FEATURE
vacuum cleaner, and we then recover all the dust and powder, so it’s basically a self-enclosed cleaning system, so nothing spills out onto the streets.
TC: And how did the company originally discover this method of cleaning? Have they used this technique throughout their 100-year history or did it take a period of development to perfect it?
MS: It was actually after the Second World War they started developing the technology, and they’ve been refining and perfecting it over the last 50 or 60 years. There have always been systems that work in this kind of manner; it’s just developing a system that’s gentle enough to work on historic buildings, things like limestone and delicate surfaces, without damaging them. It was really just a case of trial and error, trying a lot of different powders over a long period of time.
It’s been tested recently on King’s College Cambridge, which we’ve recently worked on, and they carried out infrared scans on the samples that we’d done and it showed that there was no difference in surface effects between cleaning with water and cleaning with our system. So although technically it falls under the category of an abrasive cleaning system, the level of abrasion is in line with water cleaning.
TC: So what other benefits are there for using this system over traditional pressure washing?
MS: There are a lot of benefits: one is obviously speed. It’s far, far faster than traditional systems. We’ve looked at some buildings which we’ve actually done, for example Deutsche Bank, that was put down for six months scaffolding and we did it in four weekends. So speed is one advantage. The lack of scaffolding is a big advantage too in terms of security, because at the end of the day, once we’ve packed up our equipment there’s no way anyone can use it to access a building. And the other main benefit is the lack of disruption. Because when we’re there, you don’t have scaffolding outside your windows for months on end, you see us once for maybe 15/20 minutes and that’s it for the project.
While it is classed as an abrasive system, anything that uses something
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College. King’s College is probably a more prestigious building in terms of its historical performance, but the Bank of England is probably the best known out of what we have worked on.
TC: A lot of these big-name contracts have come from within the UK, specifically in London – are there plans to expand further afield, into Europe or maybe even further?
The result from our
system is far superior to a pressure washer but with the level of
surface damage, which is extremely slight with water cleaning.
to remove something else is classed as an abrasive; we are blowing powder at a building. Having said that, water abrades stone in the same way when you’re jetting something with water. The result from our system is far superior to a pressure washer but with the level of surface damage, which is extremely slight with water cleaning; we are at the same level. There’s no increased abrasion on the stone from using our system.
TC: Over the past 10 years, the company has worked on some fairly high-profile jobs, particularly Marks & Spencer’s flagship store on Oxford Street, and more recently the Bank of England. What would you say are the most high-profile contracts you’ve worked on, and which, personally, are you are most proud of?
MS: I think probably the most recent high-profile job we’ve had is King’s College, Cambridge, which is a Grade I listed building. It’s actually the oldest university in the world, founded by Henry VI, and we’re cleaning the Gibbs building there.
In terms of which job I’m most proud of, I think it’s got to be the Bank of England, followed closely by King’s
MS: There are, yes. We’ve looked at some projects recently in Milan; the Deutsche Group has had us quote up one of their buildings, so we are looking at work abroad. We did a couple of samples last year in New York, which we’re just waiting to hear on. But generally there are already offices in European countries, so there’s not too much scope to work there. We’ve got a small office in Germany, so we’ve got a few projects there, but really the US is where we’d most like to do a project now.
We’ve got a couple of local companies over there that we work with – a lot of the stuff is through them – we’ve had a few calls from people who we did work with prior to September 11th, after which everything went quiet, we used to do a lot of work there. One of the biggest jobs that we did was the MetLife, which is a 56-storey skyscraper on Park Avenue.
TC: When you started out, the facade gommage technique was still seen as being fairly revolutionary. In the following ten years, has there been a growing understanding of what you do and are people generally more aware of your methods now?
MS: When we first started we had to explain it to people and convince them. Now the majority of people that we speak to have heard about it or seen it so generally we’re very well known.
In the beginning it took a long time to get the word out about our method – it took two years to get the first job, and yeah, it has taken a long time to get to where we are. Now we’re very well established and people generally know what we do, who we are and what we can offer.
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Tomorrow’s Cleaning November 2015 | 35
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