Achieving exemplary cleaning on an education campus

Hartpury University and Hartpury College is now using Multiwash™ from Truvox International

Located in Gloucestershire, Hartpury University and Hartpury College are among the UK’s leading specialist education providers in agriculture, animal, equine, sport and veterinary nursing. The 370-hectare campus is home to over 2,000 university and college-level students studying degrees, A-levels and diplomas, as well as undertaking cutting-edge industry research. 

Adequate cleaning is crucial for the wellbeing of staff, students and visitors and we spoke to Campus Operations Manager Stephen Parker, to ask why Hartpury has recently swapped to using the Multiwash™ floorcare system from Truvox International.

Front of house cleaning provides reassurance

“Hartpury is quite diverse, as we have everything from the world’s largest equine educational facility to cutting-edge sports facilities, so maintaining exceptional cleaning is quite a challenge,” says Stephen Parker. “We have 1,100 students living on site and another 300 off-site. We have 370 hectares of land with about 440 buildings, so Hartpury is like a village and my role is to keep the campus running safely and efficiently. We have around 25 cleaning staff who look after all of the public areas, including classrooms, gyms and all of the academic areas, plus the accommodation side across 45 blocks. In addition, there are industrial requirements, such as road sweeping, and window and gutter cleaning.

“The pandemic had a noticeable impact on cleaning regimes. When we returned from lockdown, the focus was on hygiene and cleanliness and cleaning was all of a sudden thrust into the spotlight. It went from being a behind the scenes out-of-hours activity to a front of house publicly visible process. When I started here about eight years ago, most cleaning was carried out between 4 pm and midnight, and that brought its own issues around staff motivation. Now our cleaning teams start early in the morning and are around during the day. Not only is that easier to manage, but it also gives people a focus that we have cleaning operatives, not fairies! It makes cleaning visible and that absolutely reassures people because they actually see that it’s happening. I’m a great believer in perception, so I see no reason not to continue operating this way.”

Reliability is key to success

Achieving the correct levels of cleaning requires a good and well-trained team working with the right machinery.

“We had been using another rotary floor cleaner and it lacked reliability. The machines were constantly breaking down and needing repairs, and the maintenance contract was expensive, with some machines needing servicing three times a year. Our supplier is Lydney, Gloucestershire-based DJB Supplies, and Managing Director Dave Bruce suggested we try the Multiwash system from Truvox International. We ran one for a year and we were impressed. It was easy to use and consistently reliable. We replaced all the existing machines with Multiwash, and we haven’t looked back. We’re now looking to adopt the new Multiwash Pro.

“The Multiwash machines are so easy to use and maintain and DJB Supplies gave our staff training when they first arrived to ensure the units are always working at their best, showing them how to strip the units down and check them over when required. Multiwash provides an exceptional quality of cleaning across a wide variety of flooring types, but for me the best benefit is that I don’t have to worry about them breaking down all the time like our previous machines.

“I talked about the perception that front of house cleaning provides and another benefit of Truvox’s Multiwash is that it looks extremely professional, matching in with its performance.

Multiwash is effective on all floor types

“The Hartpury campus features many different flooring types, from carpets to hard floors. The gyms have a rubberised floor that can’t be swept, and straightforward vacuuming doesn’t work. Multiwash provides the perfect solution, and we even use it on outside areas such as terraces where it does a great job on cleaning decking.

“From reptiles, llamas, and wallabies, to horses, we have a lot of animals on site, so another benefit of Multiwash is that we don’t always need to use potentially harmful chemicals to achieve the cleaning results we need. We can use water and we often just use plain warm water to clean the carpets.

“On a busy campus, reliability is a key issue to ensure success and the reliability of the Multiwash machines from Truvox International means that I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend them to any other educational establishment. I’d also recommend DJB Supplies for their support in a seamless transition to this new cleaning solution. Moving to Multiwash has given me one less thing to worry about and the machines deliver measurably better results than our previous units.”