ISSA/INTERCLEAN Show, 8 to 11 May 2012, Amsterdam

ISSA/INTERCLEAN Amsterdam 2012 will present a number of educational and highly topical seminars, notably focusing on world hygiene issues and the need to train suitably skilled operators.

As well as offering an opportunity to learn from international experts, the seminars will be complemented with roundtable sessions ‘to discuss the subjects with like-minded peers, providing real food for thought and the most important and challenging issues facing the industry’.

Hosted, appropriately, by the World Federation of Building Service Contractors and the ISSA, ‘Cleaning in the 21st Century’ will be led by keynote speaker Professor Didier Pettit of the World Health Organisation.

He will be focusing on the impact that cleaning can have on the risk and spread of infection in the general environment. This seminar will include a roundtable discussion and address issues such as ‘’life after chlorine’, the impact of hygiene in the prevention of disease and the importance of hand and surface hygiene.

Recognising that an ageing population puts added strain on the cleaning industry’s quest for workers and fresh talent, a seminar titled ‘New Ways of working and the Effect on the Cleaning Industry’ is most topical.

Its keynote speaker will be Dirk W. Bijl, ambassador of the New Way of Working (NWoW). He is a former IT expert with Microsoft, HP, Oracle and Cap Gemini and author of three books including Journey towards the New Way of Working.

‘The new way of working means that people can work how, where, when and with whom they prefer. The main goal is to work more efficient and effective and to enable a higher level of employee satisfaction. The new way of working changes the workplace, the way we structure the organisation, the flow of work processes, and also the way we use technology and the workspace. Therefore it is important to develop an integrated approach in which the organisation, technology and workspace work together to achieve the goals.’

The ISSA/INTERCLEAN organiser points out that ‘experts argue that many of the elaborate and expensive actions now being considered to stop global warming will cost hundreds of billions of dollars, are often based on emotional rather than strictly scientific assumptions, and may very well have little impact on the world’s temperature for hundreds of years.’

The ‘Sustainability in Cleaning, the Sceptical approach’ seminar will present a sceptical approach to sustainability and consider other ways of thinking on global warming that believes panic is neither warranted nor a constructive place from which to deal with any of humanity’s problems, not just global warming.

‘Rather than starting with the most radical procedures, people like Bjorn Lomborg argue that we should first focus our resources on more immediate concerns, such as fighting malaria and HIV/AIDS and assuring and maintaining a safe, fresh water supply-which can be addressed at a fraction of the cost and save millions of lives within our lifetime. He asks why the debate over climate change has stifled rational dialogue and killed meaningful dissent.’

Other seminars include ‘Doing business in a culturally diverse marketplace’; ‘Facility Management and the cleaning industry’; and ‘Certification, training and labelling in the cleaning industry’.

For more information, go to www.amsterdam.issainterclean.com