Columbia Ability Alliance
Synopsis
Columbia Ability Alliance's team, which consists of 14 individuals with disabilities, maintains the 300,000-square-foot Richland Federal Building using cutting-edge cleaning technology that consistently achieves a 93.7% quality score. The organization's early adoption of CleanTelligent technology, which conducts cleaning inspections and generates monthly reports, set new standards for efficiency and quality in government facility maintenance.
The Full Story
Columbia Ability Alliance provides best-in-class custodial and landscaping services at the eight-story, 300,000-square-foot Richland Federal Building, which houses eight key federal agencies including the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), Department of Labor, and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Columbia Ability Alliance's custodial team is a testament to how the use of cutting-edge technology, standardized methods, and training strategies that embrace different learning styles can maximize productivity and promote employee success.
In 2025, Columbia Ability Alliance received the Government Contracts Award, which honors a nonprofit agency for excellence in AbilityOne contract performance. Columbia Ability Alliance was recognized for its longstanding AbilityOne contract with the General Services Administration, where it has provided outstanding custodial and landscaping services for 30 years while also creating meaningful employment opportunities for individuals with disabilities at a key community facility. Columbia Ability Alliance's team on the GSA contract consists of 14 individuals with disabilities.
Michael Novakovich, Columbia Ability Alliance president and CEO, said their team makes sure the building and the environment are safe for the people working in the federal government to do their job.
"It's a nice clean environment," Novakovich said. "There is something that your focus isn't on, which is maybe something that was otherwise, and you can focus on the task at hand which is super important. And then again, all of the interactions that's had between our team members and the federal contractors in this building is just life enriching."
The organization uses CleanTelligent technology to conduct cleaning inspections and generate monthly reports. Columbia Ability Alliance Division Program Manager Justin Saltz said this allows their customers to see what they are doing.
"It lets us check off individual items, like 'is the desk clean? Are the garbage cans taken out? Are the walls clean?' And you mark yes, needs some work, or no. Then, at the end of the month, I give a report to my customer saying this is the deficiency we found, and we corrected them in so many days," Saltz said.
Supervisors within the Richland Federal Building referred to the custodial team as the magic that keeps everything clean and why they always receive praise when it’s time for a health inspection.
