FEATURE
A Busy Summer Ahead
Now that festival season is in full swing, we caught up with Ryans Cleaning, event cleaning specialists who have worked on music festivals, concerts and sporting events across the UK and Ireland, as well as the Olympics, to find out more about how they do it.
Chimney sweeps are considered lucky, but for Pat Ryan, who left school at 16 and was a sweep by 19, it is hard work, not luck, that brings success. Ryans Cleaning, the company he went on to found, is now one of the biggest outdoor cleaning companies in the UK and Ireland, clearing up at events from music festivals to the Olympics.
The Tipperary man left school just after his Inter Cert. “Like all 16-year- olds, I thought I knew better,” he said. By 19 he had gone out on his own as a self-employed chimney sweep. The business model was simple: “You had your rods, you had your brushes, and you knocked on doors.”
Over time he focused less on chimneys and more on cleaning offices, building up a team of people to help. He got his first big break into events by providing toilet cleaning services at the Feile music events in Semple Stadium, Thurles, dubbed “The Trip to Tipp”.
Before long, he was doing all the cleaning work for the events, including restoring the venue after everyone went home. That led to work cleaning up after concerts in Slane, Co Meath. He said: “It was a niche market but there was a lot more money in it. It was
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tough, though. You’d be at the mercy of the weather — and as we had no apprenticeship served, it was an awful lot of guesswork in the beginning.”
Fast forward a number of years and it is festival season again and Ryans Cleaning’s team of dedicated cleaning staff are on the road both in Ireland and the UK, cleaning up before, during and after huge festivals, outdoor concerts and major sporting events. This is all par for the course during the summer months for Ryans Cleaning, having spent much of the year preparing for the summer festival season, drawing up intricate site plans, assigning staff and organising stock – all in close consultation with clients.
The first of their major summer events was the Punchestown Racing Festival. Punchestown is the most important horse racing festival of the Irish National Hunt Season and Ryans Cleaning has been there for the past eleven years as it grows in size and stature. Behind the scenes, the cleaning team from Ryans worked to ensure the bars, restaurants and amenities including car parks, public walkways and toilet blocks were spotless day by day.
The teams operated a day and night shift to ensure that the site was in
pristine condition for the following day’s races. When the event came to a close, cleaning teams completed a site clean on the 100-acre area. In total, around 50 tons of rubbish was collected to keep the racecourse in perfect condition.
Pat said: “It was important that our teams returned the public areas to the same perfectly clean state each day, and although the crowds were huge we were able to achieve that each time. The festival is a credit to all concerned and a real showcase for great sport, hospitality and fun.”
Ryans was also at the Forbidden Fruit festival in Kilmainham, Taste of Dublin Food Festival and the Irish Open Golf Tournament.
At the end of June, Ryans Cleaning were once again to the fore in Croke Park at the sold out Script concert. Over 80,000 patrons attended the event and Ryans Cleaning team were on hand for pre, during and post- concert clean up.
Across in the UK, Ryans Cleaning has been hard at work at some of Britain’s biggest summer festivals. Download in Donnington had over 70,000 revellers attending the three- day event. Ryans faced some big
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