India today is experiencing a retail revolution, with malls and shopping centres mushrooming by the score in II Tier and III Tier cities also. While upcoming malls are competing in terms of size and formats to take the lead, strong mall management techniques are of paramount importance to ensure strong footfalls. The demand for superior shopping experience goes parallel with superior mall management which is inclusive of appropriate maintenance of retail space using the latest cleaning technology, trained manpower, standard operating practices and schedules.

Mall management is a new industry, says Jonathan Yach, CEO of Mantri Square, Bangalore. It calls for new skills and there is a major problem of such skills in this country. Having spent 20 years in over 200 shopping centres in South Africa, Jonathan says, “India is facing what South Africa did 20 years ago. We had exactly the same problems. We had contractors who didn’t do the sort of work they needed to do and didn’t quite understand the enormity of servicing a mall”. Even 20 years ago, there were shopping centres and very few qualified people were available to run them.

“Skill deficit in the contracting business and in mall management environment is largely being felt at most malls. In fact, mall maintenance is a joint effort of the facility operations and the contractors, says Manoj Agarwal, Associate Vice President-Operations, Inorbit Malls India Pvt. Ltd, who has 22 years of diverse experience in hotel & mall operations and management. Contractors have to be trained to suit the requirement of maintenance in keeping with the SOPs. There should be training schools for the in house staff and “we need to encourage our contractors to set up training schools for their janitors”, adds Jonathan.

People engaged in mall management and mall service contractors are different sets of people with different skills. Most Indian developers think that shopping centres are the same as SEZ or office park, but its not, says Jonathan. The hotel and hospitality industry have indicated and set standard operating procedures in respect to quality and finish, which most SEZs, offices and industrial businesses don’t bother about.

Malls draw a lot from the hospitality sector. “A lot of our contractors are from hospitality sector but we now have to learn to specialise by engaging the right people and train them. Training is a must, since it’s a long journey together,” adds Jonathan.

A mall, by virtue of the business, is such that there is always high foot traffic at any given time. They need to be cleaned, secured and managed in the hands of skilled people, as over a million people a month visit some of the larger malls like Ambience Mall, Gurgaon. “People have a tendency to just litter the place,” says Vijay Aima, Vice President-Operations, Ambience Mall. Hence, it is a challenge to keep the place up and shining all the time.

In fact, people should have a thorough knowledge of what they are doing. There is a lot of research that goes into the operations of the mall. There has to be a personal touch, you need to be coordinated with by the team as much as you can. These factors have helped in making Ambience the ‘success’ that it is,” Raj Singh Gehlot, Chairman & Managing Director, Ambience Group of Companies.

Many malls are yet to adopt mechanised cleaning or even practise set SOPs to maintain cleanliness.

When it comes to safety and security, a different set of skilled team is required to maintain the mall. All sorts of people visit a mall. “We have women clad in saree coming from the city and also from the rural areas. There have been incidences of saree-clad women, especially those coming from the rural area, tripping while getting on to the escalators. Here again we have the facility heads to help out,” says Jonathan.

At a time when India is turning to be an international retail destination, with giants like Walmart looking at opportunities, unavailability of professional support services could act detrimental. Given the limitations, malls like Mantri Square, Inorbit and Ambience are setting standards by engaging high end equipment and tools for cleaning amid challenges.

In the following pages, Editor-in-Chief  Mangala Chandran, Managing Editor Mohana M and Correspondent Renu Ramakrishnan spoke at length to the operations in charge at these malls on the challenges they face in maintaining the malls.

Design Challenges

” If the mall is well designed and if the housekeeping staff and the products that they use are the best, then the cleaning systems become sustainable and more effective,” says Jonathan Yach, CEO, Mantri Square, Bangalore.

A well designed mall with consistent best practices can be kept clean. It is very difficult to clean something that cannot be cleaned. If the mall has a beautiful ceramic or marble floor and the walls are painted; the paint should be such that it can be washed. These are very important design elements to be considered if the mall is to be kept clean.

On a monthly basis 1.4 million customers visit the shopping centre. If it rains or, when there is an important cricket match on in the city, less people tend to visit the mall. Whatever the inflow of people, the mall has to be managed. The message here is ‘design a mall well and fit it with robust equipment and finishes’. This starts with employing an architect who understands mall interiors. Often architects make mistakes from a shopping centre point of view. They do not understand the rotation, circulation, vertical reticulation, the impact on the people within the shopping centre and most importantly they don’t understand how big and wide corridors need to be and how many toilets there should be in a mall. The Mantri Square Shopping Mall has been designed to accommodate nearly a 100,000 people a day! We have handled a 120,000 people a day in our early days. We know that this mall can quite comfortably handle 120,000 shoppers.

The interiors within should be manageable. Like a table mustn’t be made out of plastic, it must be made of a hard wearing material like steel or fresh stone. Similarly, the floor has to be a hard ceramic or marble and granite. It has to be cleanable and cannot be just architecturally beautiful. In other words, if plastic is used, it will break and require frequent replacement. Invest in the best up front; get it well designed and as a result it will save a lot of money going forth. A lot of developers fall into the trap of using cheap and poor products in the design & execution and one gets stuck with problems for years thereafter.

The interiors should be such that one must be able to be clean it regularly with soap and water. The finishes should be universal – of easily cleanable and maintainable structure and form. This mall is spotlessly clean and floors shining in the morning. It is constantly wiped and kept clean during the day as people walk in and out. By the end of the evening, floors tend to lose a bit of its lustre, which is restored the next day with a quick wipe, clean and buff. The specialized deep cleaning activity done through the night from 11pm to 7am restores it back. It is important that when one walks into the mall, the floors shine.

The design should keep every end in mind. For example, how are we going to keep clean if there are no plug points in the common areas or drainage holes in the bathrooms? Even so, the bathrooms design should such that they are negatively charged from an air- conditioning point of view. In the sense, the air-conditioning flows from the mall into the toilet not the other way round. One does not want the horrible urine smell from the bathroom to come into the mall.

From the toilet point of view, one has to make sure that there are enough hooks and stands, toilet paper rolls stands, hand wash station, hand wash towel stand, enough basins, enough taps, enough cubicles in the ladies bathroom, handicapped toilets, family toilets, and so on. All these things are required in order to run a modern toilet in a modern facility.

When you design a mall it’s a golden opportunity to implement sustainable management systems. Mantri Square was designed five years ago and built three years ago. It took three years to open this mall, the systems were not as sustainability oriented as they could have been. We have made fundamental changes here, we have dropped the cost of electricity and our consumption, and we have enhanced our recycling. But the point is we could be doing better had we designed it better at the beginning. We have to design the mall with sustainable featured factored in, but in India we have infrastructure problems. We have implemented certain sustainability features, but Mantri Square is not green rated building; it was never designed to be a green rated building. From a green rating point of view there are all sorts of issues like the structure of the building and the air-conditioning.

However we do have sustainability elements: We recycle waste; we proud to say the only mall in Bangalore that have an organic waste converter is Mantri square. We recycle and re uses our water. We have three tons of garbage a day, one of that is through the organic waste converter, two tons is hard garbage which is sorted offsite. Every single day, one truck takes the garbage offsite. We have a very low exposure to garbage because it’s beautifully sorted in accordance with the norms. Our garbage and water is taken care of and we even use wind energy to supplement the electrical consumption this mall.

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. .

Mangala Chandran

Managing Challenges

Managing a mall of the magnitude of Ambience gives immense satisfaction,” says Vijay Aima, Vice-President, Operations, Ambience Mall, Gurgaon.

What are the challenges faced in mall maintenance?

Mall management is a new concept in India. People from all over, even from cities like Chandigarh flocked in when the first mall opened up in Gurgaon. The coming up of Ambience as the biggest mall – an atrium and almost a kilometre of mall area with different shops all under one roof – was something people had not visualised in India before. There is a minimum benchmark – be it stores, housekeeping, security, the entire facility management or overall upkeep that has to be maintained. A lot of planning goes into this so that a quality product, along with quality service is provided to the customer. There are challenges that go with having footfalls as high as 100,000 people over weekends, which involve cleaning round the clock. The big challenges and stress points are in the food court and the washrooms which require specialised maintenance. We use products from Diversey and others – R3 for glass cleaning, R4 for polishing and R5 for spraying. The marble floors too demand special processes and chemicals. People with the expertise and aptitude are involved in the cleaning process.

What cleaning equipment are being used?

We have the ride-on machines which are used inside the malls. We are planning to invest in bigger models of ride-on sweepers and scrubbers with a capacity to clean up to 10,000sqm per hour. These machines brush and suck the dust as well, so they leave the place clean, especially outside and the basements. We also use high end vacuum cleaners with special brushes, special chemicals and scrubs for cleaning escalators. The Articulating boom machine has been procured involving an investment of `40 lakhs, for cleaning at heights. The ‘Z’ bend of the lift enables better cleaning. At present we are using a US-made straight vertical machine that goes up 40 feet, used just for glass cleaning purposes. Besides maintaining the mall, maintaining these machines in the hands of trained operators is equally important.

We do not use any chemicals that are not good for the environment. Earlier, a lot of water being used for surface cleaning in the basements and outside has now reduced. Our intent to invest on these machines is not just to increase the level of cleanliness, but also to pay attention to the environment.

What about your washrooms?

There are totally 83 washrooms (32 gents, 31 ladies and 20 handicapped) in the mall. The water that is used in the washrooms, except for hand washing, is recycled water. We have treatment plants put up for this. There are quality compliance checks and other specific checks to determine the appropriate level of hardness in the recycled water. This helps us conserve and save water. Air purifiers, fresheners and exhaust systems are all in place. We have customers of different temperaments and different backgrounds and it is one of the biggest challenges in the malls to keep the washrooms clean.

You may be outsourcing most of your facility management requirements?

For the planning part, we use the consultants, be it the integrated facility management or soft service or just security. As it is, we have four vendors in housekeeping alone. Sheel Real Estate and Facility Management Co, Jupiter Hospitality Services(P) Ltd, Corporate/Sachan Security and Varsed Services (P) Ltd.One vendor is only for cleaning glass façade from the outside. Another takes care of the periphery/perimeter outside of the mall. Two vendors are engaged in cleaning with in the mall.

Cleaning is divided into two segments. When we select a company, it is not just for its capabilities, but we also look at the way workers are groomed. It’s not only that they have to be skilled in cleaning; they also have to look presentable as they are moving about in the mall. Our internal teams of executives, managers, specialists and supervisors monitor all the activities. The janitors outsourced are not on our rolls but they work hand-in-glove with our staff as a team. Jones Lang LaSalle, the mall consultant for Ambience, does critical analysis. They also audit and monitor the schedules.

You have levels of supervision internally?

Like any organisational structure, we have different levels of hierarchy – houseboy, supervisor, executive, senior executive, assistant manager, manager, chief manager, DGM and GM. Each level is well structured so that all the operations are carried out and the duties are well defined. Each person knows what is expected from him or her. We value our employees because they are a precious resource, who keep the place up and shining.

As a policy, the welfare and well being of employees is always a priority. For example, when we ask the boys to clean the facades, we insist on necessary certifications of the equipment we procure. Every day as the boys come down, the rope and the harness he wears are inspected. The safety of the boys is not compromised come what may. Extreme care is taken to ensure the safety of the staff working.

Can you throw some light on the SOPs followed and the SLAs?

All the details of operations are put down in the SOPs. For example, what a person does from the time he gets on to the job, when and how he does it, are all well defined. Appropriate training for using and maintaining equipment is given to operators. For example, the mechanical sweepers, we define the number of times the machine should go over a spot or the number of times it has to go around the outer area every day. How often glasses are to be cleaned, how they have to be cleaned, what tools are needed and the right concentration of chemicals to be mixed are all specified and scheduled. They just can’t take up a cloth and start cleaning. So it is the planning, the procurement of material, the mixing of chemicals, getting the right people, training and keeping them motivated that has to be taken into care.

The SOPSs are based on the professional knowledge and skills that have a scientific have been put together by experts based on top hotels benchmarks. The SOPs form the basis of the SLAs which are subsequently determined with the different service providers to maintain and sustain those standards. We also have our teams who act as auditors and carry out periodic checks to oversee the implementation of the SOPs in totality. As an organisation, we go to a great level and invest heavily in maintaining those standards.

For example, deep cleaning is defined in the SOPs. One type of deep cleaning is done every night. The same duties that were done as spring cleaning during the day, is done thoroughly at night. During the night, the whole floor is scrubbed in a different manner. Then there is a periodic level of deep cleaning. There are certain activities for certain areas such as glass in the high rise buildings or in the atrium that require thorough cleaning once a week, or a fortnight or in a month.

After all this planning, do you still see any gaps?

You see, this is an activity that never ends. Our team keeps it spotless and then you can have a child who comes along and drops an ice cream on the floor. It may take seconds or even minutes before someone even notices that an ice cream has fallen down on the floor, and it may be another minute or so before a houseboy comes to clean it. We try and minimise this delay by defining how frequently a houseboy will be traversing that area. It may take a few minutes, but it is all planned and will not take a long time. On Saturdays and Sundays it becomes a task to keep the floor area clean.

There are about 350 to 400 people employed in the three different shifts, though it is not uniformly distributed between shifts. The night shift where deep cleaning is done has fewer workers. Morning shift has the highest number of workers, as they have to get the mall ready for the day. In the afternoon and evening shifts workers sustain the level of cleanliness. The numbers remain the same and all the seven days the standards of cleanliness and housekeeping are the same. We are in the service industry where the customer comes first. The customer may not even know that he is doing something that he shouldn’t be doing. Other than making a request, we really don’t do much. But from what I see, the people who come here are educated, so our challenges on that account are not that bad. But we have thousands of children visiting and we have our own built in mechanisms to take care of that. It is a continuous process and there will be challenges.

This mall prides itself on the commitment that the management has defined. Our Chairman cum Managing Director, Raj Singh Gehlot, and Director, Dayanand Singh Gehlot had a dream of setting up this mall. It is nice to see hundred thousand people one Sunday and again on the next Sunday.

Renu Ramakrishnan

Cleaning up Challenges

In comparison to a hotel or a bank which experiences considerable footfalls, the people visiting a mall are more than double. This in itself is a big challenge, says Manoj Agarwal, Associate Vice-President Operations.

A major advantage in a mall vis-à-vis other places is that there is not much of soft flooring. The use of carpet or linoleum being restricted, maintenance wise it helps. However, traffic as high as 70,000 to 80,000 on certain peak days and a minimum of 15,000 to 18,000 on any given day, calls for proper planning.

“We work on a 24-hour cleaning schedule where the bulk of the cleaning happens during the night,” says Agarwal. Large areas, mass cleaning, wet scrubbing, buffing, polishing or deep cleaning are taken up at night when the mall is closed. The daily, weekly and monthly cleaning schedules focus on the common areas, public areas, parking, horticulture areas, staircases, lift landing, elevators & escalators, service areas, internet café, back parking, baby care rooms, food court, smoking areas, staff areas used for dining and changing and washrooms for customers and staff. The scope of housekeeping is restricted to these areas and not individual outlets within the mall. Cleaning at a height and façade cleaning are more done on a monthly or quarterly basis. Similarly, the staircase, as a general practice, is dusted and mopped on day to day basis but a mechanised deep cleaning is done once a week.

Given the vast area to be cleaned, automation is the only option and Inorbit mall has outsourced cleaning to Radiant Hospitality Services. Agarwal says, “While selecting the housekeeping service provider, we look at those who are particularly conscious of the volume and the standards involved. Housekeeping unfortunately is an area where even though we do the maximum, it is still a bit less. Hence, one has to be at it all the time. We took some time before finalising Radiant and in the last five years, both of us have evolved in our relationship.”

Radiant is also providing mechanised cleaning services to five other Inorbit malls across India, while the other outlets across India are being serviced by different vendors. “From the company’s perspective it would be very good to have a single vendor at all our operations, but fortunately or unfortunately the vendor may not be strong enough at all places. Luckily, in the case of Radiant, the malls are mostly in the cities. But if the mall is not in the city, there would be challenges – how do you get the vendor and what kind of workers will be available in that locality? Hence, it is better to tie up with a vendor based on the geography and on the strength of performance. However, having a single vendor narrows down dealings to one person, enables to maintain common standards, uniform rates… in short, the package is similar at all places.”

At Inorbit Malad, the first shift where the opening cleaning involves cleaning of customer areas like the washrooms, main floors, escalators, glass cleaning, etc., is handled by around 15-16 workers. In the second shift, it is the general up keep and in the night it is deep cleaning which includes the food court area, escalators, back offices, etc. Around 85 workers are deployed by Radiant, who provides trained manpower, equipment and the consumables as per the specified brand and quality at Inorbit. “We have a good service level agreement with Radiant which specifies all the deliverables. Certain things like wet wipes, tissue paper, soap solution or hand wash solution, we buy at our end.”

To monitor the adherence to SLAs and SOPs, auditing on a fortnightly basis is conducted and the report is then shared with the vendor. “We have third party audits, internal audits and random audits, where I or my team visits any centre to notice any gap. The feedback, if there is something wrong, helps.”

The third party audits help keep track and the pointers are built into the SLA. If the performance levels get below a certain score, the vendor would be liable for deductions and if they get above a certain score they get incentives. The operations team at Inorbit consists of an assistant manager and executive who directly coordinate with the vendor on deployment of staff and the day to day routine.

Even though housekeeping staff is on the rounds, an internal check of the cleaning levels can be maintained through this process. “These audits / checks are first monitored at the central level by the operations manager, reported to the unit head and from the unit level it comes to me at the corporate level of operations. The tracked records are reported in the monthly report which goes to the board. If the scores are consistently bad, then we would have to give an explanation.”

Inorbit has the PDA (personal digital assistant) based operational audit software, wherein the executive in operations updates the designated schedules at the start of the shift each day and this gets loaded to the server whereby the report reaches the concerned. This does away with the need to write or maintain records, etc. Hence, there is a continuous check on the operations.

In many cases housekeeping service providers have raised objections to the deduction pattern of the client. Even if one absence is reported and replacement not provided, deductions are made. “Deployment has to be in terms of the SLAs. Between the operations team of the mall and the vendor concerned, the number of workers is based on our need.” Being an annual contract, if there is anything which needs to be reviewed in terms of either the numbers or the working pattern, it is still possible to make a change. “For example, at one stage we did try to see if we can do without the night shift, but then we found that it is not possible.” Deployment of workers also depends on the type of flooring, the footfall projections, the kind of traffic expected, business projections for the year and food court usage. These changes can be reviewed on an annual basis.

Cleaning is an ongoing and joint process in a mall. It is very important to have multiple discussions and interactions with the vendor. The vendor must always be an integral part of the team rather than being considered as just a vendor who is outsourced. As the executives maintain a constant visual check on anything which is soiled or lying around or any stain or spill, they are able to get it cleaned right away. This is essential because in a mall when there is a crowd of eight to 10,000, it is not possible to cordon off an area for cleaning. Hence a ride on a mopping machine running along with the crowd is common sight at a mall.

“At one time, it was noticed that the washbasin counters were always wet. Generally, people while washing, tend to splash water on the face leading to spillage. We put a specific team in the washrooms to constantly clean the wet counter and now we follow the same as a standard.” Even during the epidemic scare it was a joint effort with the vendor in spreading awareness, putting up posters and using the right chemicals. “This model of client-vendor relationship is working well for us. Instead of employing or having in house housekeeping team, a strong supervisory team to control, monitor and direct the outsourced housekeeping staff works very well.

“Another interesting development that we are seeing off late is that women at the ground level are much more than men. This is because we find that ladies have an eye for detail, an eight to nine hour shift is much preferred by them and the job is not much different from what they do at home.”

Initially, when these workers join they are not sure of what they are getting into. But when they realise that there are equipment which make cleaning comfortable and they are treated as fellow humans and not as an outcast, they work with a sense of pride. Similarly, when they realise that gloves or boots or uniforms have been designed for their benefit and protection, they easily accept and wear them.

Training is important when it comes to getting workers to deliver the SLA. “Some of the training on the etiquette, customer service, responses or fire fighting, response to emergency and dealing with customer issues are conducted regularly from our end, over and above what the vendor does. Because of our close interaction and observation, anyone who needs specific training can be identified. We also ensure that our executives on the shift attend the daily morning deployment and briefing session. Above all, they have to set benchmarks and make sure that whether it is hygiene or housekeeping or any standard, we have a high bar and have to always try to reach that.”

An area-wise checklist right from the washroom to the common areas is a general standard referred to by the supervisor. The schedules of weekly, monthly and deep.

Cleaning are based on the usage. Around 26 equipment are deployed at Inorbit, including Alano ride on sweepers mainly for the parking area and is used only when there is traffic; Fiorentini ride on auto scrubber; Fiorentini ride on scooty machine for dry vacuum; Taski Swingo battery operated auto scrubber machines for food courts; Fiorentini escalator steam cleaners; dry vacuum machine and Taski chemicals for washrooms.

Façade access systems

One of the major aspects in specialized cleaning services in any building is the façade maintenance. The architectural design of malls today are much complex and require proper access systems to enable maintenance. Cradle Runways has provided the world’s tallest free standing Aluminium Rolling Tower with a working height of 26mt for internal access and maintenance at the South City Mall in Kolkata. For external access, Eye Bolts have been installed.

At the upcoming Lulu Mall in Kochi with large uniquely shaped atriums, Cradle Runways has provided a combination of Eye Bolts & a Reach & Wash System for external access. Internally, the glazing will be accessed with a 26mt Aerial Work Platform.

Aerial Platforms are already in use at the Prestige Forum in Bangalore. The 23mt Aerial Platform is being used for both internal & external access.