Doncaster Council sets CIMS milestone

Metro Clean, which is Doncaster Metropolitan Borough Council’s in-house cleaning operation, currently maintains cleanliness in over 350 buildings within the Doncaster area, including schools, health centres and social housing. With over 25 years’ experience in the cleaning industry, Metro Clean ensures many of its staff are trained to the British Institute of Cleaning Science’s standards. As an organisation it also constantly monitors the quality of its service delivery through regular audits. As part of this quality-led approach, Metro Clean strives to remain informed on the latest innovations, techniques and trends within the cleaning industry.

Brian High, regional chairman of BICSc North East and Yorkshire region and area supervisor at Metro Clean, identified an opportunity for further improvement if it was to apply for ISSA’s Cleaning Industry Management Standard (CIMS) accreditation.

Driven by ISSA and supported by BICs Business Services (BBS), CIMS is a consensus-based management standard that outlines and benchmarks the primary characteristics of a successful, quality cleaning organisation.

The Metro Clean CIMS project team, consisting of Drew Oxley, head of facilities management, Ian Taylor, building cleaning manager, as well as Brian High, found that meeting CIMS would allow them to ‘improve systems, reduce costs, maximise efficiency, engage staff, and reduce the carbon footprint’.

They also concluded that CIMS accreditation should be central to Metro Clean’s future expansion plans. Moreover, they found that many of the CIMS process improvement qualifications would help Metro Clean on the right path to meet Doncaster Council’s broader objective of being a digital council. Metro Clean’s Ian Taylor said: “Digitising a lot of our systems has allowed Metro Clean to have a far greater control over our resources. This has resulted, for example, in reducing staff hours for one of our school contracts by over 50 hours per week, due to the robust costing systems driven as a direct result of the CIMS process.”

After an initial on-site assessment by a local industry certification expert (ICE) representative, Metro Clean ensured changes were made throughout its business to ensure CIMS accreditation could be achieved. Metro Clean added evaluation and maintenance to its procurement process, a new staff retention policy, and improved its human resources backup. Furthermore, to improve interaction with clients, a traffic light system was introduced which allows Metro Clean to gain comprehensive customer feedback more easily, rapidly and regularly.

Following a comprehensive and exacting audit by BBS auditors, Metro Clean became CIMS accredited, thus making Doncaster Metropolitan Borough Council the first local authority in the United Kingdom to gain the ISSA CIMS standard.

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