Advantages of outsourcing Service provider guarantees bathing fun for all

The Vitusbad in Mönchengladbach has extremely modern facilities. But they need maintenance to ensure hygiene and value retention – as well as bathing pleasure for all visitors. The operator NEW consistently uses outside cleaning services and has tasked a local provider with this demanding work.The Roman Baths in the Rhineland were created in the middle of the second century AD. In addition to their function as public bathing facilities, they were also highly significant in the Romans’ social life as well as ancient spas. Often, doctors practiced their art in separate rooms of, or nearby, these antique installations. The baths had several sections, which over the centuries developed into the modern sports and leisure facilities we know today. What remains is that these public offers still serve as social centers of communication. But the feel-good factor is only given if cleanliness and hygiene are guaranteed. Health aspects are crucial. Named for the town’s patron saintThe mid-sized city of Mönchengladbach has approximately 260,000 inhabitants and is considered to be the economic center of the Lower Rhine. In contrast to widespread opinion, its middle name is not “VFL Borussia-town” (the local athletic club/soccer team) but it is actually associated with an Italian saint who is said to have done miracles at the tender age of seven: “Vitus”. A skull bone of Saint Vitus, which as legend has it was found by Archbishop Gero and his companion Sandrad under a stone on the Abteiberg, led to the founding of the monastery that became the nucleus of the town of Mönchengladbach. Names such as Vitus Street, Vituspark, St. Vitus Bruderschaft, Vitusbrunnen, the Gasthaus St. Vit and last but not least, the Vitusbad testify to the city’s close connection to the patron saint. The Vitusbad is operated by the local utility company NEW, whose economic roots are very strongly tied to the Lower Rhine. With a volume of 60 million euros in order volumes, it is an important contracting entity for the domestic economy and with approximately 2,000 employees, also one of the largest employers. It supplies not only 300,000 customers with electricity, 157,000 with gas and 102,000 with water, but also offers related services. Its regional services include the public transport system as well as the operation of seven indoor and outdoor pools. With its children’s pool (42 square meters), fun-activity pool (262 square meters), multipurpose pool (225 square meters), active fitness area (1,200 square meters) and 50 meter long, eight lane sports pool (1,051 square meters) and gallery with 410 seats, the Vitusbad is one of the largest public facilities of its kind. The recreational center is situated in the middle of the city near the main train station on an area of about 8,000 square meters. After a fire in the former central pool, it was rebuilt in this central location as the Vitusbad and now enjoys the most modern features. Rolf Heithausen is the department head of the NEW public baths department and oversees the entire operations. Most of the cleaning activities have been contracted out to the local services company P & M Jansen GmbH, which is headquartered in Mönchengladbach. Rolf Heithausen has this explanation: “For cleaning the pool, we decided to work with contractors and not only with our own employees because we calculated potential cost advantages of approximately 28 percent. This 28 percent results from cost-savings for personnel and equipment, such as investment in cleaning machines. Personnel costs play a crucial role, because we only pay for the services provided and do not have to have extra staff to fill in for those on sick leave or vacation. Specifications are highly important for professional cleaning and satisfactory results; they must be created and attached to the invitation to tender. The desired level of cleaning quality should be established right from the start, because only then can it be demanded from the service provider and carried out.” Gebhard Klein, operational manager at the Vitusbad, is responsible for the services provided. Convincing cleaning conceptAfter the call for tenders and the examination of all offers, the building service provider P & M Jansen GmbH was awarded the contract for cleaning the object. A key factor for the decision was the company’s combination cleaning concept consisting of manual cleaning of small areas with particular attention to hygiene, and automated cleaning of large surfaces. The Mönchengladbach master workshop has been active in the building services sector for over twenty years, and has two hundred employees. Its service portfolio includes daily office and industrial cleaning, construction and final construction cleaning, glass cleaning, anodized cleaning, carpet and upholstery cleaning, facade cleaning, janitorial services, cleaning and maintenance of outside areas, landscape maintenance, winter service, towel and soap dispenser rentals, dirt trap mat services and sales of cleaning and hygiene products. Michael Jansen, Managing Partner of P & M Jansen GmbH, says: “About ten years ago, we took over floor and glass cleaning after the award of a contract. We developed our offer based on the Sinner’s circle requirements, paying particular attention to using the best mechanical and chemical products. Additionally, we continually look after the motivation and training of our employees. This is the only way to achieve optimal cleaning results under quality and efficiency aspects.” The floor cleaning and agreed ancillary services in the object are accomplished by three teams in the evening, early morning and later morning hours. An additional emergency cleaning team consisting of two employees is available in the morning for about one and a half hours. Counter-rotating brushesWe clean a floor area daily that consists of several areas with different flooring, such as natural stone in the entry area, restaurant and recreational area (approximately 1,000 square meters), fine stoneware tiles in the stairwell (circa 500 square meters), mosaic tiles (approximately 5,000 square meters) and glazed tiles (approximately 1,500 square meters) in the pool area. Of this approximately eight thousand square meters of floor area, eighty percent is mechanically and twenty percent is manually cleaned. The manual cleaning is carried out in several stages, for example in the stairwell or in parts of the leisure area, but also around the existing starting blocks on the athletics pool. Special attention was devoted to the mechanical cleaning of the GS tiles (non-slip ceramic surfaces) in the pool area. A customized 91 BF 72 scrubber dryer machine (from IP Gansow’s Premium Line production line, with three-year guarantee) was configured especially for this application and used instead of the standard two plate brushes of the Gansow-Planeta system. The principle behind this scrubbing brush is derived from the well-known system of the counter-rotating three-disc machines; the brushes are attached in the form of an isosceles triangle and rotated using a complicated belt drive. In contrast to this, the patented Planeta brush works as a passive system: The otherwise relatively fast-wearing drive elements are not required here. The Planeta brush consists essentially of two parts, the master plate and the sub-brushes. The master plate is equipped with the well-known Gansow bayonet ring, which is placed on the drive shaft of the brush motor just like any other plate brush. In this object, two 370-millimeter wide master plates, each with four PES brush heads, were used. Due to the slightly inclined axes on the master plate, the sub-brushes move with about two and a half times the speed, in a counter-rotating motion, to the master plate. This makes the brushes suitable not only for GS tiles but also for other hard floors. The advantages of the Planeta brush over the conventional plate brush are convincing. The patented system achieves significantly better cleaning results due to the much higher speed and the multiple overlapping of the sub-brushes as well as to the higher, more specific brush pressure. The economic benefits can be seen in the full utilization of the working width of the inclined brush and the reduction of the purchase costs of the brushes by around fifteen percent. Due to the reduction of power consumption by the motor brush of up to forty percent, the machine run-time of the battery-operated machine is significantly increased. Alternation of alkaline and acidicCleaning the GS tiles with the counter-rotating mechanical system is a solution that not only meets sanitary requirements and is particularly economical because it uses very little water and cleaning chemicals, it is also very environmentally friendly. This effect is even greater with the Gansow Watermanagement System (GWS) of the scrubber dryer machine used at the Vitusbad. Thanks to sophisticated technical details, the TÜV-tested GWS system cleans at least 50 percent more area per tank than conventional systems and can save at least fifty percent of the water and cleaning chemicals normally needed. This reduces not only the investment costs of the machine for the object by about twenty percent, according to the manufacturer, but also saves on the costs of chemicals by up to fifty percent. The cleaning chemicals used (Dr. Nüsken Chemie) work prophylactically via the five-to-two system so that lime scale, particularly in seams, doesn’t even have a chance to develop. The XLF series, which has been on the market for five years, consists of surfactant-free cleaning products. The lack of tensides achieves a slip-resistant effect. The five-to-two system describes a combination of the cleaning agent Alkapur XLF for “five alkaline days” and the cleaning agent Phantax XLF for “two acidic days”. Here, the alkaline intensive and basic cleaner removes organic stains in the pool environments; the acidic intensive and basic cleaner eliminates mineral dirt and deposits on the pool entry and in the locker rooms. The combination of the machine with the configured Planeta system and the chemicals used guarantees high-quality cleaning results, also in regard to slip-proofing and other safety aspects. A self-regulating mechanical system (SLS) guarantees that the sub-brushes of the system lie perfectly on the floor. The high contact frequency of the many individual bristles with the floor, together with the counter-rotating brushes separates dirt from the floor – with the help of the cleaning chemicals – and allows the complete intake of dirty solution into the machine. The stainless steel suction foot is designed so that even at high speeds, its residue intake is nearly perfect. This prevents slipping accidents and thus allows the use of the machine even during opening hours. The cleaning agent only remains on the floor for less than a second before it is vacuumed up again. This eliminates the risk of cleaning solution getting into seams or fine cracks and causing long-term damage, or accelerating damage to surfaces that were previously in bad repair. This guarantees value conservation, e.g. by postponement of necessary basic cleaning. During the selection of the cleaning machines, not only the economic key figures like tank volume and working width were important. The choice of the right scrubbing tools was also decisive. As practically a “custom-tailored suit”, the scrubber dryer machine with Planeta system in combination with cleaning chemicals guarantees the necessary cleaning quality under economic and efficiency aspects. The cleanliness and hygiene achieved creates a feel-good atmosphere with bathing fun for all visitors, big and small. Wolf-Rüdiger Schwarz | peter.hartmann@holzmann-medien.de Further object-specific information and videos of the machines are available under www.dialog-portal.info/gansow18.

Advantages of outsourcing Service provider guarantees bathing fun for all

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