The Price Group

The Covid-19 pandemic is likely to increase the demand for cleaner and more sanitised buildings, even when dirt is seemingly invisible to the people who use them. This is the opinion of Charlie Price, managing director of The Price Group, a leading specialist in the UK's high-end cleaning and maintenance sector based in Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire.
The company, which employs nearly 100 people and provides services to more than 4,000 properties, uses a Hinowa Lightlift 20.10 Performance IIIS tracked platform supplied by Access Platform Sales. Its highly skilled teams use it to carry out increasingly high-level cleaning for a wide range of customers, including offices, shopping centres and transportation service providers. The Price Group was founded in 1970 and is still a family-run business. Its management team combines an innovative approach with over 200 years of experience in the cleaning and maintenance sector.
 

Charlie Price said: "In the post-Covid-19 era, I see building users appreciate cleanliness more and tolerate less environments they consider dirty. This certainly applies to desks and kitchens, places that they can touch. But I think it can also be applied to a broader context. People in the future will be happier in spaces that look clean from ceiling to foundation, which presents facility managers with a new set of priorities".
"As the lockdown eases", he says, "there is a latent demand from companies such as Price Group to bring buildings back to a level of cleanliness that satisfies both facility managers and building users”.
"It is also likely," he adds, "that cleaning regimes will be revised and intensified to make all work areas visibly clean".
 

Charlie Price says their lithium battery-powered Hinowa LL 20.10 platform will now be busier than ever as they use it to meet the growing demand for deep cleansing as business resumes post-lockdown. "It may seem a little strange that a tracked platform is a key tool in a post-Covid-19 world, but for us it will certainly be", he says.
“It allows us to enter the most challenging spaces and get to work quickly and safely to perform deep environmental cleaning, with minimal disruption to building users. This is a skill our customers appreciated even before the Coronavirus pandemic. Now that they need our support in the critical phase of business continuity planning, it is even more important".
 

The Price Group uses the Hinowa LL20.10 platform mainly for the internal cleaning of lobby areas, although it is also excellent for external work. Its exceptionally compact design allows access to extremely confined spaces and it has several other features that are particularly advantageous for this application:

The new buildings in which the company works are built on ever smaller plots. Around an office block, where once there was an access road, there is now a pedestrian footpath. Recently installed security barriers around buildings as well as access control systems within them add additional obstacles that prevent easy access to conventional wheeled platforms.
 

The trend of building basement areas in new business centres and residential high-rise buildings is imposing weight limits on the floors of lobbies. This often makes crawler platforms the only option for working at height. “Our Hinowa LL20.10 platform gives us total flexibility which means being able to accept orders that are impossible for our competitors”, states Charlie Price. "We can bring the Hinowa platform into incredibly tight spaces".
“It is so light and compact that it can be towed by a pick-up, so we can take it exactly where it needs to be used, which saves us and our customers a significant amount of installation time. Plus, because we have our own platform, we can agree to clean a building exactly when and where we need it. Often this means outside the working hours of our customers ". 
 
“We can perform tasks that are impossible with other systems. Many of our customers initially think about using reach&wash systems to clean at height, then realise that there is no way to control the flow of water. The only option is therefore to use scaffolding, which is cumbersome and time-consuming, or MEWPs - and in our experience Hinowa is the best platform on the market to do this job".
 

The company was equally impressed with the service provided by APS, the UK and Ireland authorised distributor of all Hinowa products. "The service is excellent, we get exactly what we asked for, and the delivery is fast and smooth," says Charlie Price.
Lee Louder, APS Regional Sales Director, commented: "We are delighted that The Price Group is making such good use of its Hinowa platform. As we recover from the Covid-19 pandemic, the demand for innovative, productive and sustainable cleaning technologies will only increase. And the Hinowa platforms will play a significant role in providing building managers with the cleaning systems they need".
 
The Price Group opted for the Lithium battery-powered Hinowa LL20.10 platform that provides low-noise, zero-emission operation, essential for indoor use. If required, the platform can be powered with a 110V mains cable, so a power supply is always available. The Hinowa LL20.10 tracked platform can also be equipped with low-emission diesel or petrol engines and mains power supply or, in the bi-energy version, with diesel engine and lithium batteries.