Background
New College operates cleaning services in-house. As part of a school-wide review of service standards and efficiency, the management team wished to review how it delivers cleaning services and what opportunities there may be to be more efficient and deliver greater consistency.
Brief
The key objectives for the engagement were:
- Deliver a report on the efficiency and effectiveness of the current cleaning operation against industry best practice;
- Determine whether best value is being achieved through the existing cleaning resources when measured against industry benchmarks;
- Establish whether financial savings could be potentially achieved and how the resources could be re-distributed in the interim;
- Evaluate the effectiveness of the management and supervisory structure;
- Recommend operational improvement; and
- Provide a Strategic Options Appraisal comparing the current operating model with alternatives.
Approach
Joe Parfitt, The Litmus Partnership, said: “It was important we understood the existing set-up, and so we looked through every aspect of the operation including building plans, staff hours and location of work, equipment provisions and chemical prices.”
“We then reviewed the cleaning process by inspecting a wide range of buildings during and after cleaning, scoring the standards achieved, along with observing the cleaning methodology against industry best practise.”
“To benchmark the overall labour provision and its distribution across buildings, we used digital plans which gave a comprehensive data set of square meterage for each building. We also benchmarked non-labour and the whole service cost, which meant we had clarity across the entire operation and could then provide an options appraisal of the different services.”
Outcomes
A comprehensive report was produced that outlined a set of recommendations for developing the service delivery. This included identifying how the labour resource could be better distributed to achieve more consistency; demonstrating potential savings in cleaning product procurement; and highlighting development opportunities for staff to continue professionalisation of the service provision.
It was agreed that the best value approach was that Charterhouse should continue to deliver the cleaning services in-house.
