Making sure our front-line staff are protected and remain healthy is our utmost priority. We provide the best-in-class uniforms, masks and face shields. We also managed to get the team vaccinated as early as possible while providing PCR tests on a frequent level.

- Hazim Murad, Assistant General Manager, Doha Festival City, Qatar. 

Qatar is witnessing a boom - all thanks to the FIFA world cup 2022, the Qatar National Vision 2030 and many upcoming events in the near future. As a direct consequence, its retail industry is thriving. With a larger influx of people, shopping malls are expected to attract high traffic volumes and therefore require cleaning on a frequent basis, both during opening hours and after hours. The cleaning process of a shopping mall is not an easy task. Once the mall is open, the waste bins fill quickly, the washrooms are contaminated in milliseconds, and spills can occur frequently making the environment a potential hazard. This month, we spoke to Hazim Murad,  the Assistant General Manager of Doha Festival City to understand the cleaning regime, infection control processes and best practices followed at the busy Festival City. 

How important is cleaning and hygiene for you?

Cleaning and Hygiene have always been crucial elements of all our operations. With the pandemic, this has been elevated to become a public health and safety concern and was top of our priorities and strategic direction. When the pandemic hit last year, we spared no expense or efforts to combat it firsthand and safeguard our community. 

How has cleaning changed for you in the past 2 years?

Doha Festival City is working in synergy with the Ministry of Commerce & Industry (MOCI) and under the guidance of the Ministry of Health (MOPH) and the Ministry of Interior (MOI). Taking cleaning to extremely new heights, our main concern was to deploy the latest and most efficient disinfecting methods and tools, audited by a third party, which go beyond traditional methods of ensuring a safe hygienic environment. 

In line with the preventative measures set out by the authorities, Doha Festival City has introduced stringent health and safety measures throughout the mall for its staff and visitors. This includes a thorough mall disinfection treatment on a weekly basis, robust cleaning, and sanitization operations during mall trading hours, 127 hand sanitizing stations installed in the areas that have commonly touched surfaces.

Furthermore, we are proud to have received a Germ Control Assurance Certification from Boecker, which indicates our commitment to keeping our facilities as a safe and protected shopping environment.

How have the cleaning schedules changed as a result of the pandemic?

As a result of the pandemic, our approach to cleaning has been thoroughly enhanced to include trading hours with dedicated teams on the ground ensuring the implementation of disinfecting processes throughout each hour of our operations and opening hours to visitors. 

During that period, we had to go back and review our existing cleaning procedures and adopt recommendations by the World Health Organisation (WHO) for optimum infection control.  

What infection control measures did you implement in Doha Festival City?

Doha Festival City is currently using several strategic approaches to optimize its infection control.  We significantly increased the frequency of disinfection sessions throughout the mall and added a fogging method after mall trading hours. We reviewed the standard operating procedures of our soft services delivery contractors and mandated they get recertified where necessary.

We invested heavily and installed touchless hand sanitizer dispensers throughout the mall, making them easily visible and accessible to the public in areas such as the entrances, washrooms, inside the lifts, food courts and seating areas.

We partnered with Schindler to deploy the new touchless technology across 32 elevators to aid in preventing cross-infection when interacting with elevator buttons as part of our #Festival Cares Program. 

We have organized a disinfection team that is assigned to each zone of the mall with specific tasks and areas to disinfect. The team’s responsibility is to target high touch surface areas such as the escalator handrails, seating areas, small handrails and lift buttons. 

In addition, we ensure that the back of house venues are well disinfected including the staff cafeterias, break rooms, loading bays and stock rooms.

We encourage social distancing around the mall by placement of stickers in anticipated high traffic areas. 

We have also segmented the entry and exit points on all gates and levels so we can screen the incoming visitors and ensure that we comply with our entry requirements. This also avoids crowding when visitors enter and exit through the same door.

For entry screening, all visitors are required to wear a mask throughout the duration of their visit; visitors who can present Green Code in Ehteraz app will be allowed entry to the mall; visitors should have the body temperature not higher than 38 degrees Celsius to be allowed entry to the mall.

Lastly, we made sure that all our staff are fully vaccinated. This is the most effective way of protecting our staff as much as our customers.

Tell us about your best practice in cleaning.

The most effective method is to have a preventive maintenance program (PPM). The schedules are reviewed and evaluated regularly to streamline with the areas of priorities within Festival City. Aside from the PPM schedule, we also have a daily cleaning task list that we have assigned to each staff based on their assigned location.

In addition to those measures we ensure regular joint audits are conducted; extra staff are present on weekends; quick feedback and turnaround that include a post audit to clarify the standard of an area; and close monitoring of the public health announcements to include throughout our efforts.

How do you train your cleaning staff?

We are using several methods in training our cleaning staff.

New joiners of the team are inducted after a full training program on standards and effective use of their Tools, Machinery, Products & Chemicals. Demonstrations and shadowing their experienced colleagues are imperative to the training program.

Furthermore, we conduct refresher training every quarter on all aspects of the operations.

How do you manage workload for the cleaning staff?

We manage by assigning them a specific task to a specific area of the facility. Through their supervisor, the staff is provided a daily cleaning checklist that they will follow all throughout the shift. Managing workloads avoids negative impact on the staff well-being and saves time and cost in the long run.

What are the major challenges you face in cleaning?

Making sure our front-line staff are protected and remain healthy is our utmost priority. We provide the best-in-class uniforms, masks and face shields. We also managed to get the team vaccinated as early as possible while providing PCR tests on a frequent level.

We are also thankful for the MOPH for supporting us with mall-wide PCR tests.

Amongst the challenges we faced was to balance the commercial aspect with genuine health concerns which we have excelled at. 

How do you overcome them?

To overcome these challenges, we use and adopt a strategic and targeted approach of cleaning to keep our staff, tenants, and customers safe with minimal disruption to the business’ daily operations. This targeted approach ensures each area is appropriately serviced and avoids waste and poor performance associated with over - or under servicing. 

We have invested more time in training our staff for them to easily adjust to the new covid-19 cleaning and disinfecting protocols. 

Furthermore, we have implemented stricter safety protocols at the staff workplaces, in their transportation and accommodation.

Qatar is gearing up for the FIFA world cup 2022 and a lot of visitors are expected. What is your cleaning strategy for the anticipated footfall?

With the upcoming FIFA world cup 2022 we are anticipating welcoming more visitors to the One and Only Doha Festival City. Our efforts have always been in par with international standards, and as part of our preparations is to have the necessary Soft Services work force on site and backups are ready and trained when required. This increase will be supported by additional equipment and cleaning products.

We are also monitoring our existing waste management system to be in line with Qatar’s commitment to sustainability strategy most specifically during the FIFA world cup season. Our cleaning team’s involvement is one of the key elements to effectively implement this process.