Employing the right type of people as cleaners and ensuring they are well trained is the way most cleaning companies operate. We were right to do that but we missed out on another important issue and that was about providing the right tools and cleaning chemicals. We learned by experience that the wrong chemicals reduced the top cleaners down to the level of an average cleaner.

When we were developing our ideas for the two ISO standards (Quality and Environment) we formed a working party to examine what work would be handled by the various managers. In one of those seemingly endless working parties someone joined us from the Glasgow cleaners officehow we had chosen to use the cleaning chemicals we were buying right across the country. It often takes a new person to ask the most basic questions which the rest of us just know we used those chemicals from the year dot.

Not a single person could answer that question and then the issue really dawned on us about needing standards right across the whole spectrum.

Re-thinking through the whole process we started to talk about what was important in commercial cleaning chemicals . A simple bit of brainstorming brought out nearly a page of quick notes. Then the hard work of identifying the real shortlist criteria that would meet our needs for us was to begin.

Amazingly we found our long trusted cleaning chemicals did not meet all our criteria. So we had to look at finding alternatives that did. Obviously cleaning performance can't be judged by reading the advert or the label. so we took a number of them for testing over some time to judge long term performance as well as the quick clean and over a number of different types of cleaning problems, different floors, different levels of wear and tear etc.

Prior to the practical test we studied datasheets to learn about any potential hazards to people, the local environment or to customers premises. After all we did not want to have a very clean floor that was being damaged or eaten away by strong acid cleaning materials. We do have a duty of care to our customers, don’t we?

Although there were a lot of good products tested by us over the next six months only one met all the criteria we had drawn up prior to the test starting. Soluclean was very effective as a cleaner but was also safe to use. Virtually impossible to accidentally use the wrong strength came in small concentrated sachets so no-one was driving across country with large amounts of water with some small element of chemicals added. In addition they could be used in hospitals to clean and kill off bacteria and germs that are difficult to remove without using toxic chemicals harmful to people.

We quickly decided to become the national distributor for these cleaning chemicals and now supply them to other cleaning companies across Scotland.