Hygienically Clean Audit Update: Alsco Uniforms – Sarasota

Amid a leadership change earlier this year, including the naming of seven new auditors, Textile Services Weekly recently joined an audit team at the Alsco Uniforms mixed plant in Sarasota, FL, to see how things are going.

“The new auditors are performing amazingly!” said T.J. Peterson, a 25-year industry veteran who oversees the auditing team. “We still have small issues from time to time, with such a diverse background with the auditors this was to be expected, but overall, we’re looking good! I’m quite pleased with how the program is moving forward. It has strong roots, so it was quite easy to bring it over to the group we have. It’s been quite a first year for the program being in this form, and I am looking forward to the next year. We have new auditors coming on board. We’re doing our annual training in January, and we’ve got the portals that are ever changing and expanding.”

This correspondent got a first-hand look at the Hygienically Clean certification process during the Sept. 19 audit at the Alsco Uniforms – Sarasota plant, a 50,000-square-foot (4,645-square-meter) facility. Established in 1966 as a National Linen plant, the laundry was later acquired by Alsco Uniforms. A conventional plant with 12 Ellis Corp. washer/extractors, the laundry processes 500,000 lbs. a week during high season (roughly October to Mother’s Day) with a staff of 90 employees.

We began the tour with a 9 a.m. meeting in the plant’s conference room with the auditor, Doug Story, a laundry-chemistry-veteran-turned-consultant. He was completing a review of the plant’s 500-plus page Quality Assurance (QA) Manual, which documents all the certification program requirements for operational best practices. Joining the meeting were Nancy Tree, the company’s Salt Lake City-based certifications manager; and three other branch managers: GM Delbert Duncan, Plant Manager Steve Ostermann and Safety Compliance Officer Josh Fournier. TRSA’s Samlane Ketevong, senior director of certification/accreditation, also participated in the audit.

Story described the audit walkthrough as comparable to an ISO-type on-site review. Its purpose is to confirm that the plant staff are following through on the policies and procedures documented in the QA manual. We walked through various departments from soil to clean, including fleet vehicles. At the end of the tour, we watched as Office Manager Domenica Gomez gowned up and inserted a patient gown and towel into separate plastic bags. These were sealed and placed in a FedEx box for shipment to a third-party lab for microbiological testing. The Hygienically Clean standard requires quarterly microbial testing to maintain a plant’s certified status. This includes the Sarasota plant’s Hygienically Clean Healthcare certification. Healthcare takes up about a fifth of the plant’s total throughput.

The quarterly textile testing – coupled with the three-year on-site audits – helps ensure that companies are complying with the QA manual. In some cases, the “book,” as Story referred to the QA manual, may look great, but the audit helps document compliance. “The book may be beautiful, but their plant may not follow their own book,” he says. “What you’ve got to do is go out and find out. … Well, do they comply? I know Alsco Uniforms will always do that.”

The tour took roughly three hours. One question we had was how Duncan and his team communicate the principles detailed in QA manual to production and route employees. He acknowledged that this is a challenge, especially in a multilingual environment. “It becomes a really unique thing, especially in a facility like this one here in Sarasota,” Duncan said. “We have three different languages (English, Spanish and Creole). So, we have to disseminate this across the board. We must do it in a way that makes it not as complex as 500 pages.” The key is to break out individual topics, such as bloodborne pathogen rules. “You put that out in three different languages,” he said. “You train it with three different translators. You work through the process, so everybody understands it. And you do that systematically. It’s not an overnight process. We had a year’s worth of sit-down training in different areas. We do this with every department.”

The Alsco Uniforms – Sarasota mixed plant passed its three-year audit, becoming the company’s 44th certified plant. They can expect the results of the textile testing early next month, or sooner, Ketevong says. She noted that in addition to the new auditors, the launch of a new portal in March has cut waiting times to schedule audits.

Early next year, Hygienically Clean plans to introduce a laundry safety certification program. Ketevong will lead that effort, along with safety consultant Brian Varner, who also serves as a Hygienically Clean auditor. The safety certification will help companies avoid fines and citations – while lowering the risk of incidents. “It would be a great way to prepare,” says Story of the prospect of surprise inspections by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). He added that the new Hygienically Clean Safety certification will offer companies a “second set of eyes” to ensure compliance with OSHA mandates. Contact Ketevong at sketevong@trsa.org for details. Click here for more on Hygienically Clean certification.