Building owners must realise that even though their buildings are first class or five-star, toilets contribute significantly to their buildings' image and reputation. Because of this, we often find First World buildings with Third World toilets. During the planning stage it is important to consider carefully toilet design and the aspect of daily maintenance.

It is usually good design that results in hassle-free maintenance. And a good design can be easily decided upon by observing the experience of other shopping centres or buildings. However, maintenance work involves the human factor and as a result, the biggest team assigned to carry out a cleaning job will still fail without proper supervision.

Design, location and size

The very design of toilets must be studied during the planning stage of a shopping centre. For patrons' convenience, the location must be easily accessible and directed by visible good signages.

The size of toilets may vary depending on the capacity they seek to cater to. Larger toilets will enable a centre to cope with bigger crowds while centrally located toilets will be convenient to maintain.

Cleaning and maintenance

For easy maintenance, ensure the toilet floor is waterproofed during construction.

A "water ponding" test to check where water collects - usually at the lowest level - must be carried out for 24 hours prior to the installation of floor finishes to ensure that any leakage is rectified at this stage.

This is crucial as any failure to detect a leak can be expensive to resolve once a centre is open for business. Corridors or shops below with expensive ceiling finishes may be stained and damaged - or worse, wastewater may drip onto the tenants' merchandise and shoppers!

Rectification works under such circumstances would not only involve closing the defective toilet for repairs but also disrupt tenants' businesses and compromise customers' comfort.

Fittings and fixtures

As the objective is to ensure customers' convenience, fittings and fixtures must be user- friendly to avoid unnecessary frustration in usage that may lead to vandalism. The availability of spare parts and ease of access for maintenance/replacement work must also be taken into consideration.

It is recommended that exhaust fans and top hung windows be installed to allow natural ventilation for toilets located at the building's open perimeter and external areas. Bear in mind, though, that running exhaust fans will increase electricity costs. So will ceiling fans installed to create additional air movement to expedite the drying of wet floors and lowering humidity levels.

Building owners must also install lightings that produce sufficient brightness. However, toilets with windows facing the outside of the building will have the advantage of natural lighting, thereby reducing the number of lights to be switched on during the day.

Selected finishes for the floor, wall and ceiling must be durable and readily available should the need for replacement arise. Full height wall tiles are recommended as they are easy to maintain. Half-height wall tiles with paint finish at the higher level is cheaper but require frequent maintenance as the paintwork may wear faster due to the wet and humid environment.

Owners seeking to make a bigger impact on patrons can consider "themed" toilets decorated with murals, for instance.

Ideal maintenance programme

Good toilet designs and features must be followed-through with maintenance to optimise their benefits. The most important criterion to ensure good maintenance work is to have a responsible and dedicated person in charge who regularly checks on the quality and standards of maintenance.

It is also important to appoint a reliable cleaning contractor with well-trained supervisors to monitor the cleaners. There must be planning and provision of sufficient workers, effective cleaning methods and schedules. Cleaning contractors should be required to produce detailed cleaning activities, the assignment of supervisors and workers and the frequency of cleaning work. Sometimes, the number of workers and frequency may have to be varied depending on usage.

In ladies' toilets, a sanitary disposal contract is also required with signages within cubicles installed to create awareness of the importance and hygiene of sanitary bins. The replacement of bins must be carried out on a regular basis and reviewed depending on usage.

Trends in toilet usage must also be monitored closely, with extra cleaning scheduled during periods of heavy use. Assessing such trends isn't difficult as centre owners can use a meter installed to gauge water usage in each toilet for such purposes.

The person responsible must ensure that the cleaning programme and other maintenance works are adhered to. He must carry out spot checks to ensure supervisors are alert and are carrying out their own inspections. He should also hold regular meetings to highlight problems that need to be resolved and precautions to be taken to avoid a repeat of undesirable situations.

In conclusion, to have a First World image in all aspects, the management team must be more sensitive and proactive with regards to toilets. It is recommended that the team carries out continuous customer surveys, encourages feedback from patrons and tenants or even organises competitions for the Best Decorated Toilet, Best Themed Toilet, Cleanest Toilet or the Most Environmentally-Friendly Toilet, for instance, as part of good publicity and image enhancement.

In our country, it requires a lot of effort to educate users to understand and appreciate clean, comfortable and well-decorated toilets.

The Third World image arises when toilets are badly maintained due to the centre's management's decision to carry out minimum maintenance work to reduce costs. In the long term, the centre's image will be tarnished. Instead, the management should target a "zero-complaint status" insofar as toilets are concerned and put in place as its ultimate objective, a First World image.

* Shaifulddin is a manager with Pelangi Bhd and oversees its various shopping centres in Johor Baru. He is also a member of the Malaysian Association for Shopping and Highrise Complex Management (PPK Malaysia).