March 1, 2006 - Lincolnwood, IL, USA - ISSA, the leading association for the cleaning industry worldwide, recently hosted the first in a series of technical committee meetings to create a new Quality Management Standard that will help facility service providers (FSPs) develop customer-centered, quality cleaning organizations.

One of the many developments made was to identify five key elements of a well-managed cleaning organization, which will be the backbone of the actual standard. Those elements are: Management, Quality Systems, Service Delivery, Human Resources, and Commitment to Health, Safety, and the Environment.

The new standard will apply to the management of an entire cleaning organization-either in-house or building service contractor (BSC)-not cleaning practices. It also will be "nonprescriptive" in that it will not address specific personnel, programs, or products, but will allow participants to choose their own method of achieving the requirements.

"The standard is being designed to accept and support the various existing association certification programs within the cleaning industry, which we believe will help reinforce their value to FSPs as resources for achieving a well-run cleaning operation," said ISSA Standards Development Manager Dan Wagner.

ISSA hosted three separate technical committee meetings February 21-24 to begin the standard development process: the Standards Development Technical Committee, the ISSA Standards Expert Technical Committee, and the Assessor Technical Committee.

"We are very encouraged by the tremendous progress that all three committees made in their first meetings, and we are fully confident that this consensus-based process will result in a highly valuable standard that will help improve the industry's level of professionalism," said ISSA Executive Director John Garfinkel.