With nearly 8,500 staff, St George’s is the largest healthcare provider in southwest London. Its main site is St George’s Hospital Tooting which has over 1,000 beds and is also one of the UK’s largest teaching hospitals. Catering facilities for staff and visitors includes Ingredients Restaurant, managed by St George's University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust Restaurant Manager, Aaron Madeira.
“Ingredients can serve up to 650 customers per day,” says Madeira. “Our old dishwashing machine was 15 years old and had become difficult to maintain.”
St George’s tendered two contracts for warewashing at the same time. A MEIKO M-iQ flight dishwasher was selected for Ingredients Restaurant and MEIKO FV40.2 undercounter machines with Thermal Disinfection for its ward warewashing requirements. The process took less than four months from tender to installation. “At Ingredients, I was impressed with the speed the new system was installed,” says Madeira. “The old machine was removed from our first-floor location and the new MEIKO (flight dishwasher) machine installed within 15 days and this included new floors, new drains and ceiling and adding a macerator.
“I noticed very quickly that we use much less chemicals than previously, around half as much."
“The machine’s control system is also much more advanced. The machine was not working but we had an error code on the control screen and were able to fix this with a phone call to MEIKO Technical Services. The control system also helps locate and identify problems, which means if an engineer is required to come to site, they know which area of the machine has the fault, which speeds things up. The blue colour-coded parts also make cleaning and supervision much easier."
“I have been impressed with the machine and its results.
The contract with MEIKO also includes a 5-year planned preventative maintenance deal, which covers us for regular maintenance and breakdown support.”
Operating the M-iQ flight dishwasher is Catering Assistant Mrs. Jean Chutkhan. “We have a regular daily schedule for looking after the machine which includes checking the chemicals, salt in the softener and cleaning the machine itself. I have operated both the old and the new machine and this is much better, for washing results but also it is much easier to clean and maintain. The control panel is easy to understand; it tells you when it has finished the self-cleaning program, so we can begin the manual cleaning. The blue colour-coding system is very modern and the items such as wash arms click in and out easily.”
