Cleaners create 100 new jobs

Apr 2 2008 by Chris Knox, The Journal

A BUILDING maintenance company hopes to create 100 jobs and more than treble its sales after winning a contract to clean doctors’ surgeries.

Washington-based QFSL hopes to recruit the staff within a year and grow its turnover from £1.6m to £6m by 2011 with the help of the contract to clean 28 surgeries nationwide.

It is the first national contract for the company, which already has a 400-strong workforce and now plans to increase its public sector work and buy a number of businesses.

The firm is also looking to increase its business looking after prisons.

It currently maintains seven jails in the North East and is in talks with a number of facilities in the North West.

Managing director Mike Ilderton said: “Much of our growth has come from the public sector over the years and we are looking to build on our reputation in this area.

“Now that we have secured our first national NHS contract, we are well placed to secure similar large-scale contracts by the end of the year.” The seven-year-old firm provides a wide range of jobs through its three subsidiary businesses; Quality Facility Services, which provides catering and vending support, QFSL Cleaning UK and QFSL Correctional Services, which carries out maintenance work at prisons and immigration facilities.

QFSL now hopes to use its national expansion to acquire a number of general cleaning and pest control businesses in the Midlands, where it also hopes to set up new offices.

Ilderton set up the business after buying the North East arm of German facilities management firm the Dussman Group in 2000, which had a turnover of just £32,000 at the time.

The firm has also won a host of fresh private contracts, including cleaning and general maintenance work at the UK offices of German steel manufacturer ThyssenKrupp in Newton Aycliffe, County Durham, and at the Darlington offices of construction firm AMEC.

Karen Clements, operations director at QFSL, said: “We have grown the company’s turnover year on year since setting up and we believe this year will be our biggest yet.”