Safe harbour

FMJ visits the Port of Dover to discover how the Churchill cleaning team is helping keep this vital transport hub to the European Continent clean and healthy

The White Cliffs of Dover dominate the landscape of the Southeast English coastline where the Port of Dover has for centuries been a hugely important thoroughfare to mainland Europe. Owned and run by the Dover Harbour Board, it is the continent’s busiest international ferry port, handling 33 per cent of all trade with the European Union and in 2024 processed 9.3 million passengers, 1.7 million cars and over 77,000 coaches.

The Port covers approximately 1,050 acres and is divided into the Eastern and Western Docks, which include a purpose-built cargo terminal and a marina curve which features more than 60 buildings.

Churchill has been providing cleaning services to the Port since 2016, and offers a wide range of services that include cleaning:

• The cruise terminals
• Cargo welfare and storage facility – including cargo walls and shutters – cleaned by hand by a specialist team
• Office and admin buildings
• Marina buildings
• Passenger welfare buildings, including toilets, food area, showers, receptions, berths and berth portals, as well as multi-purpose check-in booths.

Other duties include a daily mechanical sweep of piers to remove guano to allow tug staff to work safely, road sweeping, litter picking, gully cleaning, beach cleaning, jet washing, window cleaning, maintaining washroom services and consumables, carpet cleaning, landscaping and covering major events such as the Regatta, Marina Day and cruise events.

WORKING IN PARTNERSHIP

It’s a lot to cover and visiting the port it’s clear that the success of the relationship between the Churchill team and the Port is due to mutual respect and a truly collegiate way of working.

Explains Therese West-Moore, Head of Port Operations: “In the past we may have struggled to find somebody who was able to meet our needs and work with us as partners as it’s a difficult environment to keep on top of, but the thing with Churchill is we can go to them and say, ‘what can you do about this?’ and they’ll find a solution.”

As examples, she cites the replacement of big, bulky power consuming hand dryers with phs energy efficient hand dryers to help save on energy and suggestions made during the teams’ regular planning meetings that include re-siting bins to improve waste handling during busy event days.

According to James Temby, Operations Director, Churchill, the secret to the success of the relationship is that: “We evolve our business to suit their business needs, and that’s been critical to how we’ve worked together. We move services, we reduce hours, we increase hours as and when we need to, and we constantly adapt our service delivery as required.”

Churchill’s role includes cleaning up spills, whether a spilt coffee cup in the foot Passenger Terminal building at the Eastern Docks or an oil spill from one of the thousands of freight lorries that travel through the Port every day. An event like that can cause a massive backlog of lorries, so a quick response rate is vital.

MEETING CLEANING CHALLENGES

There have certainly been a lot of changes and challenges since the contract began in 2016, including Brexit, COVID and the addition of major new facilities including the Marina Pier in 2019 and an Outer Marina in 2021.

As the dedicated site manager who oversees and supports the team on the ground, Churchill’s Contract Manager Tracy Bear comes prepared to meet every issue, from ensuring each member knows which tasks they need to complete when assigned an area to assessing how much time is needed to complete a task. She is supported by Business Support Manager Sara White, Night Support Manager Beppe Bellenghi, five supervisors and a core and specialist leaning team of approximately 52 colleagues who work across the site 24/7, 364 days a year, as the Port closes only on Christmas day.

One huge test for the cleaning team was the pandemic. Says West-Moore: “Churchill were essential to us when COVID hit, and we relied on them heavily for what we needed to do to make sure that the staff were safe. The Port didn’t shut, and we carried on working, aside from the office staff who could work from home, but it was still very much an operational area and Churchill were essential to us to help keep this port running.”

The continuity of service was down to the formation of an effective business continuity plan which ranged from careful planning on how cleaning staff would get to work – to the storage of three months’ worth of consumable paper and cleaning products that enabled the cleaners to be self-sufficient for a large part of the period.

Adds West-Moore: “We’ve got a 24/7 control room and must have two to three people in there at any one time, and during COVID, with the cleaning measures in place during that period, we didn’t have any of our control team come down with COVID. That was due to the advice and the control measures put in place.”