Regional Norwegian Airport Reports Three Staff Hours Saved Daily With a Scrubber

A terminal that never stops getting dirty

A regional airport in Norway handles roughly 150,000 passengers a month during its busiest periods. Every one of those travelers walks across the same floors, and every spill and scuff has to be dealt with before the next wave arrives.

Across 27,000 square meters of floor, the cleaning team numbered 21 people working three overlapping shifts from 5 a.m. to midnight. Hand scrubbing at that scale takes hours that rarely show up cleanly on a schedule, because the floors are seldom quiet long enough for a full pass.

The contract cleaner serving the airport was looking for a way to take the repetitive floor passes off its people without losing coverage in the areas travelers see first.

• Heavy foot traffic from around 150,000 passengers a month in peak periods
• 27,000 square meters of public and operational floor space
• Three overlapping shifts running from 5 a.m. to midnight
• Repetitive scrubbing passes that pulled cleaners away from toilets, spills and retail zones

One scrubber after a rougher first attempt

The first try used two machines from a different supplier. According to the operations contract manager, that setup brought numerous issues and unexpected extra charges, so the operator moved to a single robotic scrubber from the robot supplier instead.

The chosen scrubber runs most of the public floor, including check in and arrival areas, which accounts for roughly 70 to 75% of the public space. Cleaning paths can be programmed by the airport's own team, so new routes do not need to be sent back to the supplier for remapping. The contract manager cited that control as a cost advantage, while noting that the machine cost more up front.

Operation stays light. The scrubber messages an operator when a job finishes or when it needs help, so staff can check in without watching it run. The contract cleaner started robotic scrubbing at the start of 2019.

• Compare the earlier two-machine setup and its extra costs before choosing a configuration
• Map the public floor areas with the heaviest traffic and assign them to the robot
• Let the site team program cleaning paths and update them when layouts change
• Set a defined cleaning schedule and keep training current so crews do not drift back to old routines
• Use the scrubber's job-done and assistance messages to manage by exception

Staff hours returned to the floors people use

The robot supplier's published account puts the saving at about three hours every day. According to the operations contract manager, the scrubber saves two cleaners about 1.5 hours each, which matches that total.

The machine cleans roughly 3,000 to 4,000 square meters a day. That freed cleaners for toilets, retail areas and spills, the work a floor scrubber cannot do on its own.

The supplier also estimates that net hourly cleaning labor in Norway can reach €25, which it puts at about €27,000 a year in savings. That figure is the supplier's own estimate and should be read as a projection for this site, not a settled ledger entry.

What this means for a US facility weighing a scrubber

Service Robot Co. is a full-service, OEM-neutral commercial robot integrator for US businesses. We select the right robot across manufacturers, then finance, deploy, integrate, train and service it through a nationwide US engineer network, so one partner handles the whole lifecycle.

Our customers lease robots on a 3-year lease with one fixed payment, quoted after a site assessment that maps the floor, traffic patterns and shift schedule. The questions this airport faced, such as which zones matter most and how crews will work alongside the machine, are the ones we settle before a scrubber goes live.

The lesson for any terminal, warehouse or large venue is that the right machine and the right route plan matter more than the headline hours. Robot leasing for business works best when the floor plan, the staff plan and the service plan are set together.