Skills need higher status
October 1st 2008

Peter Smith MD of Advance says window cleaning can be a risky business and deserves to be seriously acknowledged as a specialist service

Perceptions of window cleaning have to change. End users have got to realise that this highly specialist service needs to be given greater credibility.Window cleaning has traditionally been considered the poor relation of the cleaning industry. Unskilled and unsafe, large cleaning companies choose to farm out the work to local subcontractors increasing risk and upping costs.And perhaps most fundamentally, new advances in engineering have resulted in buildings that require evermore creative access solutions.

Consequently, today we consider Advance's window cleaners as amongst our most highly trained and highly skilled operatives. It's been a long journey from the days of a man with a van, ladder and scant regard for his own safety.

Fiddler on the roof Not so long ago, buildings like the Houses of Parliament were being cleaned with the now infamous 'fiddle board'method.'Fiddle boards' were essentially planks of wood which were pushed-through windows to form an external platform protruding from the structure.

On the inside of the building someone was charged with the responsibility of sitting on the plank to weigh it down, whilst his colleague erected a ladder at the other end to scale the building and clean the windows. Legend has it that Health and Safety legislation on working at height was initially inspired by Members of Parliament witnessing window cleaners using 'fiddle boards' first-hand and deciding something needed to be done.

Around this time, buildings were springing up in the UK for which such rudimentary forms of access simply weren't an option. For instance, the windows at Lloyds of London proved extremely difficult to clean effectively simply because of our inability to reach certain areas of the building.This particular access challenge directly led to Pat Coffey (now an Advance cleaning director) becoming,we believe, the first window cleaner to apply industrial rope access skills – abseiling – to cleaning at height.At that moment, the commonly held perception of window cleaners as unskilled and unspecialised was blown out of the water.With the advent of rope access, window cleaning at height became highly skilled and highly specialised.

It's remarkable to us at Advance that this still isn't generally recognised. Large cleaning companies still routinely outsource window cleaning to subcontractors. Procurement personnel still perceive window cleaning as an add-on, not an important standalone service in its own right that carries significant risks.This has a range of serious implications. Purely from a cost efficiency perspective, subcontracting essentially means clients end up paying margin-onmargin.

More importantly, for obvious reasons window cleaning is potentially very dangerous, high risk and the historic culture of piecework means window cleaning subcontractors often liable to cut corners and therefore potentially jeopardise their own safety.

The tendering and procurement process for window cleaning simply has to change: window cleaning represents 95% of the risk but only costs in the region of 10% of the entire value of an average building cleaning contract.Therefore, this element of the contract is often hardly scrutinised at all when doing the 'beauty parade' at short list stage.Despite the risks associated with it, few questions are raised about the window cleaning service. Many leading cleaning companies subcontract this element to a raft of smaller window cleaning companies many of whom operate from unmarked vans, who then in turn subcontract out the work to others if they are busy or they can't handle a particular element of the work.This further dilutes the offering,with the end user having no knowledge of who is cleaning the windows, putting the people and premises at risk as well as paying margin-on-margin fees.

Respect is due We believe it's time that window cleaning with its associated risks got the respect it deserves. It should either be tendered as a standalone service including the cradle maintenance, or at the very least get proper interrogation and respect during the tender process in terms of technical capability, training, health and safety, monitoring, experience and insurance.Advance are committed to keeping all window cleaning operatives in house, which means no margin-onmargin costs for the client and total management of the health and safety risks associated with each job.We've also abolished piecework.

Our seriousness about window cleaning was recently recognised by the Industrial Rope Access Trade Association (IRATA), who have accredited Advance with full membership status.We believe we are the first cleaning company in London to secure this membership.

We believe perceptions are beginning to change for the better.

Certainly new structures springing-up across the UK will increasingly demand specialist window cleaning operatives.We have already been brought in to clean the windows at the top of one of the most iconic new skyscrapers in the capital, 30 St Mary Axe, where we abseiled the roof last year.We have also undertaken major external fabric cleans at the O2 and the Emirates Stadium, and window cleaning at Ascot. Forthcoming structures like 'The Shard of Glass'and 'The Cheese Grater' will increase demand for specialist window cleaners and further raise their status within the cleaning industry.

More articles from Advance Cleaning Ltd: