FLOORING
It is also important to take special care to minimise the impact of floor cleaning in historic buildings, of which London has plenty to choose from. One of Julius Rutherfoord’s cleaning contracts is in The Inner Temple, for instance, and includes barristers’ chambers, which date from before the 17th century.
“HARD FLOORCARE IS NOT JUST
ABOUT CLEANING.”
Here, the dedicated team carefully and efficiently transformed the original marble flooring within the Great Hall by stripping and treating it with Twister Pads, which use millions of microscopic diamonds to clean and polish the floor mechanically without the use of any chemicals. The result was a sparkling clean, non-slippery floor, which required no polish.
And as anyone in charge of a floor cleaning programme will know, slip and fall accidents can cause injury to visitors and workers at a facility, and lead to legal action. Just as a wet and dirty floor represents an unsafe slipping hazard, so too can a freshly cleaned floor. Safety can be improved through the use of detergent-free cleaning solutions, and cleaning machines that recover the water they use, as well as drying a floor, as it is being cleaned.
TRAINING, HEALTH
AND SAFETY Properly trained cleaning operatives will also help reduce the environmental impact of floor cleaning as they will know how to avoid wastage and overuse of products, and will be up-to-date in all aspects of best practice. The most reputable cleaning contractors will not just offer their operatives training at induction, but will provide training and development throughout their career at the company.
It is highly advantageous if training can be provided close to the workplace, particularly in large and very busy cities like London, to make
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training and induction as accessible as possible for operatives.
Facilities managers should also consider whether a cleaning company is consulting rigorous health and safety systems before awarding any contract. The floor area that needs to be cleaned should be carefully researched and audited before any cleaning is undertaken, to make sure the right techniques are used.
Floor cleaning and maintenance is, by its nature, a regular job. London is a busy 24-hour city, and cleaning teams as well as their supervisors must be flexible and able to make themselves available out-of-hours to get the work done around peak floor traffic times. Creating a schedule for cleaning that can be adapted to varying climates and seasons – allowing for more frequent cleaning during the winter months for instance – is vital. The best contractors will work closely with facilities managers to make a floor cleaning schedule seamlessly flexible.
SECURITY VETTING Security is also essential for all
cleaning work, and it is vital that facilities managers know to check whether their contract cleaners are vetting operatives thoroughly. There can be a certain uneasiness in knowing that a facility is being accessed by operatives at times of the day when staff are usually not present.
At the same time, it is important for the safety of the cleaning operatives themselves to know that their colleagues have been through the same rigorous safety checks. For these reasons, Julius Rutherfoord uses sophisticated vetting process and biometric time and attendance systems to keep track of over 2,000 cleaners at 350 sites across London.
The best contract cleaners will enjoy the challenge of cleaning and restoring a tired floor. Facilities managers who take note of what best practice looks like will be floored by how efficiently their entrance halls, receptions and other areas can be kept looking their best, even in the demanding winter months.
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