Cost-Effective Needs-Based Cleaning - Project Summary

On October 31, the 3-year Erasmus+ project “Cost Effective, Need Based Cleaning – INSTA800” concluded. The project united true specialists from the seven INSTA800 user countries. Over the years, we shared experiences, learned from each other, and developed extensive new materials to help organize needs-based cleaning cost-effectively within the cleaning sector and enhance the work efficiency of cleaning personnel.

At the final project meeting, partners noted the following:

The project’s outcome is better and even more valuable than initially planned.
The project involved top specialists from each country; we learned a great deal from one another, and a strong cooperation network has been established.
New and valuable perspectives for INSTA800 were gained, which will significantly enhance the standard’s effective use. All participating countries emphasized this. In Finland, updated principles for INSTA800 implementation were developed, directly based on the project’s outcomes. The SSTL (Finnish Cleaning Association) representative believes that the entire country of Finland is grateful for these results.
New and effective perspectives and solutions have emerged for communicating with clients and cleaning personnel. The application of INSTA800 has, in a sense, gained a new lease on life.

The project successfully developed crucial materials that would have been impossible to create individually, yet are universally needed. The results are available in both Estonian and English. The materials produced within the project are as follows:

Guidelines for using the INSTA800 standard from seven European countries – these are information materials in a structured format, detailing the results of 78 interviews conducted in various countries and recommendations for standard implementation. It is worthwhile to learn from the experience of others. The material is available HERE.
The most labor-intensive aspect of the project involved conducting time trials to ascertain how significantly the level of dirt present before cleaning and the target quality level, as per INSTA800, impact actual working time. This undertaking represents a uniquely extensive experiment. We performed 800 tests to establish work time matrices for five typical room types, all based on INSTA800. These trials revealed several compelling insights that influence daily cleaning operations. The tests demonstrated that, according to INSTA800, a desired cleanliness level one quality grade higher or one additional level of dirt affects actual working time by 10-30%. The full version of the test report is available HERE. A brief summary can be found HERE.
For the standard to be truly effective and facilitate cost-efficient, needs-based cleaning, awareness among all stakeholders is paramount. Research conducted during the project revealed a specific need for guidance on how to educate clients about the standard’s use and how to train cleaning personnel to clean according to the agreed-upon quality profile. To address this, we have developed the following within the project:

Guidelines for sharing information with clients. Material available HERE.
Guidelines for training cleaning personnel, accompanied by instructional material for cleaning managers. At Puhastusekspert, we repeatedly tested this training model, and the results have become progressively more encouraging. We believe that the simple system developed enables 3-7 cleaning staff to be trained on-site in 2-4 hours to perform needs-based and efficient cleaning. The instructional material is available HERE.
For those interested in the objective measurements outlined in INSTA800, short films demonstrating the use of these devices can be viewed HERE.

We hope that our unique project has produced materials that genuinely facilitate the implementation of needs-based cleaning!

We would be very grateful for your feedback on our project materials; the survey can be accessed HERE.

Further details about the project are available HERE.