“The Friendly Games”
CleanEvent Services was awarded the contract to provide housekeeping services to the Athletes Village at the Glasgow Commonwealth Games 2014. This was an important accolade for the company and followed the success of our service provision at the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games.
We were able to draw on the great experience gained in London to ensure the Glasgow games ran smoothly, despite the range of complexities that can arise in mobilising and operating cleaning services for an event of this magnitude.
Over the course of the event:
• 343 housekeeping and laundry staff were employed to service 6,732 beds for athletes and officials.
• These beds were made 120,000 times
• 55,000 sheets and 25,000 pillow cases were laundered by the CleanEvent staff
• 2,063 bathrooms were cleaned twice a day but our housekeeping staff
• Our team kept 620 social and rest areas clean and tidy, ready for the 7,000 participants and officials
Proactive Housekeeping Management
CleanEvent Services housekeeping Supervisors were responsible for overseeing the BICSc training and development of the housekeeping teams, confirming daily work schedules and spot-checking cleaning outcomes. The supervisors also ensured that occupancy status and other details were updated on a consistent basis.
The Athletes’ Personal Laundry
CleanEvent Services fully understood the challenges associated with the running of the athletes’ laundry from previous experience at the London 2021 Olympic and Paralympic games and were more than prepared for the task.
Our staff ran 7 laundries with 91 washing machines and 2010 dryers during the extended period of the games. The laundries were operational 16 hours per day and processed approximately 1,690 bags of personal laundry every 24 hour period. CleanEvent Services provided the software and scanners necessary to read and record all laundry bag barcodes, ensuring the accurate processing and tracking of personal laundry.
“At Glasgow, we washed and returned 26,678 bags of personal athletes’ laundry.”
Norovirus outbreak
Days before the opening ceremony, news of an outbreak of the highly contagious Norovirus at the Commonwealth games was broadcasted across the UK. The outbreak mostly affected the games security contractors, but there was a growing concern about the scale of the virus and the huge impact it would have on the games, as well as the well being of the competing athletes. It was here that CleanEvent Services stepped in and took full control of the situation, instigating to the board a detailed hygiene programme.
Collaboratively, CleanEvent and the games administration and operations team on site recruited additional cleaning staff within 48 hours after the outbreak. Within 24 hours of starting, 252 cleaners were approved and trained in the use of antiviral cleaning procedure and methodologies and how to use the bleach-based cleaning chemical that was needed to kill the virus. Quick and effective cleaning action was carried out by our new Norovirus cleaning team, and the Commonwealth Games were able to go ahead without significant disruption.