Keeping Clean

We must measure cleaning not by the normal day but by an emergency. I judge my team not by normal operations but by how they react to an emergency. I am very proud of the fact that the mall is now in a very good condition in spite of the heavy 800mm rain the previous day. The heavy rain fall had created havoc in the basement but we rose to the occasion. We have issues that we still need to contemplate but the housekeepers were able to deal with it very quickly; they got the required equipment on site, they got the team on site and most importantly, they mobilised the man power to come here in an emergency and responded to the situation. Whenever there is an emergency we have massive mobilization of cleaners and other teams to immediately resolve the issue.

We have bifurcated our housekeeping responsibilities between two contractors. The first primary contractor Dusters Total Solutions & Services Pvt. Ltd which looks after the entire shopping centre. The second contractor is Sanjay Maintenance services Pvt. Ltd responsible for the cleaning of our food court. Food court management is very specialised. We have also outsourced the cleaning of our basements, periphery’s and fire escapes to CLR Services Pvt. Ltd . We follow an outsource model, everything is outsourced, we put our faith and our dependency in the professionalism exhibited by our contractors and so far we have been very happy and very satisfied. Where we have problems, we involve our management team. I have my own team – a Head Housekeeper and a Food Court Manager. One of them is responsible for back of house and common area the other one is responsible for the food court and their responsibilities are on the shift basis. We do cross exposure so that when the housekeeper is off the food court manager run the show. We also have to keep the back of the house very clean.

As with manpower, in a shift we have about 150 people, one of the biggest teams in Bangalore. The range of cleaning equipment include Taski machines, high pressure jet from Karcher, escalator machine from Innovative, vaccum cleaner, Flipper machine, etc., from Roots Multiclean Limited and ride on sweeper from Diversey India.

The cleanliness within each stall is the responsibility of the tenants but and but our operations team do daily checks. We monitor the cleanliness standards and food safety on the food courts. If we find that the tenants are not complying with our requirements, and then we don’t allow them to trade, we have a very strict approach to dealing with tenants in this mall.

Facades Cleaning

It is a very exciting job. In India everybody builds with beautiful glass. The interesting thing is that there are very few facade cleaners in this country. We have taken the services from Rap N Kleen / Cape Clean, who use the new techniques of façade cleaning. The company has been with us from the beginning. Their spider men work through the early morning. It is a very difficult job because the mall isn’t designed for easy façade cleaning. Still, we manage to keep our inside glass and external glass dust free and clean. My team doest not like to see dust; if we see a cob web we scream. We don’t want cobwebs in our homes, we don’t want dust in our homes, the why should this mall be any different? And we got contractors who rise to our standards.

Safety & Security

We have an ex-fire chief responsible for security, occupational health & safety, and fire and our evacuation systems. He ensures that we have all the necessary equipment in place. In emergency, we have a small medical suite, a division of Fortis hospital inside the mall to take care of the customers who may fall ill during their visit to the mall. We employ a company CPS, to manage our parking. The problem with parking is that it is incredibly technical, our parking is quiet complicated, we have 1800 parking spaces and we demand higher safety and maintenance standards.

For the disabled person there is a separate entry through our auto tunnel and separate toilets catering to them. We maintain a big delivery area outside which is a very specialized area, quite industrial. So we do have pest management systems for pest free atmosphere in and around the mall, but generally speaking you are dealing with contractors and with Logistics Company to deliver tenants merchandise.

Customer Behaviour

We do market research in our mall, every month we employ a team of interviewers to interview over a thousand people across the shopping centre. In addition we interview nearly 250 people a month on the food court. In the food court we are asking about food quality, about taste and the general appearance. Another 1000 people are interviewed every single month. What we get out of all these gives us a fine indication of how we are running our shopping centre. I talk to my retailer tenants every month, or just about everyday if necessary. We have a very clear mandate as to what standards need to be set. We did not set the standard by talking to customers; instead we went to the five star hotels to understand their standards. I’m afraid to say that there are only one or two malls in India that have a very higher status in terms of cleaning and supervision and we think that we are on that level, we are working very hard to maintain it. We have set this standard and one of the greatest achievements is to hear people saying that the mall looks as if it is just one day old even though this mall has been open for a year.

Generally speaking 80-90% of the time our toilets are in good condition, our floors are in good condition, this mall is a safe place to be, and people want to be here. We have a customer service orientation in the shopping centre; we train our technical staff how to deal with customers. It is a difficult job maintaining a relationship with 1.4 million customers; every one of them has a different objective and a different issue in mind.

We have a couple of interesting objectives; we want our toilets particularly for women to be a place that they are happy with, so we work very hard making sure that our bathrooms work. It is an ongoing issue from the cleanliness point of view. We have people from the neighbourhood coming here to do their daily wash, we are offering free air-conditioning and free toilets; these are the challenges that we face. I’m not daunted by any of that; we are going to provide a superlative service as best as possible to our 1.4 million guests. Now, the standard here has not quite reached 5-star hotel standard. But while a luxury hotel receives a thousand people a day, we get 50-80 thousand people a day. It is like a railway station, but better maintained than any railway station though!.

When we look at our standards, we also need to look at the air quality – is it safe to breathe, is the temperature correct, is the air quality, the coldness or the warmth appropriate. In winter, we have to drop the temperature, in summer we need to enhance the temperature.

Water Management

We buy tanker water, we have a huge STP downstairs and we have three water treatment plants downstairs. We recycle about 80% of our water, we provide water purification to all the water taps, public water taps and public facilities, but we do use ground water for our air- conditioning, and landscaping. For mechanical maintenance, we have three electricians, two plumbers and one handy man in house. The rest is all outsourced Blue Star does the air-conditioning, and Apollo Power Systems Pvt. Ltd provides electrical service. I like the outsource model because contractors become our partners. .