Providing Buller High School with a full range of cleaning services to keep school cleaned to high standard

Key Issues

• A team with flex

An agile, long-term partner to meet the 24/7 demands of the school; a supplier that could be flexible to manage the school’s diverse cleaning needs around the dynamic nature of the school.

• Exceptional quality, full-service provider

A provider with the ability to maintain the highest levels of cleanliness was paramount, as was an ability to ensure the job is done on time, every time.

• Expert team

They needed ‘the best in the business’, a partner that could provide regular training in changing environment for its staff and provide exceptional cleaning standards.

The OCS Solution

The OCS team at Buller High School provides a full range of cleaning services to make sure the school is cleaned to a high standard. This includes day-to-day general and touchpoint cleaning as well as an annual strip and seal for hard floors, periodic cleaning of windows and cleaning and buffing of other floor surfaces.

Cleanliness is hugely important to the school, and it prides itself on being a spotless, safe, and hygienic environment for its students to learn in.

It was during a recent extreme weather event that OCS’ expertise and dedication to the school came to the fore. In mid-2021, Westport suffered extreme flooding which saw devastating damage in the town, including the school. With damage to some of the school’s buildings, OCS was one of the first on the scene to help with the clean-up.

With mud and water damage affecting parts of the school, the OCS team had to act quickly to stop any permanent damage from occurring. This involved removing mud and water from inside the building, removing flooring, hosing down, cleaning, sanitising surfaces and eliminating odour.

Despite also dealing with their own personal situations due by the floods, it was within a matter of days that the OCS team members had the school fully operational for it to re-open.

“The school highly valued the fact that we could respond so quickly and that we valued them as a client to understand the needs to get the school back to some normality, quickly,” says Angela Brooking, OCS’ West Coast Operations Manager.

As part of the feedback from the school’s recent CleanSweep Awards entry, the judge stated that they were very impressed with the site during their visit.

“You could eat your dinner off the floors. It was spotless on the day of the visit and by all accounts, this high level of service is the norm on this site. The windows sparkled.

I have rarely seen floors of this high a standard in any building especially one that has challenges like this. The windows were spotless and full credit goes to the site manager and her passion for the role,” said the judge.

Buller High School and OCS have a successful, long-term relationship. The success that we jointly achieve is based on a model of open communication, integrity, and professionalism. Strong leadership from Buller High School and the OCS management team facilitates consistency and reliability to deliver high standards in all aspects of our cleaning programme. Our success story is reflected in a beautifully clean environment, which both parties take great pride in

Corrina Batt
Business Manager, Buller High School

Partnership made personal

A key factor in the success of the relationship between OCS and the school has been the building of trust. OCS’s ability to handle the 24/7 variety that comes with a school contract and its consistently high cleaning standards have helped to cement the relationship. The school has high trust that it has a partner that will go the extra mile time after time.

The school’s contract manager makes herself readily available for any requests the school has and also has regular meetings with them to make sure cleaning is completed to a consistently high standard.

“Reacting to any issues as soon as they arise and rectifying the problem quickly is really important to us maintaining the positive and productive relationship that we have with the school. It’s our proactiveness and ability to get on to things quickly that the school really appreciated,” says Angela.

This was also backed up by the CleanSweep Judge.

“The level of service, passion for the job and commitment observed at the school by this OCS team was inspiring. This team have mastered the ability to adapt at a moment’s notice.

The cleaning standards I observed on the day of my evaluation were of an extremely high level.”

Keeping up to speed

OCS places huge importance on the value of training and the team at Buller High School look forward to regular training sessions – of particular importance when dealing with the fluctuating pandemic situation.

With regular toolbox meetings and online and onsite training, staff are given the knowledge to excel and have confidence in their role. They also receive specialist, hands-on training four times per year to ensure they are a high performing team with exacting standards.

Feedback from the judge of the Clean Sweep Awards included that the site manager’s approach to getting it done with her sleeves rolled up was inspiring.

“Their client is well aware and appreciative of this caring can-do approach. OCS have strong frameworks in place to ensure a great service is delivered with its corporate systems and protocols. Keep up the great work, the drive to visit this site was worth it.”