PPG Simplifies Painter Hiring for Multiple Facilities

PITTSBURGH—To help businesses with multiple commercial facilities—like hotels—identify and connect with established professional painters, and then manage and schedule general painting maintenance projects, PPG recently launched PPG Services, a digitally enabled service platform.

“Hotel facility managers are faced with a significant list of responsibilities in order to keep their hotels updated and on-brand, as well as functioning properly to provide a positive experience for patrons,” said Divya Thadani, general manager, PPG Services. “Traditionally, hotel facility managers would hire painting contractors by manually identifying contractors across the country to find the ideal crew to complete various painting projects. It would fall on a facility manager’s shoulders to vet painting crews, juggle multiple work orders, manage pricing and scheduling, selecting paint products that adhere to the hotel’s brand standards—all while staying within the intended budget. This operational process has proven to be laborious—and daunting.”

The program uses a one-stop service, powered by proprietary technology from Paintzen, an online tool that connects painters with home and business owners for residential and multi-site commercial painting projects. “PPG Services assigns a painting crew for each project based on experience, skillset, proximity to a hotel’s location, availability and past performance on PPG Services jobs,” she said. “Lead time for painters is typically three to five business days, though it can range from 24 hours to two weeks in advance, depending on the full project scope. The PPG Services project manager will also personally oversee consistent paint specs across all projects, ensuring that all hotel brand representation needs are achieved.”

The verified and licensed crews handle interior and exterior painting projects. “Dedicated project managers work with national hotel brands to effectively manage reactive and preventative maintenance programs, hotel color re-branding, wallpaper installation, specialty coatings application, and color matching for brand consistency across all U.S. locations,” she said.

The project manager serves as the day-to-day contact throughout a project. “[The manager] provides transparent pricing—so there are never any surprise fees,” said Thadani. “The PPG Services platform gives facility managers better visibility into specific project data, access to site photos, schedule dates and project status updates. Hotel facility managers can also work directly with PPG Services on seasonal paint project scheduling priorities to ensure minimal or no disruption for hotel guests.”

In the six months since it was launched, the program has already been used in approximately 35 hotel painting projects, many of them full exterior repaints jobs. “The hospitality industry is a fast-paced market, one that requires intelligent business processes to meet and exceed patron expectations—further validating that outdated, slower methods of hiring painters can’t keep up with the speed of hotels,” she said.