KCS is a third-generation family business run by Sean Carrison that can trace its origins back 75 years
Sean’s grandfather, Frank Carrison, started his window-cleaning business after the Second World War, and his son Martin took over in the 1970s.
Sean worked for him after leaving school in 1990, predominantly as a window cleaner – and then, in 1998, he set up KCS, aiming to expand its services far beyond window cleaning.
Some 25 years later, KCS now employs more than 120 staff all from the Hull area, serving more than 500 customers locally and nationally.
It has many staff who have notched up more than 10 years’ service and some who have more than 20 years’ experience.
The company works in a variety of sectors – health, education, retail, manufacturing and leisure, working with many major facilities management and property management companies.
They clean the gutters for more than 350 major high street retail stores, and more than 180 gyms and hospitals for a major leisure and health provider. KCS also delivers external building cleaning to more than 1,000 buildings nationally, working with facilities management companies, education, leisure and health centres, and hospitals.
They clean and maintain everything from commercial roofs and solar panels to the external cleaning of the cladding, render, windows and frames to the floor, where operatives clean the paving, removing grime and chewing gum.
This is the main area that the company wants to expand on – and everything KCS does is built around safety. Safety is the number one priority. All operatives undergo training to ensure they are fully competent in every aspect of the work they undertake.
KCS has a huge amount of experience working at height, including high-level atrium cleaning and high-level factory and warehouse cleaning, especially in the food production and manufacturing sectors.
Operatives use various forms of access that include cherry pickers, scaffolding, abseil teams and the latest sky vac gutter cleaning systems as well as the latest high-level internal cleaning kits.
All work carried out comes with a full PDA report that evidences risk assessment, dynamic risk assessment, pre-user checks to equipment, and before and after photos, which every customer receives. KCS is Chas, Safe Contractor, Constructionline Gold Members approved and is just completing its ISO 9001.
Everything the company does receives site-specific risk assessments and method statements along with all staff training records. On the contract cleaning side of the business, KCS has teams in the Hull and South Bank area that carry out daily cleaning services to shopping precincts (carrying out the daily cleaning for Flemingate Shopping Centre, for example), daily cleaning to leisure sites, education, retail, health centres, manufacturing and many offices.
The company focuses this area on larger sites where three and above staff are required. Time management is in place for all sites and each site receives a H&S and cleaning audit each month.
