TOMORROW’S CLEANING APRIL 10
Learning the ropes
WHEN A LADDER JUST WON’T DO, ADVANCE CLEANING HAS A SOLUTION TO HELP YOU SCALE THOSE HEIGHTS.
Advance Cleaning has scaled some of the UK’s most iconic buildings, from Ascot, to the O2 Arena, to the Emirates stadium. In 2006, they even became the first cleaning company to successfully clean the dome of 30 St Mary Axe (aka ‘the Gherkin’). However to reach such heights, Advance doesn’t rely on traditional window and external façade cleaning methods. Instead, they use rope access – a method that allows Advance to reach unlimited heights in a safe and efficient manner.
Rope access is one of the most environmentally friendly and unobtrusive manners for cleaning at height. It requires minimal equipment, there is no need for a diesel-run lorry mount
Pat was aware of the dangers of such methods. He knew that abseiling was often used on oilrigs and he realised that this system could easily be adapted to window cleaning practices. “Following a demonstration by an ex-marine, I proposed rope access to Lloyds, and fortunately they were very open to the idea. From then on, I was keen to see how we could develop this method further,” he says. Pat continued to promote rope access and gained his first abseiling qualification in 1990.
Pat Coffey, Managing Director
access and unlike some methods for working at height, and it doesn’t interfere with the surrounding environment.
Rope access as a means to working at height was pioneered in the 1980s by Managing Director of Advance, Pat Coffey, when he was managing the window cleaning for the Lloyds building. “Back in the 1980s, some highly dubious methods were used in the window cleaning industry,” says Pat. “We’d install universal beams, scaffolding, dead weights, cradles and a pulley. A Bosun’s chair would then be swung from this on a one-rope system with no back-up rope.
“Even more precarious was the ‘fiddle board’ method, used to clean the Houses of Parliament in the 1980s. This involved pushing a beam through a window. One person would sit on the beam to weigh it down and keep it steady, whilst the other person would use ladders to scale the building from the other end”.
20 years later and Advance is leading the way in using rope access in the cleaning industry. In 2008, they became the first and only cleaning company in the South East to achieve Industrial Rope Access Trade Association (IRATA) membership. Formed in the 1980s, IRATA works to improve safety, produce an industry standard set of guidelines and training requirements, and provide a comprehensive assessment and registration process for operatives. IRATA also work closely with the Health and Safety Executive (UK).
To become an IRATA trained technician requires intensive training, thousands of hours of experience and a number of assessments to reach the highest level – level 3. Advance currently has four level 3 technicians with many others currently training to this level.
Using rope access, Advance can clean: • High level building fabric
• Walkways and bridges over roads and railway lines
WORKING AT HEIGHT
56 | TOMORROW’S CLEANING | The future of our cleaning industry
• Factory ceilings • Gantries and roofs to sport stadia • Chemical silos
• The building fabric to retail and industrial parks.
As successful cleaning projects such as the Gherkin and the O2 show, there are few cleaning challenges that cannot be solved by using rope access, and Pat believes this side of Advance will only continue to grow.
“Rope access provides virtually unlimited accessibility, and can provide the solutions to seemingly impossible tasks,” he says. “In addition, more people are starting to realise the benefits of rope access in terms of cost, efficiency and the environment, so I think there will be a much greater demand for our expertise in the future.”
www.advance-cleaning.co.uk
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