There has never been a greater need to demonstrate the link between cost and quality to Britain's cleaning services users, whose poor opinion of the value being obtained from the £8 billion spent annually is clear from the industry's high levels of contract and staff turnover, according to Mike Boxall, managing director of i-Clean Systems Ltd.
 
Members of the Association of Building Cleaning Direct (Service Providers), known as ABCD, in conference in May, were urged to use techniques such as room-specific benchmarking in in-depth surveys of sites. "Buildings, and individual room types, are simply not all the same," Mr Boxall said. "Each area of a site needs categorising."
 
"It's the attention to detail that takes the time," Mr Boxall continued. "As more time is cut from cleaning provision, end users should know, the impact increases dramatically."
 
Pat Wherton, executive general secretary of the ABCD, commented: 'More and more we're seeing evidence of the need to see cleaning as a science - and that means we have to consider ways to address the problems and issues in a scientific, methodical way.
 
"Advances in technology and new systems give us new tools in the box."
 
ABCD members were shown how the i-CleanTM Cleaning Management System - the first system to be approved by the British Institute of Cleaning Science - is made up of modules which can be used as a benchmarking tool for assessing cleaning service levels, area by area, reviewing resources, and looking at new methods and products for undertaking cleaning tasks in any organisation.