If a cleaner hasn’t arrived at a building by the scheduled time, Emmanuel Almeraz’s company knows about it. Crews clock in and out through a geo-fence system, and a missing worker gets flagged. “If at a certain time, someone hasn’t arrived at work, we’re dispatching somebody and finding out what’s going on,” Almeraz says.
He put that kind of safeguard in place early. “Right away when we got into this business, I realized very quickly the need to have systems in place that safeguard that for our clients,” he says.
Almeraz owns Shine4ever Commercial Services, a Las Cruces janitorial firm that works mostly in medical buildings. It does no residential cleaning. “We specialize working in clinical settings, with hospitals, mainly clinics, so like urgent care clinics,” he says. “We’ve done surgical centers. We’ve also done some government.”
The company began in 2017, when Almeraz and his wife bought a small family-owned cleaning business from owners who were moving into a different industry. “They wanted to do something different, and we were also looking for a change,” he says.
Both of them knew the work. Each had cleaned part-time for someone else during college and a little before. Almeraz later worked in nursing and in business development for hospitals, and his wife wanted to try something new. “We knew somebody that was selling their business, and so we decided to go ahead and jump in on it,” he says.
The company’s website lists Almeraz as owner and describes the firm as family owned and operated. He wants that understood. “Because we are family-operated and family-owned, we try to treat our employees, our clients, and our communities that we service very much like they’re our family, because they are,” he says.
The medical focus shapes how the crews work. Almeraz says the company holds certifications in OSHA standards, bloodborne pathogens and HIPAA competency, and that it has studied communicable diseases such as H1N1 and the flu. It brings clinical-grade products into every building it services. “We are disinfecting touch points,” he says.
The routine side of the contracts, as listed on the company’s website, includes custodial service before or after business hours, stripping and waxing vinyl composition tile floors, carpet extraction and day porter service. The company also stocks clients with paper products and disposables. “We try to set ourselves up as a one-stop shop,” Almeraz says. “We can do building services. We provide the supplies, like paper products, disposables.”
Checking the work is its own job. Almeraz says he has managers whose sole task is inspecting properties to make sure each one is cleaned according to its scope of work. One customer wrote in a Google review that the company does things the way it is asked, jumps on any concern that comes up, and stays detailed and consistent.
Clients can also go straight to the top. “My clients have direct access to me,” Almeraz says. “They have access to our CRM. They can communicate directly with our management.”
The company does post-construction cleaning as well, for contractors as far away as Illinois and Louisiana. “I’ve done work in Illinois, Louisiana, Texas, California, Colorado, Nevada,” Almeraz says.
The business has gone by more than one name, and it is changing again. Almeraz says it is being rebranded as Level Up Building Services, though the Shine4ever name is still the one on its public listings. “Same business, same people, but just a name change,” he says.