10 QUESTIONS
10 Questions with... Paul Lewis
Each month we ask a cleaning industry professional the Tomorrow’s Cleaning 10 Questions. This month, we chatted to Paul Lewis, Managing Director at Reintec.
Q1
What was your first job? Now you won’t believe me,
but my first ever job was actually as a Shepherd! I grew up in the New Forest and was asked to look after a small flock during the week while the owners were living in London. However my first proper job after leaving university was setting up a dot com called
OilBarrel.com which published news on the upstream oil and gas industry.
Q2
How did you get into the cleaning industry?
I joined the Rentokil Initial Management Trainee Scheme and ended up at Festival Place in Basingstoke. After six months in Cleaning and Security I was lucky enough to join Fiona Perrin’s team at Initial Integrated Services.
Q3 Q4
Q5 108
Which three words describe your personality?
Driven, straightforward, spontaneous.
If you could visit one place in the world, where would you
go and why? There are a fair few locations on my list of “must see” places, but if I could literally only pick one, I’d head to the Whitsunday Islands in Australia for some sea breeze windsurfing.
How would you improve the cleaning industry?
I’d love to find a way to give the cleaning industry more confidence. The cleaning industry plays a very important role in society, both in terms of huge employment and of course service output, but this is rarely
recognised. In fact it has become an increasingly commoditised service in recent years. With more confidence, I believe we could collectively deliver even more value as people would be willing to try new things and work much harder in terms of partnering.
Q6 Q7
If an intern were to start tomorrow, what’s the one
piece of advice you would give them? Don’t leave anything on the table – work hard, work smart and treat everyone you meet with respect.
What do you do to unwind? I love spending time with my
family; I have two small boys and a continual DIY project, so unwinding is an interesting concept! Walking and cycling are good for everyday downtime and every now and again I may get a spot of windsurfing or snowboarding in!
Q8 Q9
If you were stranded on a desert island and you could
only have one thing, what would it
be and why? On the basis I am stuck and this item isn’t going to help me get off the island, it would have to be a wind-up iPod. A world without music would be pretty tough!
What, do you think, is the future of the cleaning industry?
That’s a big question! I see increasing customer-led demand for transparency, flexibility and compliance. I think that there will be further consolidation in the key players and further outsourcing of in-house operations, and I genuinely
believe that the importance of equipment will increase – not from a tech perspective necessarily but in terms of what it can do to the overall efficiency of an operation.
Alistair Blair-Davies, Marketing Director – EMEA & India at Hydro Systems Europe Ltd., asks...
Q10
What has brought you the most satisfaction in your
career so far? I am very proud of the Reintec journey to date. Seeing our equipment in our customers’ prestigious locations is a real reminder of how far we have come – and how much more there is still to achieve!
www.reintec.com
Check out next month’s issue to see what Paul asked our next industry professional...
www.tomorrowscleaning.com
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