SPEAKER_01 0:33

We are absolutely thrilled to have you on our podcast today. We're talking to Dr. Jodi Ganglov Kaufman about how businesses can evaluate commercial pest providers more strategically. Jodi, can you give us some background on you? I mean, you're you're an amazing guest for this podcast. So can you just tell us a little bit about yourself?

SPEAKER_00 0:57

Sure. I have been an IPM specialist with the Cornell IPM program for like 26 years now. I'm an entomologist. I started my work when bed bugs began to be a problem. So 20 years of bed bug work and outreach and things. My job is mostly senior extension associates, so we do a lot of public education and industry education, and not so much on the research side, you know, because those of us set up like this didn't even have a laboratory space. So um my focus is definitely communication and education.

SPEAKER_02 1:31

When we set this up to do this, this project, there was the the wish list of people. And so Nancy had said we looked at the list, right? And so we had we had your name on the list and so we looked at the names and we're like, do you think we could get there? And so I'm just I'm thrilled. So thank you. Because this is just such a treat to talk to you. But yeah, no, I'm excited to have your expertise here and we'll just dive right into it.

SPEAKER_01 1:52

Great. All right. Well, so here we go. So when it comes to evaluating a commercial pest partner, that could be intimidating for some commercial business owners. It could feel like a blind date. We don't want that. And so what should business owners look for when evaluating a commercial pest partner?

SPEAKER_00 2:13

Well, I mean, they should look certainly for the basics. They want to know that the business has a business license and it has a pesticide business license and insurance. And the industry standard looks like a million dollars of general liability per incident. But also they might look for industry certifications, like from the National Pest Management Association. There's a few different ones, Quality Pro, Green Pro, which held the business to a higher standard and means they're more specialized, I would say, or just have more professional business practices. And you'd really want to see if they have specialized staff like board certified entomologists or at least an associate certified entomologist, or access to them easily, right? And most importantly, I'm an IPM specialist. I want to see a company do IPM. I want to see a commitment to IPM and to see their process using IPM. And that might mean that company doesn't necessarily make as much money, or maybe they do, but they should be providing written requirements, so written recommendations for sanitation, for building maintenance, and they should be doing thorough inspections, including before they create the contract or sign the contract. They need to know the scope of the business, the property, and the pest issues.

SPEAKER_01 3:32

Right, because not everything is created equal, from property to property and business to business. Yeah, excellent points.

SPEAKER_02 3:37

I think it's great. And one thing that you said, Jody, you want to see IPM actually in practice. I'm actually out on the West Coast, and so they've changed to SPM now. So we're even doing the sustainable pest management plan. California flexibility extra extract. So going through that, what would be, if you're looking at a program like that, like you want to see it done in practice, what are kind of the main points of an IPM program? What makes it an IPM program versus for for folks that may be listening that are brand new or outside of the pest industry? I know we're we kind of have that ingrained into us in IPM, and even some license categories now require specific IPM CEUs. But for someone who's maybe new, what are the basic principles of an IPM program?

SPEAKER_00 4:22

Well, you want regular inspections. And monitoring happens when you're not there, right? Monitoring is a picture of what happens when the inspector goes away. So you want to have both the regular, maybe quarterly inspections, a monitoring plan in place that's organized, that's documented, that every monitor gets looked at during every service, identification. We need accurate identification, of course. We can't be treating pantry moths when we think we have when we have clothing moth, right? They should be keeping those records, not just the pest sightings or the pest captures, but bait use. I mean, they're using baits for rodents, you would want to. Look at the amount of bait that's been taken, right? That's part of the record keeping. Actions taken and products used. And they should leave those product labels on site. That's a safety issue. They should review every year what what has happened and sort of look at the trends and say, are we successful? Are we not? And if they're not successful, or if pests are staying the same or going, you know, getting higher, we're gonna change something up and intensify what we're doing.

SPEAKER_02 5:25

Oh that's great. And so that's the gold standard you should be doing. If someone's evaluating companies, what are the red flags they should be looking for?

SPEAKER_00 5:35

There are a lot. Well, obviously, no IPM or no knowledge about IPM and untrained technicians who don't understand what the steps are. Another, you know, important thing that I didn't even think about before was if the technician only has thirty minutes or ten minutes per site, you know, there are very strict rules about they have to hit ten accounts a day. You know, those kinds of things really limit the amount of inspection and thoroughness that a a technician can perform, right? And that becomes reactive pest control. They're only responding to something that is already a problem. We want to see them being proactive and allocating a little bit more time to that account so that we're anticipating a problem before it gets there. Skipping that initial inspection would be a red flag. Like I said before, they can't um define the scope without understanding the scope. They can't really, you know, define the the contract without understanding the scope of the the property and the potential pest pressure. If they have missing documentation or vague documentation, if they're handwritten tickets that you can't read and they don't use product names correctly or product volume correctly, those are you know record keeping errors that need to be fixed or shouldn't be done. Licensing deficiencies, you know, you want every technician to be a licensed technician. In New York we have different rules and you can have a lower level what is it, apprentices, I guess. And they can work under the supervision of a technician. So those rules have to be followed. If they have high pressure sales tactics, and then we've seen this, right? That indicates, I think to me that's a red flag for poor quality service.

SPEAKER_01 7:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:13

It's really just about the money, right?

SPEAKER_01 7:14

You want insights, not just invoices.

SPEAKER_00 7:16

Yes, exactly. That's a good way to put it.

SPEAKER_01 7:18

I'm putting that on a t-shirt.

SPEAKER_00 7:19

And then someone saying this is a hundred percent effective. You know, the unverifiable claims of efficacy. You'll have nothing left, you know. So a hundred percent guaranteed or permanent elimination, those kind of unrealistic promises are also another red flag.

SPEAKER_01 7:34

That's great. And that's a great segue into so knowing those are the red flags, what are some good questions that commercial operators should be asking during the selection process?

SPEAKER_00 7:47

Well, the basics, are you licensed, all your technicians licensed, are you insured? Are you registered as a business in your state, in your county, that kind of thing? How long have you been in business? That may be you know, if they've been in business for a long time, it can often m you know mean they're very good. I would look at, you know, ratings, of course, online. Do they use IPM? Do they understand IPM? How often will the service be provided, I think, is important too, because if they come monthly, they better be doing inspections, not baseboard spraying.

SPEAKER_02 8:18

Right.

SPEAKER_00 8:19

Looking at all the rodent stations or all of the glue boards or whatever monitoring devices, they need to be checking each one every time they come and only treating if necessary, of course. Do they have an in-house entomologist? How do they get things identified if they find specimens? If they find pests, do they even know it's a pest? Do you have experience in my type of facility? So a lot of companies out there are new, you know, people go into business for themselves and they may not have experience in a hospital or in a food facility, a food production facility. So uh error on the side of, you know, finding someone who is experienced with that work because there are regulatory issues to follow to maintain regulatory compliance. So someone without experience might not know that much.

SPEAKER_02 9:08

Sure. And I think about things like AIB audits, like certain very critical audits that you have to have that experience, and you can't just really go pull one off the internet and check a bunch of boxes, like they're a lot more specific than that. With the some real real consequences if you're not passing things like that too.

SPEAKER_01 9:23

What about from a safety perspective? What kind of questions would you want to ask?

SPEAKER_00 9:27

The basics being how do you handle pesticides? Are pesticides mixed on site or are they transported? Do these technicians have access to proper, you know, uh personal protective equipment if they are going to be using pesticides that require it? Are they ladder trained? You know, if someone has to go up to a higher part of the building, even inside, are they ladder trained? That's a really important uh OSHA training. Yeah, and uh technicians need to be trained. They have you know, maintaining their pesticide license in New York at least requires them to take regular classes, you know, get those credits and maintain that license. So those are some things I would think.

SPEAKER_01 10:09

Yeah, you know, it from a training perspective, that's a question. So I oversee training for Terminx and we get that question a lot. And very specifically, show me the training program. Show me the onboarding and the continuing education that you provide for your technicians. And so um my advice would be to ask that question because you know, if the company is serious about what they do, they should be able to provide that to you.

SPEAKER_00 10:35

That's right. And one funny bad example, I was visiting a some facility, it was a you know, a person care facility or something like that, and they had pest control there that day. I was meeting with someone in a boardroom and the technician came in and sprayed the baseboards while we were sitting there. And I believe I was pregnant at the time.

SPEAKER_01 10:53

Oh no.

SPEAKER_00 10:54

I know. And this was an irreputable company. So I I called up the owner and was like, excuse me.

SPEAKER_01 11:00

So Yeah, they they did that in front of the wrong person.

SPEAKER_00 11:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:05

For sure.

SPEAKER_02 11:08

No, I think we kind of touched on it a little bit, but sometimes I've heard, you know, throughout my career, you get some folks that just say, I just want the cheapest. Just give me, I'll I'll go get some bids. I'm gonna go with the cheapest one. What would be the risk at that point? I mean, I know we have all the criteria we're looking at, but when you're just chasing after price, like what's kind of that worst case scenario if that's your only qualification?

SPEAKER_00 11:29

I've seen this happen in my own county with municipality, where a technician, it's five dollars a building. That's the bid that they accepted. Five dollars a building. So what does a technician do for five dollars, which means probably five minutes, right?

SPEAKER_01 11:44

So go in, they have a drug, run right through. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:48

Right, right. And they skip some buildings, you know, probably. So there's inadequate pest control, that's the risk. Inadequate response, low bid, you know, in New York at least, school districts are required to use the lowest bidder, and probably that's standard at the government level. So I encourage school districts to adopt a bid that includes some standards like integrated pest management, like no routine spraying, those kinds of basics that allow them to actually look at a better bidder or consider someone who's a little bit more expensive.

SPEAKER_02 12:20

That's a good point for if you're structuring something going out to bid in order to just say, send me back five dollars a building, is it possible you structure so you do structure it and say, I don't care what bid you give me back, all of this criteria has to be there first.

SPEAKER_00 12:37

That's right. That's why I don't know, 15 years ago we were all talking about how to structure bid specifications to accommodate IPM to make the low bid process better.

SPEAKER_01 12:48

Yeah. Are there resources out there for commercial operators around bid specifications around IPM or there might be, especially with AIB or something like that.

SPEAKER_00 12:57

But we were working with schools, and I think that's translatable to a commercial, especially if you have a specialty thing, a food production, a pharmaceutical production, those need to be sterile, basically, right? So AIB probably has those standards for specifications.

SPEAKER_02 13:12

Yeah. And I think to your point, even just the information and the experience on type of facility, things that I recently learned, buttons on the uniform matter. Like some facilities you have to have metal buttons, because if you lose one, you need to make sure that gets picked up on a conveyor. But like even the smallest things can have such huge risks if you don't have the experience and know those kinds of rules as well.

SPEAKER_00 13:34

And it may be even true that someone should wear a hairnet and you know booties just to prevent contamination. Yeah. So if the company understands those things and is prepared to supply those things, yeah, that's good. That's good. They know what they're doing.

SPEAKER_01 13:48

That's great. Yeah, so in terms of companies knowing what they're doing, what does separate a transactional type vendor from a true strategic partner?

SPEAKER_00 13:59

Well, I think first of all, a strategic partner identifies themselves as a partner. They use the word, right? They understand that solving the problem is the goal, not managing the pests, not managing it at a low enough level. It's got to be solved. Even if that means that there's no more work to do. We want the problem solved. And they're proactive and they understand building construction and so they know where there are deficiencies. And they're willing to provide recommendations on those things. So sanitation and pest exclusion recommendations are given freely because and I would also say that the partner pest control company should have high expectations of what the facilities people are doing. You know, we I can't manage these mice unless you close that up or let me close it up, you know.

SPEAKER_02 14:47

Do you think, Jody, there's a value in the pest control company partnering from an educational standpoint? Like, should that be an expectation of I'll come in and I'll show your staff some things that they should be looking for? Like if we're the professionals but you're on site way many more hours than we would be, can we set up some time? Like I feel like that should be a little bit more standard, probably in some agreements and just the expectation of partnership.

SPEAKER_00 15:13

Right. I mean, a good example of that would be in a hotel. So the hotel cleaning staff should be trained to look for bedbooks and understand what the signs are. And I think that has happened in a lot of instances. You know, I don't see why it wouldn't be a good idea. But in a school, you can have the custodial staff better trained. In any facility, you can have facility staff just be able to recognize the signs of mice, the you know, signs of cockroach activity, whatever it might be, whatever the risk is there. It really is so beneficial to have the staff who are there regularly just recognize pests.

SPEAKER_02 15:49

That's a good point. I think for every picture someone can recognize of a cockroach or of the pest, they should be able to recognize four pictures of the activity of the pest.

SPEAKER_00 15:58

Yeah, right. Right.

SPEAKER_02 15:59

So I do think back to my bed bug treatment days and go, oh man, if if only that crew or that staff knew that's an egg or that's a a blood spot or something like that, we would have maybe been out here so much sooner.

SPEAKER_01 16:12

Right. Let's say that we can get the staff to recognize some some pest activity signs. Once that happens, what is good or great communication look like between the provider and the client?

SPEAKER_00 16:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:25

Or vice versa.

SPEAKER_00 16:26

Having a reporting system or a chain of command, you know, in the facility between whoever is spotting something and a point of contact for the pest control company. That is what I usually recommend. We used to recommend logbooks just as a record keeping tool, one for one in each building. Could be if it's a massive building, one per floor, depending on who's managing what part of the building. But to have a point of contact written down records, pest sighting records kept in one place. It's also a place you can keep the labels, material safety data sheets. But communication is both ways. So when the pest control company comes, they would consult the logbook hopefully. And then actions taken or tickets written out, provided in a whatever way. I think everything's electronic these days. But you know, having the staff know what's happening. Especially if the staff have to communicate with clients, customers, something like that. They should be able to ask, oh what actions have been taken and that communication h is there. I'm sure there's a way to do it digitally. You know, yeah, I don't want to say all the digital log books yet.

SPEAKER_01 17:32

Yeah. I mean uh getting a foothold. We still have a ways to go, I think. Sure. Binders aren't going out of business yet.

SPEAKER_02 17:39

No, no. Not yet. Not yet.

SPEAKER_01 17:42

I'd like to actually touch on uh something that you mentioned before when you were talking about attributes of a good pest control provider. You said something about reassessing programs. How often should reassessment of a pest management program occur in general?

SPEAKER_00 17:58

I would say yearly, as long as that contract is yearly. But yearly, even if it was a two-year, I don't know how long pest control contracts typically last, I would imagine a year. But each year, because then you have four seasons of different pest activity, and you have record keeping for that year, twelve months, whatever it is, intervals of visits. So it's a manageable amount of uh information and is enough to provide trends.

SPEAKER_01 18:23

Can you talk a little bit more about trends and the importance of trends when it comes to pest management in commercial facilities?

SPEAKER_00 18:30

Yeah. Well, obviously we want a baseline of activity. If we have a pest issue, let's say we have a cockroach issue, you would want to go out and assess the population. Deanny Miller has great information about assessment-based pest management, and that is really where the industry is going. So to assess it at first with glue boards or some tool to see what the population is, and then to begin treatment, which includes sanitation and also pest removal like vacuuming or something, if that's possible. And using a standard monitoring system, we want to see if numbers go up or numbers go down or numbers don't change. And if they're going up, we've got a bigger problem. We probably have a bigger source. I was underneath a school in the crawl space and they had American cockroaches and there's no reason they should have American cockroaches in this crawl space. It's total it there's a leak somewhere, but there's nothing for to eat. So I really and it was a vast, huge underground area, and I said they probably have an open sewer line if they have constant cockroaches coming in. So Long Island's got cockroaches in the sewers like crazy.

SPEAKER_01 19:36

Yeah. So um what about like seasonal trends when we talk about the outside of the the exterior of the building?

SPEAKER_00 19:43

Right, right. Well, we all know that animals look to overwinter in s in safe places, right? So in the late summer, early fall, those animals might be looking for shelter and that includes um, you know, rodents like white footed mice, but also the overwintering pests like brown marmorated stink bugs or lady beetles or something. All of which you do not want in a pharmaceutical facility or a food plant. So we have to get out in front of those critters, meaning in mid-August get out there and either provide an exterior treatment or an assessment of potential gaps where they might get into the facility, which can be really hard to do because they're small insects, you know. But the seasonality is important, you know, because insects and rodents have their activity season, you know. And it may be different in Florida than it is in Alaska. Of course, different in Florida than Alaska, but the seasonality, you're not always dealing with yellow jackets. You're only dealing with them for part of the year. You're only dealing with, you know, la ladybugs coming indoors part of the year. So that's why I think an assessment of the whole IPM program once a year is a good goal.

SPEAKER_01 20:54

Yeah, that is a good and pest management provider should be documenting what they come across. So then when you collect that documentation, part of that review is is seeing the trends and saying, okay, well, we treated for stink bugs or box elder bugs in September last year, so let's get ahead of it this year and make sure that by August we're out and you know we're doing our preventative maintenance cost, whatever that program entails.

SPEAKER_00 21:21

Right, right. And also starting early with a treatment means you can do a secondary treatment uh to cover your bases.

unknown 21:27

Right.

SPEAKER_02 21:28

Great information. I think uh it's so important to just not go after the price piece. So knowing the right questions ahead of time and what your expectations are and really grasping out of that partnership is really just so important because it is a big investment and it's something that you want to have a good partner in because those ramifications for choosing incorrectly can be so big.

SPEAKER_01 21:47

Yeah. Somebody said to me recently good pest control partners find problems, great partners prevent them. That's really good. Yeah, that's great. Great.

SPEAKER_02 21:58

Well, Jody, thank you so very much for your time. I'm gonna be looking for you on all the different meetings now. So if I ever do some industry talks, and I'll I'll be looking for you on all the different agendas. Oh, thank you. Thank you so very much.

SPEAKER_00 22:15

Well, thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_02 22:18

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