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ServiceMaster Clean Leads The Way – June 2009

ServiceMaster Clean in Newbury has pioneered the kind of approach normally associated with maintenance partners, except it isn’t a construction firm – it’s a professional commercial cleaning company. Now the success of its approach has inspired efforts to replicate the service nationwide.

Service Master Ltd, the Leicester-based company that manages and licenses the worldwide Service Master brand to the UK, is looking to ‘clean up’ with the implementation of a delivery model created and pioneered specially for the needs of the social housing sector.

The model, the communal cleaning system, was developed by Nick Dee Shapland, managing director of the Newbury franchise, after it won a tender with Sovereign Housing Association to provide a pilot communal cleaning programme back in 2004. Prior to this, the company’s clientele had featured offices and commercial premises, the retail sector and garages, so establishing a presence in the social housing sector required a reappraisal and redesign of its contract services to meet the clients needs.

In essence, the redesign of service delivery effectively re-created the kind of partnering principles familiar in the delivery of maintenance programmes, complete with performance monitoring and management, consultation drives, and continuous improvement efforts, that have become the daily bread of planned maintenance contractors. The only difference is that ServiceMaster Clean is a professional commercial cleaning business.

To carry out an excellent standard of work for Sovereign, the company introduced new technology, new machines and new principles. This was necessary because the feedback from the initial surveys revealed the need for greater levels of organisation and service, as no-one knew when the previous cleaners would turn up and standards were poor. Programmes vary depending on the situation; density of the area, the social habits of the people involved and the types of cleaning required – all of this needed to be factored into the planning process.

Dirty communal areas reflect on and affect everyone concerned with the building, so not only is communal cleaning a demanding task for psychological, as well as hygiene reasons, it is also practically challenging given the volume of people that will pass through those areas and the types of floor used.

In developing the new service programmes for Sovereign, Service Master Clean had to build a ‘map’ of these factors into a database, as an integral part of preparing the groundwork to upgrade the cleaning services. The emphasis was on a professional service delivery; ensuring all the tenants were satisfied with a ‘job well done’, not just once but each and every time. The database also contained information as to the type of flooring in each communal area, since hard floors, carpet or concrete require different methods to achieve effective cleaning.

Service Master Clean also invested in new technology, including commercial truck mounts, PDAs, tracking systems and so forth, to take into account the average travel time to each site, monitoring the programme and allowing continual improvements, as well as other aspects that allow KPIs to be measured and value for money achieved to drive the service forward. Consulting the tenants was a key part of establishing the new programmes, not only allowing Service Master Clean to introduce itself and its staff, but also ascertain tenants’ expectations and requirements of service. After all, Sovereign might be the direct client, but it is the tenants who are important because they are the ones paying the bills, not to mention the ones directly receiving the service.

“We introduced disciplines to the job, complete with image,” explained Nick Dee Shapland, managing director of Deeland Limited, who owns and operates the Service Master Clean franchise in Newbury. “The tenant can see who arrives, which offers transparency. The key is the communal cleaning operative. Rather like a postman, the tenants will see the same person in attendance, underlining how much we value the importance of relationships. Service Master Clean is all about people, working with housing associations and its tenants in delivering quality cleaning services for local communities.”

Since pioneering its partnering model with Sovereign Housing, ServiceMaster Clean has gone on to win work with further housing associations in Berkshire and surrounding areas. Again, these are predominantly for the provision of communal cleaning, but it also provides other services such as graffiti removal and void cleaning works. As a whole the company offers a comprehensive range of cleaning services, some of it highly specialised, such as carpet and hard floor restoration, fire and flood restoration, window cleaning, toilet deep cleaning and steam cleaning to name but a few. The company also offers a 24-hour call out service for clearing up spillages in communal areas.

Steve Faulkner, who was estates manager for Sovereign when the contract was set up, commented: “ServiceMaster has provided a high quality business-wide cleaning service to all our communal areas since they were appointed in 2004. Such is our confidence that we have signed a formal partnering contract with ServiceMaster Clean until 2011.”

The service enjoyed by Sovereign is now to be offered to housing associations across the UK, as the model and partnering principles established by Nick Dee Shapland are developed for fellow ServiceMaster franchises across the country. Nick is working closely with the Leicester ‘head office’, if it can be put that way, to trail-blaze the systems he has developed for social housing to fellow franchisees across the country.

“Nick has been an inspiration and we are looking at what he has achieved by focusing on the housing association market. It’s been very successful and we are looking at expanding that model into other franchise businesses,” said Steve Emmerson, the managing director of ServiceMaster Ltd in Leicester. “Social housing is a target market for us. We have 50 years commercial experience in cleaning in the UK and five years experience in managing cleaning contracts for social housing; Nick is working with us to put in place for our franchised network, the communal cleaning system in providing cleaning services to the social housing sector, we have started the process and we are already winning contract cleaning work.”

For those not familiar with franchising, it can perhaps be a little confusing; Leicester’s ServiceMaster Ltd and Newbury’s ServiceMaster Clean are two different companies, as are ServiceMaster businesses throughout the UK. What links them is the brand – the controls, systems and management principles that are packaged under the ServiceMaster banner, which is managed and licensed by the Leicester company to the UK. It’s about providing uniform systems of quality management that customers can trust – but they are nevertheless locally owned businesses rather than subsidiaries or branch offices.

“You don’t have a manager of a depot – you have business owners working to a system licensed to us,” added Emmerson. As local businesses, they employ locally, know the area where they operate, and also have a vested interest in providing a quality service. It’s not just a matter of conforming to the requirements of the license. The franchisees have a vested interest in a good outcome – it’s their reputation as well as livelihood that rests – ultimately – on customer satisfaction.

The ServiceMaster Clean franchise in Newbury is owned by Deeland Ltd and was established in 1991. Nick Dee Shapland bought the franchise, having been impressed with the brand’s worldwide reputation, and its expertise. Since then, the company has developed its own strong pool of expertise, adding to that already gathered under the ServiceMaster banner, but equally able to draw on that experience as well. With the move into social housing, the Newbury business has added an entirely new dimension to that stock of experience.

Individual franchises that adopt Nick Dee Shapland’s partnering model will be able to negotiate tenders on their own behalf, but with larger social landlords that sweep across different franchise territories, it is anticipated that the Leicester company will perform a major tendering role on behalf of the franchises, so that local business will gain national support and vice versa. Call centre operations are already handled in Leicester on the franchises’ behalf, freeing the individual business owners to focus on building their business delivering quality services to their clients.

Thanks to the lead taken by Nick at ServiceMaster Clean Newbury it looks like the ServiceMaster brand is set to become much more familiar in the world of social housing.

Article courtesy of www.housingexcellence.co.uk