Sean Carrison tells Sam Hawcroft how he is leading Kingston Cleaning Services into a new, modern era with safety as the number one priority…
Kingston Cleaning Services can trace its roots back to just after the Second World War, when Sean’s grandfather, Frank Carrison, set up a window-cleaning business – and it would continue to be run for many years by Sean’s parents Martin and Jeanette.
Sean and his brother initially began working for them as window cleaners, before his brother left to pursue other interests – and in 1998 Sean and his father were “going along different paths”, so Sean decided to set up KCS.
“I used to subcontract work from my father’s business in regards to the window cleaning while venturing into other avenues of the cleaning industry to build up KCS, so there was still continuity there,” says Sean. He acknowledges that it was a fair leap from being a window cleaner to running a company – and he credits his mother with much of the grounding in the essential administration and organisational skills.
Sean is a keen motorcyclist and used to compete in road racing events, but a serious accident in 1993, in which he injured in spine, forced him to stop manual work. While recovering, he spent time in the office with his mother learning the workings of an office. “I learned about VAT, PAYE, things like that – she was really good. It taught me to be very financially disciplined, always to keep the business in the black, and don’t spend more than you earn. As the years went on, there was the realisation that I needed to do other things and so I set Kingston Cleaning Services up to develop the business from there.”
As a family decision, Sean and his father brought back together the two businesses in later years until Sean’s parents retired in 2015. In the early days, KCS was very much a local business, employing a handful of window and office cleaners, but it has since grown to encompass a far wider range of services.
Now, the company delivers external cleaning to more than 1,000 buildings nationally, including render, cladding, stone and windows, as well as all the surrounding paving and floor areas, plus gutters and commercial roof and solar panel cleaning, for an increasing roster of key local and national clients across all sectors. These include Humberside Police and Flemingate Shopping Centre, more than 350 high street retail stores such as Next, factories such as Siemens Gamesa, health and leisure centres including Nuffield Health, major retail outlets such as Amazon, and huge facilities management companies such as CBRE.
The firm boasts staff with extensive experience of working at height, including high-level atrium cleaning, especially in the food production and manufacturing sectors. Operatives are skilled in using cherry pickers, scaffolding, abseil equipment and the latest sky vac gutter cleaning systems and internal cleaning kits. The company also has teams delivering kitchen deep-cleans along with grease and air duct ventilation cleaning, using the latest and most effective equipment which allows them to clean to a TR19 standard so their clients remain compliant.
So, it’s been a major expansion – but it has happened organically in the past 25 years, says Sean. “A lot of it has evolved out of relationships with clients. As these relationships have grown, they’ve have requested if we can deliver a more varied service and this has created KCS to evolve to the business it is today. Now having the capability to clean any part of any building through experience and training has added services as the years have gone by.”
Another aspect that’s evolved is the emphasis on training – every member of staff goes through courses in the myriad elements of specialist cleaning from jet-washing to carpets, and working on roofs. “We have grown the business on reputation and professionalism – not on hard sales and then not delivering the service,” says Sean. “Safety is the biggest thing for me. With the training and the way that we work with the guys, our customers are recognising that. Our staff can often turn up on site and liaise confidently with our customers and site managers on what they can and can’t do safely. We do a lot of work at height. Every January we go through a rigorous process and everybody gets retrained. Toolbox talks go out monthly, and all the paperwork is refreshed. It’s a massive task, with about 120 people on our books, to make sure they’re all compliant, confident and competent in the work they are required to carry out.”
This dedication to training and safety is also reflected in the company’s numerous accreditations, including Constructionline Gold Member, CHAS, Safe Contractor, NEBOSH-qualified operations directors, BICS, ISO 9001, IOSH, Water Jetting Association, to name a few. All of KCS’s staff are directly employed rather than subcontracted in, as Sean places a heavy emphasis on staff development. He says staff retention has been “brilliant”, because they realise the investment the company is making in them through its safety standards and training regime.
Working alongside Sean there are two operations directors in Jamie and Michelle. Michelle and her area managers oversee the contract cleaning side of the company, delivering daily cleaning to all sectors, from offices to factories, shopping centres and medical centres, working seven days a week at all hours keeping premises clean for staff and the public.
“Jamie works closely with another guy called Richard who’s worked me for over 20 years now,” says Sean. “That’s a great story, because both Jamie and Richard came to work for me as window cleaners. Taking somebody out that environment, of physically working, washing windows, and then putting them in front of a computer, was not an easy transition. But to see them where they are now, overseeing teams of staff working throughout the country I think it’s fantastic.”
It’s a journey that Sean can chime with, having started out as a window cleaner himself before taking the plunge into entrepreneurship. But investing in marketing and promotion isn’t something they’ve traditionally done much of, he says. “We’ve never done anything like advertising in the media. We had a website done years ago, but didn’t plough a lot of money into it to make sure it was fit for purpose, which we are doing now. When I look back, I could probably have done that 10 or 15 years ago. But I’m also a big believer in being able to manage what you’ve got. I’ve never wanted to go too big, too soon, because if you can’t cope, that’s when mistakes can be made.”
Sean echoes many other business leaders’ stories in this magazine when he admits it can be lonely at the top – and the responsibility for the livelihoods of others also falls heavy on the shoulders at times. “As the boss you’re involved in everything – people’s divorces, bereavements, marriages, illnesses. Sometimes you do feel like you’re on your own. As things started to get busier and busier in the early days of the business, my wife used to help with the invoicing, but then we went through a divorce. And when something personal like that happens, you’ve just got to carry on. You can’t just take two weeks off.”
Sean suffered the tragic loss of his brother in 2004. “Unfortunately he died at 33 of a heart attack one day and I was back at work the next, because I had a wife and a newborn baby to support. It’s very difficult when you’re self-employed – the business just has to keep running.”
He has gradually learned to let go to grow, but he acknowledges that it’s not been easy. “When you start off, you’re micromanaging everybody because it is your ‘baby’. And nobody does it quite like you. But you’ve got to accept that people can do it – and there are people in this business now who are better than me, and I love that. I really try to reward the staff, we’ll have functions, nights out, as well as bonuses and increased holiday entitlement to financially incentivise them – to truly show my appreciation.”
That said, recruitment has been a challenge lately, but KCS isn’t alone in experiencing this. Numerous businesses have told BW of the impact of Covid, Brexit and the cost-of-living having a significant impact on employment trends, with younger people especially eschewing manual work and there being a general shift towards flexible and remote working. To that end, Sean has taken on a member of staff whose focus is solely on recruitment – and he says the fact that many of his staff have been there for 10 years, some for more than 20, is testament to the fact that it may be hard work, but it’s hugely rewarding, too.
KCS prides itself on being able to respond quickly to the needs of a big range of clients – and Sean is keen to grow the ventilation side of the business in the coming years as well as continuing to scale up and gain more national clients.
While he’s proud of his Hull roots, he admits he’s concerned that the name, Kingston Cleaning Services, could be holding the business back nationally, and that he is pondering a rebrand. It does make it sound like a small local cleaning firm, rather than a company that completes projects on a large scale for huge UK brands. A compromise would be KCS, which is snappier but still respects the company’s origins, says Sean.
“We’re trying to send a message of size out, and that we’ve got the infrastructure to deliver a service nationally. We’re creating a lot of jobs, and response times are usually quite crucial in this industry. So we pride ourselves on being able to respond and deliver – it’s now about taking that to a bigger scale.”
