The clean team challenge
December 1st 2007

Why hold skills competitions? They take up a lot of time, can be difficult to organise,and not everyone can be a winner.Chris James, director of research and development at Asset Skills says its all about benchmarking against the best in the business

It was a hard fought contest and choosing an overall winner was tough.That’s why the judges of the UK Team Clean Challenge awarded top marks jointly to MITIE Cleaning and Principle Cleaning Services.

The competition to find the country’s best cleaners was organised by Asset Skills, the Sector Skills Council for the cleaning industry. It took place in October at Merton College in South West London and Matthew Boulton College, Birmingham. MITIE, OCS, Emprise, Strand, Principle Cleaning and other entrants were put through vigorous, two-hour assessments of their practical responses to a set of scenarios including mocked-up filthy hospital wards, office spaces and dirty IT equipment.

Each team had a manager, supervisor and two cleaners and were marked against criteria specific to their roles. Managers tackled issues like costing and risk assessment, the presence of customers on site and the motivation and management of their team.

Supervisors were assessed on team-leading and front line troubleshooting.The skills and competencies required of each team were based on the national occupational standards and industry qualifications like those offered by the British Institute of Cleaning Science (BICSc).

The competition was open to entrants from all parts of the industry be it healthcare, local authority or contract cleaning.

Why bother?

Some people might ask what’s the point of a skills competition like this? It is hard work, takes up a tremendous amount of time and not everyone can be a winner.

At Asset Skills we are constantly striving to raise awareness of the importance of having skilled staff.We believe events like the Team Clean Challenge can provide a focus for employers and their workers to review and refine their talents. It allows them to test their competence against the best in their class and benchmark their own performance.

We want to create a circle of skills development, refinement, testing and benchmarking through the competition and on into the workplace.This makes for an ever increasing upturn in skills.

European champions?

For the winners, this focus on excellence is now critical as they go forward to represent the UK in the EuroSkills competition in Rotterdam in September next year. From this point on, the hard work really starts and the teams must undergo serious training and development.

Mary Schramm (pictured first from left) of Merton College, the UK Team Trainer, will be holding a series of team training sessions where they will rehearse time and again the kind of scenario they could expect to meet at the Euroskills contest.

The European dimension gives us the chance to really find out how good we are compared to the competition in Europe. On the international stage it gives operatives, managers and supervisors in the cleaning industry the chance to profile their skills. We all expect them to do well and hope they’ll bring home the gold medal.This is the main driver for the team at Asset Skills who are working on the competition.

Also in 2008, a separate strand of the Team Clean Challenge will begin when we expect 20 or so prisons to enter the contest. Not surprisingly the winners won’t be able to progress to the Euroskills competition but it’s hoped the event will highlight to inmates the fact that cleaning can be a viable and worthwhile job to consider for the future.

For too long the cleaning industry has been considered without skill or poorly skilled. We can show without fear of contradiction that this bizarre assumption is simply not true.Cleaning really is a skilled occupation as a manager, a supervisor or as a cleaner. By focusing on the challenges faced by cleaners and the skills required to overcome them, the UK Team Clean Challenge hopes to make the cleaning industry the biggest winner of all.

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