Dizzying heights of success: Most people can recall the image of a man cleaning a window 34 floors above the ground, without a harness, at the Jumeirah Beach Towers in Dubai this year. But, for those who work on high rise buildings, it is no joking matter when the safety of their employees is paramount. Earlier this year, Swiss company Serbot AG launched a robotic cleaning system for windows and façades on high-rise buildings in Dubai. But, for professional rope technicians there will always be a demand for work because machines are susceptible to breakdowns. ‘I have not actually seen one of the robots in action yet,” said Billy Harkin managing director of Megarme an inspection, repair and maintenance provider that specialises in working at high or difficult accessible locations.
“I do think there is a market for such a product given the amount of glass facades in the region, as long as it was a versatile and reliable piece of kit. I don’t, however, see it as a threat to the industry but more as something that will compliment other such services. “It has been our experience that equipment (BMU’s/access systems/machinery/technical equipment/etc.) is usually susceptible to breakdowns and malfunctions in this type of environment so there will always be a need for ever reliable people services.” The real test for companies that specialise in high-rise building environments is to make sure staff are fully trained to a recognised standard of health and safety procedures to minimise any risk of accident or danger to themselves.
Companies follow a set of guidelines by IRATA (Industrial Rope Access Trade Association), which produce qualifications for trained rope access technicians and access specialists. It is a global qualification with a set of protocols to execute work projects safely including rescue operations. “You need to be prepared for all possible outcomes in this industry especially working in this type of climate where people get dehydrated or tired quickly,” said Robin Gibbs, head of trading divisions for Al Serkal Group. “You need to have a rescue plan in place whereby you get people down according to the IRATA code of practice. Once you have those guidelines in place, you can do anything involving work at height including maintenance, cladding, welding, cleaning, drilling, or painting and you can get in and out safely to do the job.”
The Al Serkal Group is a service provider to the FM industry, handling anything from mechanical engineering, to electrical, plumbing and solutions at height. It recently won a contract to clean high level areas of the glass and steelwork of the Meydan Grandstand which has a giant glass bubble building. Gibbs said the work is a time sensitive project because it has to be completed before the racing season kicks off on November 11 this year. “At any one time, we have four or five projects on the go,” said Ed Buckley, a Level 3 operations manager for SKY Riders, which is part of the Al Serkal Group. “Currently, it is the Meydan Grandstand, glazing and safety netting works at the Presidential Terminal at Abu Dhabi International Airport, a full building office clean at the John Buck International Al Mamoura buildings in Abu Dhabi, and on-going work at Dubai Mall, which includes a cleaning service for the food and beverage outlets, where one man will drop down into a 3ft wide vertical duct to clean it inside.”
Buckley said each job has to go through a risk assessment prior to each project to implement a tried and tested safe method of work. “We are talking about projects that are 200m in the air. Each building has its own personality and each job requires its own specification, depending on the client,” he added. “One of our jobs is to make the frame, attach the foliage and hang the lighting banner on the 90ft Christmas tree in Dubai Mall. It’s quite a detailed job but great fun. The most high profile work we have done is cleaning and painting the steelworks inside the seven star Burj Al Arab. It’s a nice sense of achievement to be able to go home and say ‘I did that’,” said Buckley.
Rope access training: Sky Riders currently employ 30 members of staff and each person works on industrial ropes with two points of attachment. It has an affiliation with a training school called Traks Pro which teaches workers how to set the ropes up and how to get each other out in case of an emergency. Level 1 is the entry level for all rope access technicians, Level 2 are experienced technicians who have more training to do with health and safety, knowledge on how to put up the correct rigging and the skills to exercise more technical rescue plans. Level 3 is a senior team leader in-charge of a site and is able to inspect equipment and make site operational decisions. It takes three years to become a supervisor but to start as a novice technician includes a six day intensive training course followed by a day’s assessment exam on site.
WEARING THE PANTS: Whitehorse-born, Tsawwassen-raised Tressa Wood expects to see Wallace-tartan-wearing men climb ladders to clean windows and roof gutters all over North America. She's the CEO of Men In Kilts,which Nicholas Brand and Brent Hohlweg started in 2002 and developed into a 15-staff operation by 2009. The Richmond Chamber of Commerce named them young entrepreneurs of the year. Now, their entrepreneurial eyes are set on the Richmonds in Ontario, Quebec, California, India, Kentucky, Maine, Texas, Virginia, and elsewhere. Enter Wood, who joined Brian Scudamore's 1-800-GOT-JUNK? firm as operations director in 2002 and left as vice-president of operations in 2008. In that time, she said, revenues rose from $10 million to $130 million via some 330 franchisees, many of which she signed.
With 35 staff today, Men In Kilts wants fewer franchisees but with larger operating areas in the one-million-residents range. Wood expects to contract five in 2011 (including Seattle and San Francisco), perhaps 15 in 2012, and a metro-market total between 100 and 150. She's close to two likely early signers. Rob Watson is a 1-800-GOT-JUNK? franchisee, and Nicholas Wood is her four-year husband and father of the eight-month-old and two-year-old children she had while working full-time and taking seven-day maternity leaves.
As for how junk-hauling and window-and-gutter-cleaning differ: "At 1-800-GOT-JUNK? we were pioneering an industry, and had to educate people about the service," Wood said. "This is a very established industry, but not with national franchises or brands." It is also a "fun" industry she said, chuckling about the kilted chap who returned from a particularly windy shift to say: "I'm finally getting the attention I deserve."
Regarding the attention her firm deserves: "You need a more entrepreneurial type of franchisee in the early days, when you are building, testing and refining your systems. They are the types who'll give the feedback you need." They'll also give $60,000 to $120,000 as an entry fee to don their own kilts, "which cost under $100," said Wood, comfortably business-like in tailored slacks.
Marathon man Mike Mackay's weighty challenge: A Montrose man is gearing up to take part in next year's Edinburgh marathon to raise money for two local cerebral palsy sufferers — but not before he loses seven stone. Window cleaner Mike Mackay (34) was inspired to take on the mammoth challenge after hearing of the plight of Rhys Allan (3) and Riley Murray (5). Both boys suffer from severe forms of the disease and Riley's parents need to raise £18,000 to buy him a specially adapted wheelchair. Rhys — who has just returned from a trip to Germany where he received stem cell treatment in a bid to improve his condition — needs physiotherapy and treatment which will cost £9000 per year. Mike said, "Doing a marathon is hard enough — but especially when you have to lose seven stones. "I'm getting weighed weekly and I'm on a high protein, low carbohydrate diet so hopefully that will help." He added, "I'm hoping people will be generous as it's a great cause."
Antón García Abril is 41, but he hasn’t lost his childlike impulse to experiment. Mr. García, an architect, calls it his “madman’s urge to find out” if something can be done. That’s how he explains the urge that drove him to design a house made from pieces of prefabricated infrastructure. The concrete components are affordable and “structurally efficient” and can be assembled quickly, Mr. García said. So quickly, in fact, that the major construction on the two-story house he shares with Débora Mesa, 29, an architect at his Madrid firm, Ensamble Studio, was completed in just seven days, in the summer of 2008. Using a crane, Mr. García’s team assembled the oversize pieces — three giant concrete I-beams originally intended to be part of a bridge, two concrete segments of an irrigation canal and two steel girders — all of which were anchored by a 20-ton granite slab. Once the prefabricated parts were set in place, the structure was enclosed using 35 thick, rectangular pieces of glass. Interior walls, of which there are few, were built using plasterboard.
The remaining work, mostly wiring and plumbing, was finished a few weeks later. The design work, however, took nearly two years to complete. Part of the difficulty was making sure the massive prefabricated parts could be adequately balanced, a painstaking process that involved multiple trials using scaled-down pieces, Mr. García said. The 2,190-square-foot home was built for about 250,000 euros (about $350,000) on a lot Mr. García bought a decade ago (for 200,000 euros, or $280,000) in a gated community here, about 20 miles from Madrid. It has two swimming pools: one in the patio area on the ground floor and the other in a length of irrigation canal cantilevered dramatically from the second floor. Most of the walls are glass, so there is ample natural light, and the couple decided not to install overhead fixtures. There are floor lamps, but only a few. Still, as Ms. Mesa noted: “What we save in electricity, we are paying in window cleaner.”
Junior News and Mail: "The Giraffe and the Pelly and Me" by Roald Dahl and illustrated by Quentin Blake. Another classic from the genius children’s author that is Roald Dahl, The Giraffe and the Pelly and Me is a humorous story complemented by Quentin Blake’s iconic illustrations. Take a giraffe with a magic neck, a pelican with a retractable beak and a very agile monkey, and what do you have? The world’s finest Ladderless Window-Cleaning Company, of course! Together with their friend Billy, they have lots of adventures and come up against the Cobra: the cleverest and most dangerous cat-burglar in the world, meet the richest man in England, and open The Grubber – the most wonderful sweet shop. Published by Jonathan Cape, it’s priced around £7.99 in hardback with 10% of royalties going towards Roald Dahl’s Marvellous Children’s Charity.
Osceola family regroups after house fire: "It's all real patchy," Steve DeGroote says, trying to recall how he dropped his wife out of a second-story window. There were no words. Only actions. He couldn't speak, his lungs stinging with smoke. Moments later, they watched flames eat their family's home. "I feel fine," DeGroote, 42, said Monday. Never mind that he coughed up black stuff for a couple of days. Or that his beard and the small, reddish curls in his hair are burned off. Or that minor burns trace his right hand, wrist, forehead and ears. The house seems a total loss. But the family is counting what they still have. Like insurance on this large, three-bedroom house, which they'd bought in 1997 and updated its dark, funky colors. And like Steve's parents, who have spare rooms in their house for the family. People keep calling and offering help. Clothes show up from neighbors and Colin's kindergarten teachers at Bittersweet Elementary School. "We have good family support system and friends," said Steve, who runs his own power-washing business, D&L Extreme Services.
The British government will review the arrest of six men on suspicion of terrorism during the visit by Pope Benedict XVI to the United Kingdom. The six men—all employees of a cleaning firm, and reportedly of Arabic background—were released after police found that they represented “no credible threat” against the Pontiff. A thorough investigation uncovered no evidence that they had engaged in any terrorist plot.
I think Dixon might have mentioned Arsenal's title win at Old Trafford in 2002 a few times. He also told a great story about how - on the day of that game - Arsene Wenger took the whole Arsenal squad, who were wearing team tracksuits, on a walk around Manchester. The players warned him that it was not a good plan but he ploughed on regardless until he was accosted by an irate window cleaner who was furious to find Wenger on his patch. After a bit of face-to-face rage, the boss announced that the team would be swiftly returning to the sanctity of the hotel.
Former Scottish Football Association chief executive Jim Farry has died of a heart attack. The 56-year-old had his family around him when he passed away at Hairmyres Hospital, East Kilbride. Wife Elaine and children Alyson, 28, and Ewan, 26, were last night at the family home in East Kilbride in shock at Jim’s death yesterday. Jim grew up in a tenement in Holybrook Street, Govanhill, Glas- gow and went on to become a high flying football bureaucrat.The son of an East End cop, he worked as a landscape gardener, milkman and window cleaner before starting life in Scottish football administration.
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The Lower Manhattan Development Corporation has missed its deadline yet again to dismantle the tower at 130 Liberty Street. The former Deutsche Bank building, originally slated for demolition in June 2007, was supposed to be torn down by the end of this year. But construction mishaps have again delayed the project, L.M.D.C.’s Director of City Operations Josh Rosenbloom announced at Monday’s Community Board 1 World Trade Center Redevelopment Committee meeting. Rosenbloom attributed the latest holdup to crane problems. “It’s a very sensitive piece of equipment – the slightest little thing goes wrong in the crane, the computer shuts down,” said Rosenbloom. “It’s nothing major, just a couple of small incidents that took the crane out for a period of time.”The L.M.D.C., Flynn added, should have installed double-paned windows in nearby apartment buildings to minimize the noise impact of the demolition. “It’s hard to demolish a building like this without making noise,” replied Rosenbloom adding that he would consult with his colleagues about possibly scheduling a window cleaning in the nearby apartment buildings.
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The Apprentice - week six live blog: Good evening, and a vigorously scrubbed and germ-free welcome to Week 6 of The Apprentice! Tonight is the utterly joyous advertising week, in which the remaining candidates have to create a new brand of cleaning product, then develop an advert to present to present to a load of bored agency types who have taken a break from auditioning drumming gorillas and writing raps that rhyme with "organic yoghurt". There are two big companies who make ALL the UK's cleaning products, says Alex, in his infinite marketing wisdom. He is of course referring to Procter & Gamble and Unilever, but has of course forgotten Reckitt Benckiser, makers of the likes of Vanish and Finish and Dettol and Cillit Bang, because he knows absolutely cock all about marketing. But I've plugged them now, so all is well.
As a town built for veterans after World War II, Veterans Day has a special place in the Levittown community. Polly Dwyer, president of the Levittown Historical Society, has provided Levittown Patch with photographs and brief biographies on three veterans who are especially significant to Levittown in honor of this holiday. Steve Buczak was a World War II belly gunner in the Army Air Force, Buczak returned to Levittown to establish a window washing company. They washed all the new Levitt house windows. In his retirement he edited many books on histories of local towns and donated the books to the local libraries. The Levittown Public Library and the Levittown Historical Society were among the recipients. He soon joined the Levittown Historical Society and became a board member and then an officer for few years. He assisted Lynne Mattarrese in the society's book "The History of Levittown, NY".
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