Urban Cleanliness Management

Urban cleaning services have a fundamental role to play in the quality of life and sustainability of cities.

Urban cleaning services have a fundamental role to play in the quality of life and sustainability of cities. They have to deal with a complex organization. On the one hand, expectations and priorities may change according to political or societal changes. On the other hand, they manage important means in terms of employees and machines.

In order to objectify expectations and measure the performance, cleaning services are implementing planning and management systems. In France, this often takes the form of "cleanliness plans", which allow elected officials and administrators to agree on priorities before initiating progress.

Other municipalities are introducing quality management systems and if necessary having them certified according to international standards such as ISO for management or the environment. Régis Gabriel, head of waste management for the city of Metz: "Our waste management division is ISO 9000 certified. The quality approach with the description of processes brings a lot of transparency to our management, whether for planning or for navigating our activities."

The level of cleanliness as a performance measure

The measurement of objective indicators is central to any quality approach. Sandro Rosselet, head of waste management for the city of Yverdon-les-Bains: "In autumn 2020 our department was certified ISO 9001, 14001 and 450001. As part of this process we thought with the whole team that an objective indicator could help us with regard to the population's perceptions of cleanliness and in order to concentrate our efforts in the right place."

Dominik Egli, Head of Cleanliness for the City of Basel: "Measuring cleanliness is part of the 'contract' we have with the authorities. We commit ourselves to an objective level of cleanliness and report our performance to our authorities. In addition, this measure allows the municipality to dialogue with the population on an objective basis."

In a previous Clean City Lab article, the City of Zurich introduced the idea that the cleaning service "produces a clean city" and that the cleanliness index (and its variability) is a measure of the quality of the result. In Zurich the measurement of cleanliness has been closely integrated into all processes of urban cleaning for the past 20 years. Michael Ultsch, Head of Cleaning for the City of Zurich: "The cleanliness indicator is used in the planning and operational phases to control our activities, as well as to optimize cleaning concepts."

The level of cleanliness, as a measure of the performance or quality of a service, essentially has two functions. Nils Rademacher, head of cleanliness for the city of Carouge: "The daily measurements help us in the day-to-day organization of our activities. To manage our improvement projects, we use the cleanliness indicators over longer periods of time. They allow us to set our priorities and check whether the actions taken are producing the expected results."

The quality approach must produce results

The idea of continuous improvement based on the measurement of progress is the basis of quality management. The best-known example is the "Deming wheel" or PDCA (Plan-Do-Check-Act), which was introduced in the 1950s. Since then, many methods have been developed. For example, the "Balanced Scorecard" which defines areas of progress. The cause-and-effect relationships make it possible to identify the levers on which to act in order to obtain the desired results.

Is it possible to introduce such approaches also for urban waste management as well, and thus benefit from methods that have proven their worth in other fields?

This was the question posed by Mauro Lorenzi, head of urban cleanliness for the city of Geneva: "We were convinced of the potential that measuring urban cleanliness could bring benefit to the quality of our work, but we did not know how to introduce it into our teams." This is how the Geneva Clean City Lab was born. The cleaning service made one of its sectors available to develop a simple method of managing cleanliness with its operational teams based on objective indicators. This method was tested for one year and the gains were objectively measured in the field.

The method used was inspired by operational excellence and agile management (1). It simplifies the complexity of urban cleaning tasks by focusing on the areas of improvement that have an impact on cleanliness and the environment. In the opinion of the Clean City Lab teams, it avoids dispersion in a number of different improvement initiatives in order to achieve the ones that have been selected as priorities. An iterative process allows either to correct the measures in place or to define new objectives once the previous ones have been achieved. The method is as follows:

Define one or more goals. These goals should be measurable by quantifiable indicators. This is the notion of SMART (Specific, Measurable, Acceptable, Relevant and Time-bound) objectives or DoD (Definition of Done) for the agile method. Examples: achieving a uniform level of cleanliness defined by a Clean City Index value, saving resources or reducing water consumption.
Take a statement of the initial situation and identify the barriers.
The method consists of identifying the bottlenecks that prevent the desired objective from being achieved at present. This is done by comparing the current situation (e.g., the level of cleanliness measured, the resources used) with the situation that would allow the objective to be met. This makes it easy to identify the levers of action that can be used to remove these bottlenecks.
Implement the action levers and measure the results.
Correct and iterate if necessary until the expected result is achieved.
In our opinion, it is important to close the improvement project when the objective has been reached, even if it means redefining a new objective with higher expectations. This is one of the principles of "agile" methods, which allows to keep a manageable number of improvement projects and to regularly re-prioritize them, if necessary in agreement with the political principals.

Which indicators should be chosen for street cleaning management?

The mission of urban cleaning is to maintain a level of cleanliness that satisfies users, optimizes the use of resources and reduces the impact on the environment. For the Geneva Clean City Lab, we have introduced indicators to measure performance and progress on these three dimensions. We have added a fourth dimension for employee motivation. Indeed, the work of urban cleanliness is often not valued. However, the involvement of employees is essential to the quality of the work, and even more so to the success of any improvement process.

The dashboard must remain simple, understandable and indicate the performance of each aspect of the mission. We differentiate between key performance indicators (KPIs), which are the high-level indicators, and the many other measures that can be used to analyze and track the multiple components of street cleaning or the performance of a specific action lever. For example, a waste management service could track the availability of their vehicles, or the fill rate of its litter garbage cans, indicators that we have not included in the street cleaning matrix.

We have selected metrics that can be easily acquired. For example, the costs of cleaning are generally not directly accessible at the municipal accounting level, let alone at the cleaning department level. We have replaced them with labor and machine hours, which are available and representative indicators of these costs.

Mission and KPI	Measurement method
Cleanliness
Cleanliness index Number of complaints	Clean City Index monitoring City complaint system
Resources and costs Labour hours Machine hours	City HR system Manual records by drivers
Environmental impact Energy consumption (litres of diesel) Water consumption Quantity of cigarette butts	Manual records by drivers Road department records Clean City Index monitoring
Employee motivation Employee satisfaction Absenteeism	Questionnaire to all employees City HR system

Performance of the proposed method

Continuous measurement of urban cleanliness enables results-based management of operational cleaning and prevention activities. It is essential for cleaning services to measure the quality of their service, to which they can commit objectively.

It also provides a new tool for managing teams to drive continuous improvement projects in urban cleaning organizations. Within the framework of the Geneva Clean City Lab, the Voirie Ville Propre and Cortexia teams have developed and tested a method that has proven to be very effective.

The three axes of the urban cleaning mission: cleanliness, resources and environmental footprint, as well as employee satisfaction, are measured by objective indicators (KPIs). The city and the street cleaning department define the objectives for their mission. The waste management teams are involved in identifying the obstacles to achieving these objectives. This way of establishing root causes greatly simplifies the search for a solution.

The involvement of teams in improving the quality of their work is a source of satisfaction for employees. It also guarantees pragmatic solutions, supported by the teams and which ensure measurable results.

The method is a simple tool made available to all cities that wish to adopt it, improve it and share their experiences.

Notes

Legat, Dieter (2016). "Surf the Waves of Opportunity: Lead your business to operational excellence with five things done right", Books on demand, 214 pages.

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