Kick-off Meeting of the International Project “Cost Effective, Need Based Cleaning – INSTA 800”

The kick-off meeting of the Erasmus+ project “Cost Effective, Need Based Cleaning INSTA800” took place in Tallinn on October 14-15, 2019.

Defining and assessing cleaning quality. INSTA800 is an official standard in seven countries. Representatives from all seven countries have never before met to exchange experiences. Over the years, Puhastusekspert has established contacts with all these countries concerning INSTA800. This led to the dream and idea for a project that would bring all countries together to share experiences, learn from each other, and jointly create materials that everyone needs, but which would be either impossible or too expensive to develop individually.

Consequently, in March 2019, the project application for an Erasmus+ strategic cooperation project was submitted. However, only 6 countries remained in the project, as the Norwegian partner unfortunately withdrew at the last minute, and it was too late to find a new partner. Nevertheless, we found a way to document and incorporate Norway’s experience into the project.

The project will last for 3 years, with a budget of 325,610 EUR, during which the following will be developed:

  1. Mapping INSTA800 user experiences, highlighting good practices and misuses of the standard, what these have led to, and what can be learned from them. Based on this, principles for using INSTA800 will be developed, which will be publicly available in English and in the languages of all partner countries. We believe this will benefit new users of the standard and provide experienced users with a valuable opportunity to learn from the experiences of other countries.
  2. For five typical room types, we will compile cleaning time matrices, considering the level of dirt before cleaning and the desired quality level to be achieved. To ensure the reliability of these times, 1200 cleaning tests will be conducted in various countries. The question often arises as to how much cleaning time, and consequently cost, is affected if the desired quality is, for example, level 4 instead of level 3. We hope to provide objective answers to this question using the jointly developed cleaning time matrices.
  3. Effective training programs and methodologies for INSTA800 knowledge levels 2, 3, and 4. We will also conduct experimental training sessions in spring 2022. Through this, we aim to propose the most effective ways to train standard users, thereby contributing to the efficient implementation of the standard.

Project partners:

In spring 2022, we hope to organize a seminar for all interested parties, where we will present the project results.

We sincerely hope that the project will create value for many and contribute to the development of results-based cleaning and the minimization of unnecessary work during cleaning. Cleaning that does not remove dirt is a pointless activity. We often observe surfaces being regularly cleaned, yet remaining dirty, while important areas are left uncleaned for long periods. Time and resources are spent, but the actual cleanliness achieved is poor.

If results-oriented effective cleaning is of interest to you, please stay updated on the project activities. You can find information about project news: