Maintenance Days – Keeping the Club Looking Good!
We often get asked about the type of work that gets done on our maintenance days, which take place approximately every 6 months, and thought it would be worth giving a quick outline.
These maintenance days are very important to the way that we try to operate the business, enabling us to maintain the high quality of the facilities, reducing our need to close areas or take equipment out of service, and generally keeping the Club at the leading edge of the industry from a quality point of view.
Typically, the days comprise a mix of three different types of activity:
- Planned maintenance and ad-hoc repairs.
- Cleaning.
- Staff training.
Taking each area in turn:
Planned Maintenance & Ad-hoc Repairs
We have a huge amount of expensive plant in the building which needs regular maintenance and our long opening hours can make this difficult to schedule. Ad-hoc repairs can also be tricky – for example in the ladies’ locker room for our male maintenance team!
On the up-coming maintenance day, we have lots of external contractors coming in to do work. Examples of work completed previously completed and planned for our next day are:
- Emergency lighting servicing and testing.
- Servicing of all the air handling units.
- Servicing of all HU’s.
- Cleaning of the balance tanks on the pool and spa.
- Various areas of the Club that have got a bit grubby will be repainted.
- The kitchen ducting will be cleaned.
- Service all air con units in the high traffic areas of the Club.
- Sink traps will all be removed and cleaned.
- New ceiling vents in the showers replacing the rusted ones currently.
- Filters in the shower mixers to be cleaned.
- Speed bumps and line markings going in the car park.
- Batons being fitted in front of the treadmills to stop them moving forward.
- Various pieces of electrical work around the club.
Cleaning
Whilst we invest a huge amount in cleaning the Club, employing our own cleaners and using contractors at night, it is very helpful to have some dedicated time to ensure that cleaning is being done effectively, and to deep clean areas which are hard to do during opening hours.
On the upcoming day, for example, some of the tasks will be as follows:
- Thorough cleaning of the changing room lockers, including the tops of the lockers.
- Deep cleaning of the showers, drains, etc.
- Thorough clean of all gym and studio equipment, including spin bikes and mats.
- Deep cleaning tasks in the kitchen / bar area such as extraction filters, fryers, steam cleaning the ovens, deep cleaning the coffee machine, etc.
- Deep clean all Club Lounge furniture to identify and remove stains.
…… and many more……
Training
We take the training of our staff teams very seriously, but it is very difficult to get them all together because of the shift-based nature of the work, and our long opening hours. This applies especially to our Reception, Gym and Club Lounge teams. Hence, we use these scheduled maintenance days to try to get a couple of hours training in for each of the main staff teams at the Club. This helps us to maintain service standards, and deal with longer term issues that may have arisen and need resolving as a team.
As you can see, the maintenance days are certainly not a day off for our staff team! Hope you notice a difference when you come back into the Club.
Steve Davies
General Manager