Orkin Canada

Source: Exec Digital Canada

Date :26/07/2007 22:20:01

Orkin Canada is embracing some very high tech methods to rid Canada of as many unwanted rodents and pests as possible

Written and produced by Megan Santosus & Michael Townsend

At first glance, it doesn’t seem like the Internet or cable television would have anything to do with the pest control business, but Gary Muldoon begs to differ. Muldoon is president of Orkin Canada, the largest pest control company north of the 49th parallel.

Earlier this year, when some very large and hungry rats were found to have infested a New York City fast food restaurant, a film crew set up shop on the sidewalk and recorded footage of disgusted passers-by. That film clip quickly made its way to cable news and the Internet.

“Within 24 hours that story was everywhere,” Muldoon says, creating a public relations and health nightmare for this global company. Reputations that took generations to build can be ruined that quickly. “Incidents such as this have really raised the bar as to what our customers’ expectations are,” he adds.

In Muldoon’s estimation, Orkin Canada is ideally positioned to satisfy the increased expectations of commercial customers.

“Our clients are looking for proactive rather than reactive approaches to pest management,” Muldoon explains. “They don’t want to have a pest problem that is solved only when it gets out of control.”

The pest control industry, Muldoon adds, is changing. Since 9/11, food safety is increasingly on the radar, with more government inspections throughout the food chain. In addition, diseases such as West Nile virus - which can be carried by birds and transmitted by mosquitoes - are increasingly in the public spotlight.

“There’s a real emphasis on continuous improvements [in pest management techniques] and not just a few treatments here and there,” Muldoon says.

Orkin Canada has been managing pests for more than 50 years; first as PCO Services and then as Orkin Canada since 1999 when the Mississauga, Ontario-based company was acquired by Orkin, Inc., in Atlanta (Orkin is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Rollins Inc.).

With approximately $75.5 million in business and more than 50,000 contracted commercial clients, Orkin Canada is twice the size of its nearest competitor, Muldoon says. The company provides traditional pest management services for insects, rodents, and wayward wildlife, washroom care, and general sanitation and pest exclusion for a variety of commercial and residential customers. Approximately 85 percent of Orkin Canada’s business is in the commercial sector in a range of industries such as food service, hospitality, education, healthcare and retail.

With years of experience in Canada and the ability to take advantage of Orkin’s training and technology initiatives, Muldoon says that Orkin Canada is poised to remain the industry leader.

“We have more service trucks on the road than anyone and this allows us to respond very quickly when needed,” says Muldoon.

In Atlanta, Orkin maintains a state-of-the-art training facility designed to simulate real-world pest control scenarios encountered at commercial and residential sites. The 13,000 square foot training center includes model hospital and hotel rooms, as well as a supermarket, bakery and bar – which Muldoon says “has everything right down to the coasters, except the alcohol.”

The facility is designed to provide Orkin Canada’s pest control specialists with rigorous training; Muldoon says that the facility’s realistic design enables the company to put pest control specialists to the test before they get on the job.

“It’s where we conduct hands-on training for our [pest control specialists],” Muldoon says.

For Orkin Canada, training is a point of pride and something the company emphasizes as a major differentiator. All new pest control specialists spend two weeks at one of Orkin Canada’s 31 branch offices with a certified field trainer, whom they accompany on service calls. Once that training is complete, pest control specialists attend a formal program in Toronto.

Throughout a pest control specialist’s career, Orkin Canada offers additional training opportunities. Recently, the company installed a satellite system at three branch locations where employees can receive ongoing education remotely from the training center in Atlanta.

In addition to pest control specialist training, Orkin Canada is an aggressive user of information technology. Select pest control specialists that service accounts in the food processing industry use a system called PowerTrak, which enables them to collect data onsite and do trend analysis.

“If there’s a rodent in a food plant, it’s one thing to find it and remove it,” says Muldoon. “But the real issue is finding out how it got in, because that could indicate a bigger problem.”

In a food processing plant, every bait station or trap has a monitoring device mapped into the PowerTrak system. Pest control specialists - equipped with handheld devices similar to cell phones - enter data from inspection sites into a computer for analysis. So, if a cereal plant has had five problems with mice, and the pest control specialist discovers that on four occasions mice were caught in one particular trap, additional analysis may uncover a problem with the shipping area or building maintenance practices.

“Our plan is to post PowerTrak information on the Internet for our customers to review,” says Muldoon. “We are the eyes and ears for our customers and we take this responsibility very seriously.”

PowerTrak has been so successful that Muldoon says expansion of the service for some of Orkin Canada’s national accounts is in the works.

Technology has reshaped the pest control business in the past and will continue to do so.

“There are a lot of new opportunities coming down the pipe from a product and IT perspective,” Muldoon says.

For example, in the past, if a restaurant had problems with cockroaches, the traditional line of attack was to treat the entire restaurant. Today, Orkin Canada uses baits and pheromones to attract and trap cockroaches in specific areas.

“There’s [less opportunity for] contamination of products and the restaurant doesn’t have to shut down for a period of time,” Muldoon says.

As for IT, Orkin Canada is currently evaluating electronic monitors for cockroaches. When a cockroach enters the monitor – synthetic reproductions of the cockroach’s pheromones attract the pest – a signal is sent to a computer. The idea, says Muldoon, is to proactively manage any pest problems when they originate to avoid serious infestations down the road.

As he explains, “When someone has been bitten by bed bugs 100 times, those bugs have been around for a couple of months. We need to be aware of the problem before it reaches this stagte in order to protect our clients and their customers.”

With so much going on at Orkin Canada, it is easy to see that building a better mouse trap is an integrated process involving the use of new technologies and advanced training.