We were asked to do the ground work on the reasons why the cleaning in one area of the Royal Navy wasn’t working very well and to suggest ways in which it could be made much more effective.

PROBLEM: like all navies, the Royal Navy is bound by many regulatory issues, but equally no more so than land based ones. Increasing need for awareness of health and safety regulations as well as even stricter environmental regulations on disposal, storage and use of detergents, plus the shortage of people willing to consider doing the cleaning puts some serious constraints on any system developed. In many ways there are less constraints in a food factory where cleaning is required to be at a very high standard.

SOLUTION: we were able to examine in detail the reasons for the problems and these were not quite what our customer had anticipated. This is very often the case and this is where we are very useful to our customers. As in this case, management consultants had been used to suggest reasons for the problems but their reports all lack the one thing that we alone can, and do, give our customers – the fact that we have had so much practical experience in cleaning and problem solving around cleaning, that we are able to look at problems from a practical “hands on” angle and give answers which actually work in real life. These may not be what is expected but the problems are also often not really what the customer is expecting – it could come from an entirely different direction and we find out by examination, audits and surveys just what the problem is and the best and most cost effective way of solving it. All the answers we give have one thing in common: they work and they are guaranteed to work.

Following on from this initial ground work, we implemented:

• Full training and operational manuals
• All new and re-designed cleaning products and sanitisers
• All new range of cleaning equipment

Established standards:

• Whole ship cleaning systems for ship's staff
• Infection control for QA nurses in medical facilities
• Waste disposal systems and procedures (MARPOL)
• All shore-side cleaning contractors