Our cleaning methodology (3D Cleanliness)

What is clean?

You could look at a floor and believe it was very clean, an 8/10 standard. But someone else might look at the exact same floor and perceive it as only a 4/10. Cleanliness is subjective, which means understanding and implementing it is fraught with challenges.

Whilst we believe that our patch tests and before and after deep cleaning images really do speak for themselves, is that really always enough?

You really need a more holistic, a more thorough, and ideally a more quantifiable way of really knowing if a floor is clean or not.

Introducing 3D Cleanliness

For this reason, we consider the 3D Cleanliness of a floor:

Standards: how does it look (as this is still, clearly, important)? How does it feel? How does it smell?

Hygiene: how much bacteria is present on the surface?

Slip safety: how slip-resistant is the floor

Looks aren’t everything…!

Historically, we’ve only judged cleanliness, really, by “how does it look?”. In a post-Coronavirus world, this really isn’t good enough any longer.

You can have a floor that “looks” clean, but had high levels of bacteria and high slip risk. That’s not clean.

Consider an operating theatre. If you were being wheeled into surgery and you saw the surgeon wipe down his scalpel with his handkerchief, no doubt you’d worry that although it looked clean, it wasn’t truly clean.

What about a tiled floor in a washroom? That could be mopped with water and it may look clean, but would it be hygienic and would it be slip-resistant? In other words, does that method achieve true cleanliness?

What gets measured gets managed

As with most things in life, if you can put a benchmark against something, there’s a good chance that over time it will be improved because human nature is such that we like to see numbers moving in the right direction.

So, rather than solely considering subjective points, let’s quantify cleanliness:

Hygiene can be quantified: the fewer bacteria present on a surface, the cleaner it is
Slip safety can be quantified (*): the more slip-resistant a floor, the cleaner it is
Standards can be measured, albeit qualitatively in most cases, by recording photos for example

3D Cleanliness: manage and measure all three to ensure that you achieve – and maintain – true cleanliness.

Contact us now to discuss how we can help you to achieve the standards you, your staff and clients deserve

(*) note: it’s true to say that certain floors in wet conditions are slippery irrespective of how clean they are. However, on these types of floors, the dry slip resistance value can strongly indicate how clean it is. A smooth, dry floor with contamination on it wil record a pendulum test value lower than the same smooth, dry floor with no contamination.