel tends not to corrode, or “pit”, to the same degree that mirror finish bronze does. Nevertheless, this type of severe corrosion can take place if the metal is neglected for lengthy periods of time. For this reason, property managers should take care not to ignore any exterior mirror finish stainless steel on their building for any extended period.

Copper

Copper is rarely used today for most “functional” architectural items. It is more commonly used for items such as decorative awnings or in kitchens.

Copper is the principal component of bronze, so it has many of the characteristics of bronze. One of its main drawbacks is that it begins to oxidize almost instantaneously. Consequently, unless the customer is looking for a natural patina finish, copper must always be coated with lacquer (or cleaned very frequently by hand) to prevent discoloration.

Copper is also quite soft, making it impractical for items such as doors or elevators entryways. Any architect or property manager looking to use copper in his lobby should be aware of this issue. Copper should only be used for items that will not be frequently handled, and money must always be budgeted for its maintenance.

Other Metals

There are other metals that are less frequently used for high---visibility architectural appointments: nickel bronze, steel, chrome, and iron (very rare today). Nickel bronze, which looks almost exactly like stainless steel, is treated in a manner similar to bronze. The other metals are treated in a variety of ways, depending upon their location and finish. One could write a book on the variety of ways all metal scan be treated, and though the reader would no doubt be thrilled at the prospect of delving into such a fascinating subject, we shall confine ourselves to the four primary materials already described. The reader can contact his local metal refinisher for any questions regarding these more arcane metals.

Q: “Why should I have a maintenance contract, running one or more years, with regular service provided for specified items on a relatively fixed schedule?”

A: Again, for some readers the answer to this question is obvious: my metal will rot for the above-specified reasons if I don’t (most of these readers for a variety of reasons, tend to be located in the northern and eastern United States). For many others, the answer to the same question is some variation of the following:

“I know I have to periodically clean this stuff (the metal appointments), but locking myself into fixed payments is too expensive. I can walk around the building, and when I see that the metal needs to be cleaned, I’ll hire someone. This way, I save money by only spending the absolute minimum necessary. It seems to me these metal guys are always cleaning metal that already looks pretty good.”

Or

“Every time I need some items done, I bid the job out. This way I always get the lowest price for every single item. When I tie myself up in a contract, I lose that economic leverage and end up spending way too much.”

We will now explain why reason number one is almost always wrong, reason number two is totally wrong.

“I’ll do it when I need it, when I see that it looks bad.”

The first, and most obvious reason why this is flawed thinking is that the tenants do not want the building to ever look bad. Waiting until the building looks poor prior to doing something risks alienating customers and potential customers. It is also true, for the reasons explained above, that waiting until something looks bad might end up costing far more than periodic regular maintenance. This is especially true for anodized aluminum and mirror finished bronze.

“I bid single items when they need it, this way I guaranty the lowest price for each item.”

Contrary to what most people think, it is more expensive to pick and choose items on a regular basis than to bundle them in a contract. Let us explain.

Time is money. Time ALWAYS has a cost. If a property manager must spend an hour looking around at items another twenty minutes making phone calls to vendors, twenty minutes to a half hour reviewing proposals and then issuing a PO and scheduling the job, the time value of these activities is likely to be at least $800.00. Also keep in mind that the vendor (Stuart Dean) must cover his costs of writing proposals, looking at items, crating schedule3s, etc. These activities cost a minimum of $200.00. Going through this routine for every single item can get very expensive and quite wasteful if the items are refinished annually, or even semi-annually, as will be explained below.

It is also wasteful, and ultimately more expensive, to not take advantage of certain efficiencies that may be realized by “bundling” the refinishing of several items at once. For example, it is almost never the case that the refinishing of any single item requires precisely eight hours of time, but because of the nature and costs of the metal refinishing business, all work has to be “chunked” into such segments and the customers are charged accordingly.

For example, assume it requires fourteen hours time to refinish a given item and this is the only item the customer wants serviced. Assume the cost per hour equals $60.00. This fourteen-hour item should cost $840. Unfortunately for the customer, it will almost always cost $960. How come?

The reason is that once the fourteen hours of work have been completed, there is nothing else that the metal refinishers can do. In almost all cases like this, the worker will simply have to call it a day. The reason is that the entire process for metal refinishing of any item (masking the area for protection, cleaning, then spraying with clear lacquer) requires a minimum of two to four hours. The work crew in this example has just completed a task requiring fourteen hours (two men working seven hours). They will not have time to go to another site, perform all the preparation work and completed any items in the time left in their eight-hour day. Keep in mind that in metal refinishing, all items generally need to be completed the same day they are started: the customer will not tolerate the appearance of partially cleaned items, or the presence of masking paper in their lobbies or common areas during daytime hours. (Metal refinishing is almost always done at night after working hours to avoid inconveniencing the tenants).

The same logic described above applies to any job that does not round off to eight-hour increments (or requires that the service provider spend substantial time in the middle of an eight hour shift moving to a new site), be it twenty hours or one hundred hours. SO long as there are any other items that also need to be refinished on an ongoing basis, it is senseless to omit them from an ongoing program and not allow the refinisher to capture the efficiencies that may be gained by “bundling”.

The reader may be asking himself a couple of questions. First, why would the property owner be charged the cost for the downtime or the travel time? Why wouldn’t the refinishing company absorb this cost? The answer to this has two parts. First, the refinishing company obviously seeks to maximize revenue and must pay the labor cost to the workers to travel. It will therefore seek to capture this value by charging the customer.

More importantly, the refinishing company, if it has a backlog of any kind, will always round the price up to a higher number. If the company has a backlog of work it would be irrational to take on any project that did not allow it to maximize the revenue possible in an eight-hour day. If you ask me to bid on your fourteen hour project, and I have a six hundred hour backlog, there is no way I’m going to bid less than sixteen hours for this fourteen hour project. To do so would be a sacrifice two hours of revenue generating time. For the same reasons, a ten-hour job will probably be bid at twelve hours: two hours travel time is required to get to the next project. Keep in mind that every metal refinishing company will be compelled to price similarly for the exact same reasons provided they have a backlog (and they all do. The handful that does not is probably those you should avoid).

Furthermore, by bundling and allowing the metal refinishing company to crate an optimally efficient work program, the pricing for practically all the items will revert to the actual time required for their servicing. In other words, THE TOTAL COST FOR THE CUSTOMER IS LOWER. Why? In a competitive bid situation, the company that does not take advantage of the efficiencies afforded by cleaning all items that could be done simultaneously will charge too much. The competition will realize that things can be done more efficiently and price it accordingly.

I hope by now that most readers grasp the specious reasoning behind objection two. If the customer has more than two or three items that require any on-going care, it is almost always senseless to arbitrarily pick single items out for bid, or for that matter, any subset of items that may inhibit the achieving of scale efficiencies. Competitive forces guaranty that metal refinishers will bid away any excess costs. Anybody seeking to “pad” the contract with excess services will be compromised by a competitor who knows it isn’t necessary. It is also true that if the customer cannot afford the frequency of refinishing suggested by the bidders, he or she can write a scaled back, standardized bid sheet. This scaled back maintenance program is still superior to the willy-nilly selection of items on an as needed basis.

The moral of the story: take advantage of the efficiencies inherent in the bundling of refinishing services that can be reaped by putting all metal items that require maintenance in a formal maintenance program. The logic here is inescapable: picking and choosing items on an “as needed” basis is wasteful. The extra cost associated with picking and choosing is probably between ten and twenty five percent, depending on the size of the project.

Q: Do all architectural metal items need to be included in a maintenance program?

A: No. Some people might argue this point. Every metal appointment must be refinished sooner or later, they argue, so it should be included in a contract.

The argument that all items will have to be refinished eventually is true, but other factors need consideration. The fact is that even metal refinishers do not know precisely when every item needs to be refinished. We are loath to admit that we are not omniscient, but sadly, it is true. It is also the case that some items, because of their location, probably do not require the attention of professional metal refinishers, or at least as part of a regular program. Let’s examine each case.

Let’s first take the case of the items that need to be refinished at some point, but precisely when is hard to determine. The classic example of such an item is bronze chandelier located inside a building lobby. The item will never be touched and is subject to zero variation in temperature (except for the metal located near the bulbs.) Consequently the synthetic lacquer finish should last a long time. Furthermore, when the lacquer does begin to deteriorate, it will do so very gradually. The rate of deterioration of the finish on an item such as an interior chandelier can vary from two to six years. For this reason, it’s probably wise to not include this item on a standard contract.

There are other items that usually never require the attention of a metal refinisher. The classic item in this category is the interior side of an anodized aluminum window frame in the tenant areas. Here again, the item is subject to no environmental degradation. It is sometimes the case that after years and years of neglect a dirty film will build up. Ironically, this dirty film is usually the residue of dirty window washing fluid. In such cases, a metal refinishing company can usually clean these frames more thoroughly and economically than some other service provider. It is nevertheless true that interior aluminum frames on upper floors need not be part of a regular maintenance program.

These two examples together with the exercise of some common sense can guide the property manager in assessing whether certain other items require ongoing maintenance. If there is still some confusion, you can call a Stuart Dean representative for more insight.

Q: Why is it common for the property manager to get bid prices for the same item or items that are very dissimilar?

A: This can be the result of several factors:

1.) One, or both of the salesmen who bid the work do not know how to bid accurately (they have little idea how quickly their respective workers can execute the job.)
2.) Both salesmen can bid accurately, but one is bidding to do the work in a slipshod manner, the other to do the job thoroughly.
3.) Both men are bidding to do the job thoroughly (or poorly), but the workers of the company with the lower bid are more diligent and efficient, and their sales rep knows it. Consequently, he can bid more aggressively.
4.) Some combination of the above.

This headache-inducing situation does not often arise in most other bid situations in the building service industry. This is because the range of possible outcomes for janitorial service, window washing, and landscaping is so much narrower. These services generally do not require the combination of bullish physical stamina; careful preparation and keen attention to detail that are the requirements of quality metal refinishing.

What does all this imply? It implies that deducting the value in a metal refinisher is almost never as easy as looking at the price. In fact, pricing is often worthless as an indicator of value: it could easily be the case that the most expensive bid is representative of nothing other than sloth, not quality.

Now, market forces being what they are, the provider of lousy quality at high prices should not be around too long. Unfortunately, this only removes that least competent player. The property manager is still left with the dilemma of trying to deduce whether the typical low bid represents high quality service delivered very rapidly, low quality service delivered rapidly, or really low quality work delivered at some average rate. It is usually, though not always, the later.

There is no easy answer to the low price/high efficiency-low price/low quality conundrum. The only way to help answer this question lies in getting an assessment of the quality of the various bidding firms from your fellow property managers regarding the reputation of firms in our field. We are confident in our reputation, and it should be clear from the above that the reputation of a metal refinisher will greatly assist prospective buyers in making good value assessments of our service and the service of our competitors. Without such an assessment, a property manager could make a very poor decision.

For more information on Stuart Dean’s metal restoration and maintenance services, contact a sales representative at (800) 322-3180.

Q: What types of wood restoration services does Stuart Dean offer and can you give a brief description of what that service entails?

A: Touch-Up - Touch up and color blend nicks, scratches and abrasions. Apply a matching finish to the affected area. Rubout any overspray.

Recondition - Commercially clean all woodwork, removing old wax and dirt build-up. Touch up and color, blend nicks, scratches and abrasions. Tone in light areas. Apply a matching finish to all affected areas. Scuff sand all surfaces and apply two (2) coats of a premium grade finish. Steel wool between lacquer coats to achieve smooth finish.

Refinish - Chemically remove existing coating to bare wood. Fill any voids and sand all surfaces smooth. Stain desired color. Apply four (4) coats of a premium grade finish. Steel wool between lacquer coats to achieve smooth finish.

Wood Maintenance - Touch up and color blend nicks, scratches and abrasions. Apply a matching finish to affected area. Then apply a non-oily liquid wax to entire surface (cleaning and replenishing existing coating.)

Q: What must be done to wood wall panels when there is cracking in the veneer?

A: We would remove the existing coating to bare wood. Fill any voids and sand all surfaces smooth. Stain back to original color. Apply three (3) coats of a premium grade finish with UV protection and steel wool between coats to achieve smooth finish.

Q: Do I need to have a complete refinish job if my wood looks dull and streaky?

A: No, Stuart Dean has a program to recondition your wood and give it a “Like New” appearance without going through the mess and cost of refinishing.

Q: Would I have to close the work area down until project is completed?

A: No, Stuart Dean always leaves areas clean and functional during business hours so you are not inconvenience with having to close off sections of the building.

Q: Is Stuart Dean strictly a wood maintenance and refinishing company?

A: No, we also are a Historical Restoration Company who has been involved with quite a few projects using old time finishes and procedures.

Q: Does Stuart Dean have off-site facilities to handle a large job?

A: Yes, Stuart Dean has over 16 regional offices that have a facility equipped to handle large wood projects.

For more information on Stuart Dean’s wood restoration and maintenance services, contact a sales representative at (800) 322-3180.