What is an integrated pest control about?

We familiarise ourselves with pest control solutions as we engage one or two treatments to treat pressing pest infestations. For example in a home, getting rid of cockroaches and ants has always been an uphill task while rats are damaging business’s safety and reputation. However, we found that we are challenged with not one, two but multiple pests frustrations be it at home or work. Rentokil shares the importance of an integrated pest control and things involved in an integrated programme.

What is integrated pest control?

Integrated pest control is about integrating various essential components together to optimise the quality of control against pests and its services delivered to customers. Firstly, it is about addressing multiple pest issues that might be happening at the same time or connected among one another. Secondly, it provides recommendations and suggestions that complement efforts of treatments carried out by pest control companies. For example, offering housekeeping tips and proofing advice to optimise the control standard. Thirdly, as we embrace a packed work schedule and busy home activities, it enhances customer experience journey through value added service. Finally, it involves eliminating pests but assessing the overall premise environment, condition and situation.

Why is integrated pest control necessary?

You might be wondering since the current pest services you have engaged seems to work well at the moment, so why is integrated pest control necessary.

Enhance health and safety standards

It involves integrating with factors affecting pest elimination efforts by looking at the current sanitation standards. In a way, the sanitation and hygiene quality not only affects the possibility of attracting pests, but influences the cross contamination factor as well. Pathogens including bacteria and viruses cause diseases and illnesses such as the coronavirus and Influenza.

Integrated pest control looks beyond a one-dimensional view of pest eradication but overall health and safety of the people. Above all, water is a key element of food source among pests and removing spills and moistures can keep pest infestation level maintained. However, it is also a main factor for workplace incidents such as trips and falls.

Optimise customer service experience

Regardless for personal or business matters, we are bogged down with numerous tasks on our checklist. Integrated services can alleviate some hassles and inconvenience to ease our efforts in removing pests while managing other aspects in our daily routine. For example, an integrated approach makes reporting facilities, service appointments or payment matters easier. Instead of referring to multiple platforms to seek answers, an online login portal can replace those troublesome steps with a click of a button. Find out more about the myRentokil reporting platform.

Address more than one type of pests infested

It is almost very common and often for a premise to be infested with more than one pest type. This is because pests have similar food taste and require the three basic elements to survive, including food, shelter and water. For example, cockroaches, ants and rats emerge for a reason, namely, poor hygiene and housekeeping, presence of food sources including waste and means of entry. For pests such as bed bugs and mosquitoes and cross-infestation driven, and possibly invade your home or office at any time. Hence, this prevents the risk of under pest coverage while not compromising the quality of pest control services rendered.

Enjoy one stop service for pest control and hygiene needs

Both elements of pest management and hygiene maintenance complement each other. For example, to maintain optimal food safety and good food handling, businesses require zero-tolerance to pests and adequate hand hygiene facility. Particularly, for a food establishment, by regulatory, ensuring a pest control contract in place, insect light traps installed and provision of hand soap and drying facilities is required. In addition, drainage management such as the grease trap is also mandatory on a regular basis. Rentokil Initial offers integrated solutions covering pest control, hygiene and washroom services and drainage management.

Ensure adequate control coverage for the premise

Pest can invade from all corners, entry holes and opening. Firstly, we need to guard from the underground such as termites, block sewers, burrows and root top from the rats, seal cracks and crevices and manage open windows and doors. Secondly, there are times we only carry out pest control indoors such as offices or production areas, but externally. Rats for example requires up to three lines of defense in order to safeguard their entry well. Finally, we tend to neglect grease traps for example, thus breeding small flies into the adult flies population.

What does integrated pest management involve?

So what does integrated pest management involve in a programme? Here are some critical checklists they undertake as a pest control specialist.

• Deliver routine and scheduled pest service at your premise after a detailed site assessment and recommendation
• Detect for signs of pest infestation, visible presence of pests and their root source or breeding sites
• Perform pest identification particularly for pest species that resembles close such as termites and ants
• Answering to your pest queries and concerns for example what attracts cockroaches to your place?
• Pest trend analysis particularly for flies population and rat activities in high dependency or food sensitive businesses
• Monitoring and tracking of your pest infestation condition, is there a drop or surge in their presence and activities
• Recommendations and assessment relating to your pest history and account, e.g. housekeeping and proofing, pest flush outs and environmental condition
• Value added service and expertise beyond pest control for instance, offering services including washroom and hygiene solutions and drainage management and care
• Managing their account conveniently through a contact point, via online portal or simply send in a query via the Rentokil Chatbot. The pest control technicians on site are also able to provide professional advice on technical-know-how and pest issues.

Who requires an integrated pest control programme?

Residential homeowners for family protection

Family’s safety particularly with babies, kids and elderly in the household is utmost important. Especially for homes with multiple pest infestation, infested with complex pests such as termites or located within high-risk areas. Integrated solutions not only provide assurance and peace of mind, and allow consumers to spend more time bonding with family rather than frustrating over pest matters.

Some of the common pests found in homes include the following:

• Cockroaches and ants often lurk around kitchen, dining hall and living room
• Mosquitoes indoors and outdoors including car pouch and courtyard
• Termites are inevitable in most homes due to moist and wood presence
• Bed bugs particularly homes with regular traveling that brings these bugs home
• Rats for homes near construction, drains and sewers or poor waste management

Read also: Essential guide to home pest control

Commercial pest control for businesses environment

All businesses need to ensure health and safety for their employees and drive to maintain low to none work day loss. Ensuring the general well-being of the people addresses cost efficiency and avoids jeopardising the productivity of the workforce. More importantly, is to prevent any possible financial implications including renovation or replacement cost and financial penalty consequences. One pest to lookout for are the rats that tend to chew and gnaw on electrical wires and cables and potentially trigger a short circuit or even fire. Common key risk location in an office environment includes:

• Pantry area where food scrapes, water spills and bins are presence
• Server food with electrical wiring and conduits
• Common office space and walkway where pests may crawl along
• False ceiling or ceiling boards with rats hiding them to nest
• Washroom if there is poor sanitation or high moisture for cockroaches to feed on

You may also like: Why is pest control important in an office

High dependency or food sensitive businesses

Particularly among the critical and high dependency business that seeks zero-tolerance to pest for consumers’ safety. A pest infestation may compromise supplies especially for food processing, pharmaceutical, restaurants and food retail sectors. Some implications with poor and loosely managed pest control include product recall, operation disruption, financial lost, closed business and ruined brand reputation.

These businesses either run on a large and complex compound or vulnerable to the surrounding environment. For example, there is a raw material plant, production, packing and loading designed for factories. Restaurants on the other hand may be located in an open concept environment or implicated with surrounding tenants with a pest problem.

Adopting adequate and integrated pest management not only heightens the control efficacy and quality, but also eases the monitoring and reporting responsibilities to the regulatory authorities and auditors. In these settings, numerous reports, documentations and trend analysis is necessary and having to deal with compliance will be made efficient for this group of users.

Hospitality, retail and service centric sectors

People fronting businesses tend to face more pressure and challenges when it comes to pest problems. Where differentiation is reliant on customer reviews, star ratings and brand strength, integrated pest management is critical to support them in upkeeping their standards. Imagine a scenario where a pest is found crawling on the guests in a hotel room or along a shopping walkway. These encounters may be easily shared on social media.

Popular pests including cockroaches, rats and bed bugs may start on the media if left unmanaged. Besides ruining the brand reputation, there will be negative consequences around patronage, word of mouth, compensation, penalties and cease of operations. As compared to managing pest in a smaller and more contained environment such as home and office, hotels and malls are vulnerable. The space is large, has multiple entry points, implicated by environment and urbanization conditions and other structure integrity to consider.

With a credible and trustworthy pest control company to manage all these hassles under one roof in a holistic manner, can bring down those stress levels while controlling pest more effectively. In addition, for premises with multiple sites and locations, a key risk map and pest trending analysis can highlight any particular hotspot with pest activities to focus on or seek specific action relating to sanitation and proofing.

Production and labour intensive nature workplace

There is a long checklist of requirements when it comes to an industrial and manufacturing environment. In particular, running complex and heavy production on a daily basis and housing a large pool of employees within the compound. Labour is a costly operation asset, and hence productivity and efficiency while driving low on cost is essential to keep the business profitable. Hence, any pest implication that affects its operation, production line, finished goods and profit and loss statement is detrimental. Where are key risk areas in an industrial plant?

• External compound including the carpark area and driveway
• Lobby and reception
• Production plants, manufacturing and assembly line
• Kitchen, canteen and pantry
• Office space, meeting rooms and conference halls
• Warehouse and storage room
• Loading and unloading area

In this environment, it is common to face various pest challenges. Besides the common ones including cockroaches, ants, rats, mosquitoes and flies, there are other pests invading the compound. They include bees or wasps, birds and other crawling termites. Operation can also be massive to deal with labour and production. Hence, an integrated pest management in place alleviates these stresses.

Firstly, a sound and robust pest control is in place to reduce the pest population. Secondly, the pest control specialists monitor and track the activities or to access them online. Thirdly, the professionals will raise any gaps and lapse found in the facility maintenance or property. Fourthly, all necessary safety data sheets, reports, service history and recommendations are retrievable online anytime. This eases the trouble to flip and find the required information swiftly.

Frequently asked questions about pest control

For many of us, we may not understand what entails pest control, what to expect and what information do we need to know. Rentokil Singapore shares the top five frequently asked questions about pest control.

Is pest control safe for home or food sensitive sites?

Firstly, licensed technicians are trained to perform pest control. They have the knowledge to mix active ingredients and use relevant gadgets and tools. Secondly, the regulatory bodies requires the registeration of all active ingredients. Thirdly, conducting a prior site risk assessment to ensure and consider all risks before carrying out the treatment. Finally, there are eco-green pest control solutions to optimise the safety standards.

How much does pest control service cost?

The price of pest control is dependent on a few factors. They include the size of coverage, number and type of pest, complexity of the premise, nature of the business and type of solutions used. Other considerations include the infestation level, environment and surrounding, frequency and services are a one time off or long-term protection. Prices differ among different companies, treatments and type of active ingredients. It is important to evaluate and choose a trustworthy and credible pest control company to manage your pest management needs.

Read also: Pest control prices in Singapore

How often pest control should be scheduled for my premise?

Pest control services are usually maintained on a monthly basis. Activities including site inspection, pest treatment and recommendation will be reported. However, some pest service is scheduled on a weekly or fortnightly basis. This may be due to heavy infestation, critical pest epidemic such as dengue, or a sudden pest surge due to environmental reasons. Every premise treatment is different and customised based on different circumstances and business needs. Read more on how often should we schedule for commercial pest control.

What are the types of pest control services?

Pest control services treat a range of crawling, flying and vector pests namely, cockroaches, ants, flies, rats, termites and mosquitoes. There is also fumigation for import and export containers and large projects on vector control. It includes various delivery methods such as spraying and misting, placing or monitoring units and traps or fly control units to lure and eliminate flies. Another part of pest control services is offering digital pest control solutions by using digitalisation and sensing technology to monitor, detect and control rats in Singapore.

How do we evaluate and decide which pest control to engage?

Here are some evaluation checklist you can base on to decide which pest control company to engage:

• Brand reputation and years of experience in the industry
• Health and safety policies and quality control assurance
• Customer reviews and service quality satisfaction
• Type of active ingredients used and deployment of technology
• Expertise views such as presence of medical entomologist
• Size of the business and its financial stability
• Resource and manpower availability to meet your pest needs 24/7

Read also: What factors contributes a good and credible pest control in Singapore

Call Rentokil Singapore at (65) 6347 8138 for a pest control solution today.