Interserve Partnership Gets Centre Of Excellence Status

BICSc has awarded Sussex Estates and Facilities LLP – a partnership between Interserve and the University of Sussex – ‘Centre of Excellence’ status, in recognition of the best practice training it is providing to cleaning operatives.

Sussex Estates and Facilities (SEF) was created in January 2014 when the university appointed Interserve to deliver estates and facilities management services across its entire estate. Since then, the partnership has provided extensive training for 135 members of the cleaning and housekeeping team to achieve their BICSc Bronze level Licence-to-Practice qualification, with further Silver level training now underway for all team members that undertake customer-facing roles.

The training programme at SEF is led by its BICSc champion, Hamid Ghadry, who is currently the only person in the country to have completed the Cleaning Professionals Skills Suite 2.0 (CPSS) qualification through the BICSc.

Hamid Ghadry said: “Implementing a vigorous, structured training programme is not only instrumental in providing a first-class service to the customer, it has had a major positive impact on morale and productivity too.

“At Sussex we have the most updated version of the BICSc qualification, which we are providing to all housekeeping employees. It is very important to us, and to the University, to focus on best practice, and ensuring our employees receive continuous training is a key part of the Centre of Excellence mentality.”

Brian Talbot, Managing Director for Civil Government at Interserve said: “As a BICSc ‘Centre of Excellence’, our partnership with the University of Sussex is now nationally recognised as an example of best practice in the cleaning industry. It’s fantastic to see the hard work of our teams rewarded by a respected industry body, and reflects our ongoing commitment to ensuring the smooth and efficient running of our customers’ organisations.”