The Standard Issue 4 2023

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MY CAREER IN CLEANING MBICSc, JAMES REYNOLDS When I was asked to write this article by the Team at BICSc I was going to say I came to the cleaning industry as a career later in life, however when I started to think back to the first jobs I ever had, whilst still at school, they would all have had cleaning in the job description (if one of those things had existed at the time). The first job I can remember getting paid for was as a Kitchen Porter in a local hotel in Dunoon, in the West of Scotland where I grew up. The work involved a lot of spud peeling and a lot of cleaning. It gave me my first experience of using a dolly mop – not a pleasant experience in that environment. THE EARLY DAYS During my mid to late teens and then again when I went to university I had a number of jobs that helped provide me with a bit of “pocket money” and also to supplement my study grant, and of course fund the significant social activities that most students get up to. Over the years I was a supermarket assistant, council gardener, tennis club assistant, café cook, shop assistant, summer camp sports counsellor, painter and decorator, football steward, hotel porter, travel agent, baker's assistant, and one of my least favourites, a mini-bingo caller at a Mecca bingo hall in the Gorbals, Glasgow. The heckling that you got from the “customers” if you called rubbish numbers was legendary. Many of these jobs involved cleaning (everything from standard tidying activities to carpet deep cleaning and floor polishing) and they all had one thing in common, no training for cleaning tasks worth mentioning. There was nothing about safe use of equipment and chemicals, manual handling, risk assessments, COSHH or anything that we have all come to expect as the norm in a commercial cleaning environment. Usually the supervisor or a colleague would just take a few minutes to show you what THE STANDARD needed to be done and how to do it. But to be honest I didn’t expect any more than that, I didn’t understand the potential hazards and risks that I faced and it wasn’t until some years later, after I left university and started my “adult” career, that I realised the value and importance of high quality professional training. ENTERING THE WORLD OF WORK – PUTTING SAFETY FIRST So I entered the world of work – proper – with an Honours Degree in Commerce with Information Management and a Post Graduate Diploma in Information Systems and promptly took a job as a baggage handler at Glasgow Airport. Although being a “loader” was not in my career plan at any point, an airport was one of the most interesting and exhilarating environments to work in and also very dangerous – this was back in the early 1990s and airport operations in the UK were still going through a cultural change with regard to the provision of professional training and putting safety before everything else. When I started in the industry getting the planes away on time was the most important priority and as a result there were a lot of accidents and a lot of damaged aircraft as ground crews drove around like crazy trying to avoid delays. Thankfully that has now changed and operations safety is the absolute priority for the industry. I spent the next 15 years working for the company now known as Swissport. Initially behind the scenes in a number of support roles covering everything from Manpower Planning, to Fleet Management and Health and Safety before moving into Operations and ultimately being appointed as the Ground Handling Operations Director for the North of the UK which covered nine airports from Humberside to Inverness. Now of course none of those roles included a direct responsibility for the provision of commercial cleaning services but, they absolutely all relied on the provision of clean and safe workspaces - not JAMES REYNOLDS MBICSc Cleaning Industry Council Member something I consciously thought about at the time, but that I took for granted and expected to be provided consistently and without fuss or drama. CLEANING – THE IMPORTANCE OF GREAT TEAMWORK It was when I moved to Derichebourg Multi Services, a French multi-national (still within the aviation industry) that I got my first taste of Commercial Cleaning. DMS had an Aircraft Cleaning and Catering Company in the UK and I joined them as the Operations Director for the north of the country. That’s when I learned the harsh reality that cleaning isn’t an easy job at all. It requires excellent organisational skills, good physical fitness, the ability to plan and work calmly under extreme pressure, and a very humble and low fuss approach to delivering services. I learned early on the value of getting hands on experience – my time as a baggage handler was a great source of shop floor knowledge when I moved into Ground Handling Operations management. And so when I joined DMS I insisted on spending time as an aircraft cleaner to help me learn the job and get a good understanding of the services provided and challenges we faced. I have to say that I have never been so exhausted at the end of a shift than those few days spent on the ramp as part of an aircraft cleaning turnround crew. As a team of four you would be expected to complete a full clean in less than twenty minutes on an aircraft capable of carrying 200 passengers that might have flown six hours or more on their journey serving dinner,
snacks and with a full bar. Sometimes it felt like walking into a nightclub the day after a Hogmanay party! But it was also a fabulous experience and provided me with some of the best examples of team work, good humour and work place camaraderie that I have ever experienced. It was a very humbling experience for me and I felt guilty for all of those times as an aircraft dispatcher when I would have asked the cleaning crews for a “quick clean” to ensure that we minimised the risk of the delaying the flight. COMMERCIAL CLEANING It was also while I was with DMS that I got my first experience of cleaning outside of aviation. DMS had a small cleaning business in Ireland that had merged with the aviation business and became part of my portfolio and so I was thrown head first into the vast world of commercial cleaning. Our client list was very diverse and covered numerous segments:- Banking (Irish Nationwide), Production (Dulux, Kerry Gold) Healthcare (National Orthopaedic Hospital) Government and local authorities (National Libraries) and there were over 200 small “Daily Office Cleaning” clients as well, so I built up quite a bit of experience of managing cleaning operations over the next 2-3 years. Then in 2012 I joined my current company, ISS Facilities Services one of the leading Global Facilities Management Companies headquartered in Copenhagen, as Operations Director for the Transport Division in the UK, becoming Managing Director in 2017 for the Cleaning and Transport Business and then moving into my new role as Head of Product and Performance UK&I for Cleaning and Waste Services in 2021. I have to say that ISS really are a fabulous people company – it is genuinely a place where you will be supported to learn and develop into the best that you can possibly be. It is absolutely a "place to be you". THE IMPORTANCE OF GREAT QUALITY TRAINING I took on my current role just as ISS launched its new Global OneISS strategy which is all about providing standardised products and services using the same equipment, chemicals and methods across all customer locations and all countries, so that our customers can experience the same service excellence no matter which global site they are visiting. This was a big move for me, away from the comfort of operations and P&L accounts and into the world of Support Services with a focus on product development, deployment and performance improvement. Over the last two years my team have worked closely with ISS Group colleagues, key suppliers, operations, our learning and development colleagues and with BICSc to adapt and deploy across the UK&I our new global standard office cleaning product – Pure Space Office (PSO). The adaptation programme also included the development of a comprehensive training programme and train the trainer familiarisation process – a three-day immersive programme that ensures that the new product is fully understood by operations trainers before the product training is delivered to our front-line staff. The team also created an e-learning option and we are now looking forward to adapting and rolling out the next additions to the Pure Space range for the Production and Healthcare segments. One of the most important achievements that we were able to accomplish though for PSO was for our new training programme to be developed in consultation with BICSc which ensured the product was compliant to BICSc own very high standards which now allows anyone who has gone through the training to sit the BICSc Licence to Practice (LTP) assessment which can represent the start of a formal learning journey and industry recognised qualifications for many people undertaking a career in cleaning. I am very proud to say that I have my LTP having sat the assessment in 2022. The provision of high-quality training for the cleaning industry is at the heart of everything that BICSc stands for and in ISS I am delighted to work for a company that shares those same values. A CAREER IN CLEANING – WHY NOT? The cleaning industry is a fabulous place to build a career but not many people leave school hoping to do that. Most people get into the industry by chance (that’s what happened to me) but I suspect very few people leave the industry once they are there. Hopefully the progress and recognition of the importance of the sector that we have seen over the last few years will continue in the future, and much needed developments like the new Cleaning Apprenticeship scheme will provide the momentum that we need to continue on this journey and give so many people a platform into a life-long career the chance they need. As my fellow BICSc Council Member Darrin McCartney said in his recent article “you have a wonderful opportunity to have a lifetime career in one of the world’s oldest and most satisfying vocations, and one that is now getting the long overdue recognition that it deserves”. Why not take a chance and give it a try…you might just like it! 26 | 27
Page 1 and 2: THE TITLE, STANDARD SUB TEXT 1St Pa
Page 3 and 4: THE CHAIRMAN'S HELLO: STARTING WITH
Page 5: ELEVATING THE UK CLEANING INDUSTRY
Page 8 and 9: AWARDS SUCCESS! Every year the BICS
Page 10 and 11: AMAZING AWARD WINNERS! THE CHAIRMAN
Page 12 and 13: THE STANDARD
Page 14: CHARITY CHAMPIONS BY SOO BARTHOLOME
Page 17: Tools like Whiz provide immediate f
Page 20 and 21: THE LATEST UPDATES FROM SAVEFAST TR
Page 22 and 23: TORK OFFICE HYGIENE PACKAGE TM IMPR
Page 24 and 25: CLEANING UP THE INDUSTRY: HOW THE C
Page 29: OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH & SAFETY: MUSCU
Page 33 and 34: CHEMICAL FIRST AID AT WORK The Heal
Page 36: A NEW WAY TO SPRAY A PRACTICAL ALTE
Page 40: THE STANDARD CONTACT US: TEL: +44 (

The Standard Issue 4 2023

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