Those of us of a certain age may remember those 1970s sitcoms where the window cleaner arrives at a suburban house to clean the windows only to find the lady of the house in a state of undress…. I’ll leave the rest to your memory!
I’m glad to say that window cleaning has moved on a lot since the 1970s! The All Clean Services commercial window cleaning teams are professionally trained in many disciplines. So we thought we’d share with you a day in the life of one of our highly experienced window cleaners.
Let’s call him Robert – he doesn’t want fame and fortune, so we said we’d give him a different name to maintain his privacy! Robert’s day starts at 7.30am when arrives at the building, Robert already knows his schedule for the day as it is uploaded to his handheld PDA each evening from our central computer system. Depending on the size of the building, Robert could be working on the contract for between 1 and 5 days.
When we cost the job with the client, we calculate the length, so we can advise the total cost and so we can schedule our team efficiently.
Robert meets with his team of 2 other cleaners who are also both fully professional trained. They run through their safety checks – which they do every morning, before they start work, regardless of how many days they’ve already been on site – before the cradle leaves the ground. They harness themselves into the cradle and Robert presses GO!
The cradle ascends at a very steady pace – it’s not a race after all. Safety is paramount at all times and not damaging the exterior of a clients’ building is also vital. Robert knows where they finished cleaning the day before, so he manoeuvres the cradle to the same place. Sometimes the windows are so dirty it’s obvious where they finished cleaning at the end of the previous day.
On the way up, the team wave to the lady on the 12th floor as they did yesterday and they have a mime conversation with the man on the 24th floor about the results of the football match the night before. When they reach their starting point for the day, Robert stops the cradle, locks it into position and the team start to clean. They use a commercial cleaning solution, which doesn’t need rinsing, it is wiped on with an applicator and then squeegeed off using a professional squeegee and that’s it that section is done. Once the team has finished that area, Robert moves the cradle up, they carry on in this methodical fashion until 10.30am when the team take a well-earned break. They take a flask with them in the cradle, because descending back to ground level and nipping off to a café takes just too long, so they get as comfortable as they can in the cradle and have a quick cuppa. The routine of cleaning a section and moving up is repeated until Robert calls it a day at 4pm, he then returns his team safely to the ground. The cradle is secured safely and securely for them to start again tomorrow.
You may think it’s a pretty mundane job, but Robert and his team really enjoy their jobs, they are outside in the fresh air all day and have some pretty amazing views, especially when working on tall buildings in central London. They regularly work on different sites so get to travel all over London and the south east. Sometimes they even dress up as superheros, as All Clean Services regularly clean at a London Children’s Hospital and it’s is a lovely feeling to bring a smile to the face of a poorly child.
