When Taylor Swift took to the stage during her recent UK tour, the ground quite literally moved. Earth tremors were detected about nine kilometres from the Edinburgh venue. This follows a similar seismic event at one of her US shows the previous year. These kinds of mass gatherings—which can attract ground-shaking crowds in the hundreds of thousands—aren’t just a threat to the plasterwork. In our post-COVID world, we are increasingly aware of the challenges they present to those responsible for cleaning and hygiene at large-scale venues.

As Australia and New Zealand look ahead to a busy few months of footy, tennis, and Coldplay, infection control will be a hot topic for those organising these events. Cleaning contractors such as Quayclean, who this year secured the contract for Melbourne’s legendary MCG, are on the frontline when it comes to breaking the chain of transmission. Quayclean CEO Mark Piwkowski says that, in the wake of the pandemic, a greater awareness of hygiene control has become the new normal.

“It’s certainly more heightened than ever before,” Piwkowski says. “From a cleaning perspective, we’ve seen a greater focus on products that contribute to sanitisation and hygiene, particularly at touchpoints such as basins, ledges, and doors. HEPA filters in vacuums are now common practice.”

The industry itself has developed a strong awareness and understanding of hygiene cleaning that supports infection control.

Piwkowski notes that these changes to cleaning practices at larger venues seem to be driven more by the cleaning industry than by clients.

“When it comes to viruses and infections, customers’ expectations have not necessarily changed, but awareness has changed the industry. Customers’ expectations are very focused on higher standards of site presentation, cleanliness, and added value. The industry itself has developed a great awareness and knowledge of hygiene cleaning that supports infection control.”

Major venues such as the MCG are leading the charge when it comes to hygiene in public spaces, Piwkowski says, as they are willing to invest in high standards of cleaning. Meanwhile, other facilities—such as some educational campuses—are being forced to cut costs. It can be challenging for contractors to balance the desire for economy with the need to maintain hygiene in shared spaces.

Behind the scenes

Dr Gavin Macgregor-Skinner, Senior Director of the Global Biorisk Advisory Council (GBAC), a division of ISSA, says that infection prevention at mass events has become a booming industry, but the focus tends to be more on protecting players and performers than the attendees.

“If you’re talking about the players and their support staff, things have changed immensely,” Macgregor-Skinner says. Major venues have implemented a wide range of measures to protect the health and safety of professional athletes in locker rooms as well as important guests in corporate boxes and suites.

“There’s been a lot more focus this year on indoor air quality, especially in locker rooms. Many locker rooms in our stadiums were built years ago with very poor or inadequate ventilation. We’ve also been talking to teams like the Philadelphia Eagles about the types of chemicals they’re using on their gym equipment because people sweat on them. If you’re using toxic chemicals in your locker rooms, that just puts toxic chemicals on your skin. They changed it overnight—all the toxic chemicals are out, and we’re now using cleaning products with safer ingredients.”

The recent Olympics, in which several athletes contracted COVID-19, highlighted the criticism those responsible for mass venues and the athletes competing in them can face if things don’t go as planned. US sprinter Noah Lyles, for example, collapsed during the 200m final after testing positive.

“If you look at Noah Lyles, people wanted to know how that happened. That comes down to management. Someone didn’t do their risk assessment or didn’t manage the system effectively to reduce all the risks of him getting infected.”

Having worked with big-name teams and competitors across a range of sports from baseball to Formula One, Macgregor-Skinner has seen how effective infection control means having broad-ranging hygiene systems in place, covering everything from surfaces to air quality.

“We focus on cleaning for health, cleaning surfaces and measuring air quality. There’s new research showing that air pollution or poor air quality can actually affect a player’s professional performance. You want to create a whole systems approach so that when they come to training, it’s safe. When they go home, it’s safe.”

When it comes to the attendees, given the size of the crowds at major sporting events (or Taylor Swift concerts), keeping a venue in a hygienic condition is a major logistical exercise. Many venues will only have a narrow gap between games or gigs.

“I’ve got a stadium at the moment that has 70,000 fans every game,” Macgregor-Skinner says. “We have about 150 cleaners working there, and it takes about 16 hours to do it. I think people underestimate what 70,000 fans in a stadium actually leave behind. Logistically, it’s an enormous challenge, but the operation managers of the stadiums and the cleaning companies do an amazing job.”

That said, infection control at mass gatherings has its limits. Even where air conditioning with HEPA filtering is available, when you gather earth-shaking numbers of people in a single venue, it’s inevitable that transmission will occur.

Piwkowski says there’s really only one simple solution.

“I think the best method of hygiene control, on an individual level, continues to be if you’re unwell, don’t present yourself,” Piwkowski says. “And if you’re unwell and you have to be in a public environment, at least wear a mask.”

Macgregor-Skinner says it’s important to distinguish between infection control during an event when large crowds are in close contact, and infection control before and after an event, where venues and cleaning contractors are working to reduce contamination.

“Infection transmission increases when you’re in a crowd, but infection transmission continues if you haven’t cleaned properly. That’s why we focus on cleaning for health and safety.”

By way of illustration, one venue saw an extended outbreak of norovirus that was eventually traced to a single dirty vacuum cleaner.

“It was a wedding, and someone vomited in the hotel lobby at three o’clock in the afternoon,” Macgregor-Skinner says. “They went and grabbed a vacuum cleaner to clean up the vomit but never cleaned the vacuum cleaner. Over the next 30 days, they had another nine events, and more than 350 people got sick.”

While cleaning companies and workers at mass gathering event facilities tend to achieve high-quality cleaning services, Macgregor-Skinner says it’s essential that they are educated and trained to understand cleaning products, methods, and materials—and how to maintain and evaluate their effects. When it comes to cleaning buildings and equipment used by professional athletes, cleaners need to know the health issues that cleaning products and processes can create as well as how to clean without leaving chemical residues or affecting indoor air quality.

“Cleaning for mass gatherings demands planning, preparation, communication, collaboration, and the ability to quickly adapt. The way you can get to that level of professionalism in your cleaning business is through proper education, training, and certification.”

Our focus as we move forward, and as we work to make the industry better recognised as professional, is to take lessons from other managers.

From the outside in

Macgregor-Skinner says facilities wanting to demonstrate their commitment to supporting a high-performance cleaning and maintenance programme that provides a hygienic indoor environment should consider GBAC® STAR accreditation. This certification indicates that facilities have knowledgeable cleaning professionals trained to uphold the highest health and safety standards. Managed by the Global Biorisk Advisory Council® (GBAC), a division of ISSA, GBAC STAR helps facilities apply the science of cleaning to benefit the health, wellbeing, and performance of people. It is not about passing or failing but helping a facility focus on data-driven cleaning and improving performance. Performance can be measured by looking at both activities and outcomes.

“Our focus as we move forward, as we try to work to make the industry better recognised as being professional, is to take lessons from other managers,” Macgregor-Skinner says.

One good place for venue managers to find lessons is in the environment surrounding a stadium or arena. “Environmental managers of the outdoor space have become so good at talking about the issues, the problems, and the need for mitigation and solutions. They’ve become so aware of things like contamination of ground rivers. We want to take those principles of environmental management and apply them to the complex situation of an indoor space with indoor air quality, as well as all the different surfaces that have to be cleaned and maintained.”

Having recently attended the Paris Olympics, Macgregor-Skinner says he was struck by how efficiently the city dealt with maintaining hygiene and cleanliness inside and outside its sporting venues. “The trash pickup was amazing. It was the cleanest I’ve ever seen. The hotels, the public transport, the stadiums. Everywhere you went was just immaculately cleaned. It was incredible.”

Piwkowski says a recent tour of sporting venues throughout Europe and the UK reinforced to him that a major public gathering event doesn’t need to present problems for hygiene or cleanliness. However, he says that the next big shift for venues hosting large games and gigs may not be infection control but sustainability.

“There’s a heightened awareness that hirers and venues need to have an understanding of how their events contribute to CO2 emissions and creating more sustainable events that limit their environmental impact. Hirers have the ability to change community and venue mindsets in this regard.”

So, while attendees at the coming summer of sport can expect a level of hygiene that protects them and the players they’re watching, they can also expect a shift towards waste reduction and more environmentally friendly behaviours. It’s an earth-shaking shift that is coming from the very top.

“Taylor Swift, when she came out to Australia, wanted to know that the venues where she was playing had a sustainable mandate in terms of how they manage waste,” Piwkowski says. “When FIFA was in Australia for the Women’s World Cup, it had a huge focus on sustainability and recycling. Coldplay, who are in Australia this summer, have taken the whole thing to another level where they want to measure the actual carbon emissions, including the waste volume generated and the recycled waste volumes, at their venues.”

Taken from the September/October issue of INCLEAN magazine.

At the 2024 ISSA Cleaning & Hygiene Expo:

• Dr Gavin Macgregor-Skinner: “What’s the Game Plan?” 11 September
• Mark Piwkowski: “The Dos and Don’ts of Cleaning Products,” 12 September
• Dr Gavin Macgregor-Skinner: “Air, Surface, Water – The Trifecta of Cleanliness,” 12 September

See cleaninghygieneexpo.issa.com for more details.

Photo by Alvin Balemesa on Unsplash.