School and college cleaning is a daytime and ‘after hours' job. When there are students/pupils in a building there is a mess. Anyone living with children, especially teenagers will confirm this. You can never get a building spotless during term time but with good time management and work scheduling you can reach a high standard most of the time.
We clean a many schools and colleges across the South of England and no two are the same but all have one common problem - students. They create a mess especially litter, chewing gum, cigarette ends, graffiti in the toilets (male and female) and some acts of vandalism.
The cleaner's task is to keep the building and grounds as clean, litter free as possible because anywhere that looks like it is not cared for encourages maltreatment.
Daytime work includes window cleaning, litter picking, maintenance of food preparation and canteen facilities, washrooms, waste and materials removal from classrooms. These include brick and cement dust, hair from the beauty class, cooking materials, building materials, wood shavings, metal, art materials, pottery clay and paint. Art, woodwork and pottery rooms are worst as fine dust blows and it sticks to anything.
Ground rules
Traditionally colleges and schools have the worst possible flooring for their needs - such as Terrazzo where the pores of the floor clog with materials - food, grease etc Poor grades of vinyl are used to save money and these quickly suffer from a thorough cleaning regime. Cheap wood floors are ruined by ladies shoe heels in just one term and they are often not sealed when installed.
Motor workshops are a nightmare to clean with deep floor and wall scuffs; oil, grease and brake fluid spills and oily finger marks everywhere. Cleaners need extensive training on relevant cleaning agents and equipment and how to use them.
Colour is key
Colour coding wipers and equipment is as important when cleaning an educational establishment as any place. We use different colours for washrooms, baby areas in nurseries, food areas and general cleaning.
Cleaners today need to know which materials are to be recycled and how best to remove a wide range of substances from floors and furniture.
Trashing the toilets
Toilets bear the brunt of most student anger and boredom. Graffiti is rife; blocking sinks with toilet paper remains a firm favourite; breaking hot air dryers and toilet seats and ‘streaming' toilet tissue onto the floor remain frequent. Every ‘vandal proof' system installed is a fresh student challenge.
To keep control of cleaning and FM services cleaners need to develop good relationships with in-house maintenance teams whom they rely on to fix emergencies.
Painters and builders must understand that they need to work with the cleaners so that cleaning is carried out after their work, not before it.
Cleaning teams must read a situation and identify when a builders' clean is required, what must be done during and after disaster recovery such as fires, floods and break-ins.
Out of hours work
Mobile supervisors must be available on call 24/7 because in the world today where low grade materials are used and cut priced jobs carried out, incidents are frequent. Vandalism and arson attacks are usually at night or weekends. Supervisors are backed up with our help desk when our office is closed.
‘Out of hours' or holiday period work includes deep kitchens cleans, cooker hoods, ducting and ovens; science labs and workshops including art areas like pottery, textile printing and oil painting. These require a range of chemicals and equipment including steam cleaning and pressure washing.
Students have no respect for carpets and flooring so at weekends and evenings we use extraction cleaning on the upholstery and carpets, floor stripping and polishing.Holiday periods are no longer good opportunities for this work as so many establishments are rented for holiday courses so we need a timetable of when each room or corridor is used.
Planning is essential
Toilet graffiti is never eliminated.During terms it is controlled and then the walls are repainted usually twice a year.
Cleaners in the educational sector are no longer simply cleaners - they are diplomats for the contractor, intermediaries between other contractors, they require good interpersonal skills, need constant training and retraining to be up to speed with new equipment and techniques and particularly new regulations.Cleaners must be able to plan their workload in the time allocation and during the reduced time that areas are available for cleaning.Today cleaning offers a good career with development opportunities. Cleaners are a great asset to any organisation and I have immense respect for the service they provide.
Info@lccss.co.uk or call 01277 268899 http://www.lccss.co.uk/
