Introduction
Maintaining the sanitation of 26 buildings spread over 3 campuses with more than 8,500 rooms to clean is a demanding mandate. At the University of Quebec in Montreal (UQAM), this challenge has become easier to manage and control with the contribution of the UMT Audit software.
Case Study: Quality of Health and Safety Management at UQAM Using UMT Audit
Initial Problem
UQAM employees carry out routine inspections to supervise cleaning work carried out by an external company. Any discrepancies are effectively flagged and sent to designated teams for correction.
In order to validate, regulate and ensure a high level of site cleanliness, daily inspections were previously carried out manually and the data collected was then transferred to spreadsheets for analysis. The additions of comments came to weigh down an already slow and tedious process involving several risks of error.
Jean-Martin Venne, estate logistics advisor explains: ”The time required to transmit the information was too long; Most of the time, the information was not available until the next day and the compilation of statistical data was complex because of the large volume of documents.”
Mr. Venne wanted a quality control system on a computer platform allowing the immediate transmission of results to his service provider.
Laubrass was able to meet all of UQAM’s needs with the customizable UMT Audit software.
Solution
The Buildings Service – Maintenance and User Services Division of UQAM – has 18 agents who now use UMT Audit to carry out daily inspections throughout their journey. Each attendant uses the UQAM checklist on their mobile device to verify that specific tasks have been completed in each area.
The setup at UQAM was to include a list of secondary inspections so that semiannual audits were carried out in all classrooms; UMT Audit allowed standardized planning to ensure that all rooms are in good condition and equipped with the necessary items.
With UMTAudit, the three managers responsible for producing the reports can make changes to their configurations if deemed necessary.
All inspections are traceable and logged for easy access of reports to managers.
The reports include all the data collected which can then be filtered, grouped and sorted according to analysis needs by flag / inspector / type of response / type of corrective action / date, etc.
The support provided by credible and accessible reports is essential to collaborate and regularly communicate to the service provider the positive results as well as the improvements to be made.
Results
According to Mr. Venne, “the system in place makes it possible to establish priorities and quickly identify the sectors requiring intervention. This aspect has a significant impact since our operating budget is in the millions of dollars.”
UMT Audit makes it easier for UQAM to recover the fees charged by its cleaning service provider when tasks are not performed or non-compliant. Images can be used as evidence and all inspections are traceable. Managers using UMT Audit can therefore easily identify tasks that need to be taken up and corrected.
According to Mr. Venne “The integration of UMT Audit was an element that favored the collaboration with our supplier since it allows us to quickly work together on the problems identified.”
The university has saved time and money by automating its inspection processes “with the use of UMT Audit we have seen an improvement in the quality of the work of the sanitation teams on our three campuses.”
