Live Events Cleaning Is Indescribable – And Here Is Why
Friends and colleagues in the cleaning industry often ask me why I chose such a specific niche as live events cleaning. It is very hard to explain because of a simple reason – it is almost impossible to describe live events cleaning. Not that I cannot come up with a catalogue of chores required for a post-concert cleaning, for example. However, a task sheet cannot describe the scale, complexity, and intensity of the job, nor does it pay attention to the difference in approach due to the nature of the event.
I will try to address each of these characteristics of live event cleaning to prove my point. If professional carpet, window, office or tenancy cleaners feel that my comparisons are unfair, I most humbly beg their pardon.
There Is No Such Thing As A “Standard” Live Event
I started working as a cleaner almost fifteen years ago in one of London’s biggest home cleaning agencies. One of the most crucial lessons my trainers and mentors tried to hammer in my unyielding head was “standardisation results in greater efficiency”. In other words, if you learn to clean a kitchen sink fast, you will be able to clean one hundred sinks the same way. It sounds nice and dandy, and to a great degree, it works in cleaning fields that operate with standard entities – windows or carpets, for example.
You cannot apply the same approach in live event cleaning. First of all, you have to pay attention to the event – whether it is indoors or outdoors. If it is the former, you must take into account the peculiar features of the venue – its size and shape, how many people it can accommodate, and even the type of music. Jazz events attract a different audience than hard rock, metal, or pop concerts – accordingly, the cleaning challenges also differ.
Let’s take, for example, two of Camden’s best-known venues – the Roundhouse and Koko. The Roundhouse, located at Chalk Farm Road, used to be a railway engine shed and has retained a raw, rugged, almost industrial vibe. It has an 800-people capacity, and its eclectic musical program makes it one of the iconic live-music spots in Central London.
On the other hand, Koko looks and feels more refined inside and out. The former theatre stands prominently on Camden High Street and is substantially bigger than the Roundhouse with its 1400-person capacity. And while Roundhouse features more hard rock and metal bands in the programme, Koko is well-known for its house, electronic, and alternative pop music.
As you can imagine, a standard approach to cleaning two venues that differ so much will get you nowhere. I don’t even mention the score of smaller Camden live-music clubs and concert venues, offering a completely different set of challenges.
No Real Comparison In Scale
Take a regular house cleaning job, regardless of the specific service, multiply it by a hundred, and you will get a notion of the scale in live events cleaning. The only comparable service in the cleaning industry is large-scale commercial and corporate cleaning, but I will leave it to the respective experts to say if they are similar – I highly doubt it.
Let Koko serve us as an example once more. Its total area of 50,000 square feet makes it four times larger than the average square footage of a single floor in an office building. Of course, we don’t clean the entire breadth of the venue, but the same applies to office cleaners treating corporate premises. Just to give you some perspective – the average London one-bedroom apartment rarely exceeds 600 square feet…
If You Cannot Work With Tight Deadlines, You Are Out Of Business
Let’s imagine a homeowner booking you for a carpet cleaning procedure. You arrive at the address and assess the job will take three hours. However, for whatever reason – a surprisingly persistent stain, more moving around than initially thought – you extend the deadline by fifteen minutes. What will the consequences be? Absolutely none. Your customer will hardly notice that you are late, and most carpet, home or window cleaners work with very comfortable time cushions.
Live event cleaning poses totally different challenges related to time management. Most venues try to fit in as many shows as possible, often on consecutive days. The common practice is to clean in the early morning (music events often end late in the evening, even after midnight). You must finish by noon or the very early afternoon at the latest because artists require sound checks and rehearsals. Fifteen minutes may be the difference between seamless perfection and scheduling catastrophe, with agents demanding explanations, pop divas going into psychotic rants and venue managers on the verge of a heart attack.
What does it mean for a cleaning crew? That you have to work like a well-oiled machine with no hiccups, thoroughly trusting in the efficiency of each member. That you have to know your venues inside and out. But above all – you should be able to expect the unexpected, adjust to it and react effectively. I’ve had professional cleaners with an extensive background in regular services (domestic, carpet, end of tenancy) who cannot deal with the hassle and quit after a few jobs.
Some of my former colleagues think that I exaggerate when I tell them they cannot imagine the nature of the beast. When I tell them, “You don’t know what real, hardcore cleaning on steroids is”, and that you cannot understand it until you see it, I mean it. Only after you’ve cleaned a 1400-person venue after a rock concert in under five hours does it begin to dawn on you that live event cleaning is in a different stratosphere – one that you cannot describe but have to experience.