Kevin Riley is a franchise owner of ServiceMaster Clean in Portsmouth. He starts his day early at 5:30am to coordinate his staff and handle any emergency calls, as his business provides 24/7 cleaning and restoration services. Riley assists with various jobs from cleaning up spills at a university to coordinating an upholstery cleaning on the Isle of Wight. As a franchise owner for over 16 years, Riley works to help clients with disasters like floods and turn things around for them. Alan Sutton also owns a ServiceMaster Clean franchise covering several cities in Yorkshire. He handles various emergency jobs from sewage cleanups to fire damage restoration. As franchise owners, both Riley and Sutton are constantly on call to coordinate cleaning

1. 26 | Repairs & maintenance | January 2015 January 2015 | Repairs & maintenance | 27
Atyour
service
“We’redealing
withnicepeople.
They’vehad
atraumabut
we’returningit
aroundforthem.
Youcanseethe
difference”
“Ilikehelping
people,tocalm
them,assure
themwhat’s
happening–
thatit’sinour
handsandwe
cansortitout”
ManagingaServiceMasterCleanfranchise
meansyoucouldbedealingwithcleaningup
anythingfromfiretofloodtoavoid.Wespend
adayinthelifeoftwofranchisees
staff, including four technicians who will
soon be driving out in the companies’
vans to their first jobs of the day. Some
work is more specialist than others.
‘There’s a lot of training for the floods.
For the cleaning side of things, we just
train them ourselves,’ Mr Riley says.
But even simple clean-ups need special-
ist knowledge – ‘you’ve got to know
your fabrics.’
8.30am Mr Riley is on the move again,
to catch a ferry to the Isle of Wight. This
job is from a department store and
involves an upholstery clean – the local
cleaning companies on the island can’t
handle the unusual material, so Service-
Master Clean has been called in to help.
On the way, Mr Riley will make some
calls to his team who are out cleaning, ‘to
double check they’re all out’. Some of
them will be out doing cleaning for hous-
ing association Sovereign – ServiceMaster
has the contract to clean communal areas
in the association’s block of flats. It’s one
of a number of housing association con-
tracts of the type; this type of job involves
giving a clean to ‘communal areas, car-
pets, hand rails, glass, windows. It could
be weekly,’ Mr Riley explains.
‘We do some emergency work for the
housing associations – say, someone dis-
posed of something in the courtyard. We
clear up if someone’s spilt something.
We also do emergency work for Ports-
mouth University and the city council.’
The firm takes on quite a few emer-
gency jobs for the local universities:
‘[When] the students have been ill, or cut
themselves, having had too much to
drink. Quite a lot of different stuff.’ It’s
not all student clear-up – between Christ-
mas and New Year, the firm carried out a
‘high level clean’ of the engineering block
for a university, hiring a special lift to get
into the ceiling space. Cobwebs – and,
given the engineering going on below ,
grease – were cleared out.
12pm Mr Riley arrives at the job on the
Isle of Wight. ‘I’m booked on the ferry
back at 3 o’clock. I get back into Ports-
mouth for 4 o’clock, and check every-
thing’s OK with the rest of the team.’
5.30pm In theory, Mr Riley should be
on his way back home to his wife, Anna,
and kids. But he’s not sure that will hap-
pen: ‘We’ve got quite bad weather today,
we could get a phone call.’ Flood clean-
up is some of the most satisfying work,
Mr Riley says. The firm is doing one such
job for First Wessex housing association,
drying out a flood-hit block of flats. ‘I like
helping people, to calm them, assure
them as to what’s happening – that it’s in
our hands and we can sort it out. We help
them.’
Contingencyplanning
them. You can see the difference.’
6pm Mr Sutton hopes to be on his way
home by 6pm, unless a major incident is
called in and he will be out the door again
for another inspection. ‘We’re always on
call,’ Mr Sutton says.
‘Ihaven’tlookedback’
ServiceMasterClean,Portsmouth
5.30am The day starts early for Kevin
Riley at ServiceMaster Clean’s franchise
covering Portsmouth, Southampton and
the Isle of Wight. ‘I didn’t want to get up,’
Mr Riley admits ruefully, but with a busy
day ahead, he rose ‘as soon as I was
awake’.
This isn’t unusual. ‘We don’t stop,
we’re 24/7,’ Mr Riley explains. The office
is open from 8.30am to 5.30pm, but if
someone calls with an emergency job out
of hours, Mr Riley gets a text message. If
it’s urgent, he gets a phone call too. He
‘We’realwaysoncall’
ServiceMasterClean,Rotheram
7.45am Alan Sutton is out the door of his
North Yorkshire home, in his car driving
towards South Yorkshire, the headquar-
ters for his franchises of ServiceMaster
Clean – covering Rotherham, Wakefield,
Huddersfield, Halifax and south
Bradford.
‘I make calls on the way,’ Mr Sutton
explains. ‘You can be dealing with a fire
one minute, a flood the next, or a void
clean for a housing association.’
This morning he is on the phone
sorting out a job. ‘This gentleman had
found his electrics had gone, he looked
under his floor of his house and he had
two feet of raw sewage. Our job is to get
that out,’ Mr Sutton says.
‘We do a vast array of things. Yesterday
I was dealing with a fire that occurred
over Christmas. We had a team in wash-
ing walls and ceilings. I’ll do the initial
inspection usually, then we’ll decide
what is required.’
9.00am ‘This morning I went straight
to site,’ Mr Sutton explains, in this case
two flats. ‘There had been mould growth
on walls but we didn’t know why, so I met
a plumber and a builder to do some trace
and access to find out where the leaks
were coming from.’ This job involves
hacking into the damp plaster to do read-
ings and identify the cause: multiple
leaks in the flat above. Once the client, in
this case a loss adjuster, has given the go-
ahead, ServiceMaster Clean will be back
with builders to solve the problem.
11.30am Mr Sutton arrives at the office,
and starts going through the calls
received that morning with his office
manager. ‘We will go through any emer-
gency calls we’ve had. Some calls that
gets these late night wake-ups about
twice a month, which could be a call to
mop up after a spill in the student halls of
residence, or even a flood and fire clean-
up. The firm is often called in by insur-
ance companies after just such an
emergency.
But today, Mr Riley’s first port of call
was easier. ‘I had to pop down to Ports-
mouth University to pick up some drying
equipment – there was a flood there.’
8.00am Mr Riley arrives at the
ServiceMaster Clean office in Ports-
mouth. The job at hand is co-ordinating
staff and sorting things out. ‘I’ve been
doing it for about 16 years now. My wife’s
father started [the business] 25 years ago.
He built it up and my wife Anna was
working for him then,’ he recalls. At the
time, Mr Riley had been doing different
types of work but hadn’t settled on any-
thing. ‘He said, “come and try a day with
us”. I haven’t looked back.’
Now the franchise has about 11 regular
social housing, sometimes employed by
construction teams brought in by hous-
ing associations, or by insurers, or
directly.
Mr Sutton has been doing this work all
his adult life. ‘I was the youngest fran-
chisee at 19 in 1986,’ he recalls. His step-
father spotted the ServiceMaster Clean
franchise for sale in the Daily Mail, and
bought it. ‘My mother answered the
phone, I did the cleaning.’
2.30pm Time for a late lunch, before
coming back to the office for more
paperwork. Many of the franchise’s cli-
ents have got key performance indica-
tors to meet, and Mr Sutton must keep
close track on all the jobs, uploading
photos and detailed costings, for a
report on ‘what we’ve done and why
we’ve done it’. Mr Sutton is filing paper-
work on a fire that occurred between
Christmas and New Year. ‘This fire, we’re
dealing with nice people. They’ve had a
trauma but we’re turning it around for
need answering straight away, some that
will wait,’ he explains.
Soon, he hears back on the sewage job.
‘Our quote has been authorised, I’ve then
got to organise the operational side of it.
It’s got to be done tomorrow,’ he
explains. ‘It’s a health and safety issue.’
This includes making sure that staff and
contractors have the correct protective
equipment and masks as they’ll work in
the floor space under a house. ‘We have
our own staff, but of course because
we’re a reactive business, I also have con-
tractors who are fully trained to assist on
carrying out various work,’ he explains.
Four people work in the office, not
counting Mr Sutton. The franchise also
employs three technicians who are team
leaders going out on jobs, fully qualified
by the British Damage Management Asso-
ciation. It has another four assistant tech-
nicians.
About 70% to 80% of the work they
deal with is emergency response, and the
rest is ‘programmed work’ on building
sites and jobs such as flooring replace-
ment. Mr Sutton’s team often works in
CHAPTERINASSOCIATIONWITHservicemasterclean
Articlewritteninpartnershipwith:
KevinRiley’sfranchise
hasacontractwith
housingassociation
Sovereign
AlanSutton(left)has
beenaServiceMaster
Cleanfranchiseesincethe
ageof19
■