Offices and retail

Offices and shops have a lower pest burden than kitchens or warehouses, and the problems that do arise are usually about the building rather than about hygiene. That is worth saying because a pest problem in an office is often taken as an accusation, and it rarely is one.

Ants are the most common call. In an office they usually enter along service penetrations, where pipework or cabling passes through an external wall, and follow a trail to whatever food is available, which is normally a kitchenette or a bin rather than a desk. The nest is generally outside the building or in a wall void, so we bait so that workers carry the treatment back rather than wiping out the trail you can see, which achieves nothing lasting.

Cockroaches turn up in tea points, in the warm gaps behind vending machines and fridges, and in shared service ducts in multi tenant buildings. That last one matters: in a building with several tenants, a cockroach problem is frequently a building problem, and treating one floor while the riser stays untreated is money spent on somebody else's infestation. Where we think that is what is happening we say so.

Rodents come in around bin stores, loading areas and gaps at ground level, and in retail units they follow stock as much as waste.

Mosquitoes are worth a mention for buildings with planting, atriums or car park sumps, all of which hold water and produce mosquitoes on site regardless of how clean the interior is.

Retail brings one extra consideration, which is that treatment has to be invisible to customers. We work before opening or after closing, and nothing is left where a customer could encounter it.

For most offices and shops a light scheduled arrangement is enough, a visit on a regular cycle with monitoring in the areas that matter, rather than a heavy programme. We would rather set that up honestly than sell more frequency than the building needs.

Multi tenant buildings deserve a separate mention because they are where most office pest control money is wasted. Where several businesses share risers, waste points and a basement, an infestation is a property level problem and treating one tenancy repeatedly will not end it. If your building is like that, the most useful thing we can do is tell you plainly, so you can take it to the managing agent rather than paying for the same visit every quarter.

Storage and back of house areas are where problems usually start in retail, not on the shop floor. Stock kept against walls, cardboard held for long periods and a rear door propped open during deliveries account for most of what we are called about, and all three are cheaper to change than to treat.

Air conditioning and building services are worth checking too. Condensate trays, sumps and roof drainage hold standing water on many commercial buildings, and a site can be producing mosquitoes from its own plant while the interior is spotless.