Food & Drink Matters honour Swiftclean with ‘Outstanding Achievement’ award
Food & Drink Matters is delighted to honour award-winning expert services provider Swiftclean with our Outstanding Achievement Award in building air and water hygiene services, particularly across the education, healthcare, hospitality, facilities management and social housing sectors.
Swiftclean is a family run company with just under 100 employees across the UK. The company provides specialist air and water hygiene services which have, for four decades, had a profound impact not only on ductwork hygiene, but also on fire safety. This has brought positive benefits for the general health and safety of countless buildings and the wellbeing of their occupants.
For professional and commercial catering establishments, Swiftclean provides a number of industry leading services, including kitchen extract fire safety cleaning, ventilation system hygiene, fire damper testing & maintenance, grease traps compliance, Legionella control services, and laundry extract cleaning.
Hygiene in ventilation systems and kitchen extract systems is an essential aspect of facilities management for catering businesses. In order to achieve and maintain compliance with the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005, it is necessary to control fire risks such as the accumulation of grease deposits in the kitchen extract ductwork, which can act as fuel for a fire. Grease deposits are an inevitable result of the cooking process and must be regularly removed from the canopy, filters and the entire extraction system, including the full length of the ductwork, which may extend for some distance. Removal of the grease should be carried out in accordance with the BESA specification TR19® Grease ‘Fire Risk Management of Grease Accumulation within Kitchen Extraction Systems’, which requires expert cleaning at regular specified intervals and monitoring the rate of grease accumulation.
Swiftclean Managing Director, Gary Nicholls is widely recognised as an industry expert on this issue and is a co-author of TR19® Grease and its predecessors, TR/19 and TR/17. TR19® Grease is published by the Building Engineering Services Association (BESA) and is now a widely recognised specification with which building managers should comply in order to meet legal obligations set by the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order. His input into the formulation over time of this specification has been invaluable and he serves as part of the steering committee which writes and updates this technical document.
A popular misconception is that a grease layer must be very thick in order to pose a serious risk of fire, but the reality is that a very thin layer of grease can provide fuel for a fire. TR19® Grease stipulates that grease levels should not be allowed to exceed 200 microns as a mean between cleaning intervals to ensure adequate fire safety control – about half the thickness of a business card. A relatively small amount of grease can cause a fire to spread through the ductwork to other parts of the building, often causing considerable damage to the roof as well as, potentially, to adjoining properties.
Swiftclean has campaigned to raise awareness of this key aspect of fire safety, and for fully accessible extract systems which allow compliance. Many older systems were designed prior to the publication of TR19® Grease, and do not have sufficient access points to allow the entire system to be thoroughly cleaned. Swiftclean will retrofit additional access hatches to older systems in order to help its clients to comply, and regularly advocates for TR19® Grease to be the standard to which systems are designed, in order to facilitate future compliance.
In addition to TR19® Grease, the BESA also issues TR19®, a sister document which establishes the guidance for hygiene in ventilation systems. Regular expert cleaning in accordance with TR19® helps to ensure that the air which is circulated through ventilation systems is cleaner, fresher and free from airborne contaminants. This helps to ensure good indoor air quality which is vital for the wellbeing of staff, guests and residents.
Swiftclean helps to raise awareness of the need for compliance in its own industry and across other sectors. The company helped to formulate the BESA’s own apprenticeship programme, and the company is a BESA accredited training centre, and hosts BESA accredited ventilation hygiene competency courses. Members of Swiftclean’s own team deliver some of the training.
Major insurer, AXA Insurance, as part of its Commercial Kitchen Fire Safety Service, names Swiftclean as recommended provider of fire safety kitchen extract cleaning. Compliance with TR19® Grease also helps to protect building managers. Should the worst occur, many insurance companies will now refuse to pay out for a claim for fire damage if the extract system was not compliant. Following a fire, if the building manager cannot demonstrate their compliance, they can be liable to prosecution for negligence, especially if injuries or fatalities have occurred. Swiftclean provides robust before and after photographic evidence of its expert cleaning, which helps to protect the building manager.
The BESA recommends that caterers use members of its Vent Hygiene Elite (VHE) scheme to provide specialist cleaning to TR19® Grease and TR19®. VHE members are regularly vetted to ensure that they apply best practice and provide compliant service reports. Swiftclean is a founder member of the VHE scheme and MD Gary Nicholls serves as Chairman of the VHE scheme user group. Gary is often called upon to be an expert witness in cases of suspected negligence following an extract fire, and his expertise and experience are recognised industry-wide.
Swiftclean is also one of the few UK companies to provide expert fire damper management. In order to provide fresher air throughout a property, ventilation ductwork often passes through an internal fire-resistant wall, creating an opening in the wall through which fire might travel.
To solve this problem, fire dampers are installed at the point of intersection to restore the compartmentalisation provided by the fire-resistant wall. This is frequently at a point where the ductwork passes from a side room through a corridor.
Fire dampers are essentially a set of steel louvres which normally remain open to allow the flow of air through the ventilation system, but which automatically close in the event of a fire. Naturally, it is vital to know that they will work as designed, so each fire damper must be ‘drop tested’ at least every twelve months, in accordance with BS:9999, to ensure that the blades will ‘drop’ into their closed position, restoring the barrier against fire. Should any fire damper fail this test, it must be repaired and retested.
Swiftclean’s track record in both service and awareness is exceptional, and we are very pleased to acknowledge this with a Food & Drink Matters Award for Outstanding Achievement.
