The Princess of Wales Hospital Bridgend has installed a MEIKO M-iQ flight dishwashing system, replacing a veteran dishwashing machine from another manufacturer. The dishwash is operational from 6 am - 7.30 pm and handles ware from patient wards as well as the restaurant, which can serve 400 - 500 meals daily to a mixed audience including visitors, medical staff and university graduates on training.
Catering Services Manager, Michael Jefferies explained that the tender process to find a replacement for the previous dishwashing machine examined the environmental impact of each bidder in fine detail, including water, chemicals and energy running costs as well as ongoing maintenance costs. Reference sites were also included in the scoring process.
“MEIKO’s feedback on the tender documents provided substantial technical and in-depth information. Basically, MEIKO gave us much better-quality answers than their competitors.
“Also scoring in their favour was the positive feed-back from reference sites, including the nearby Royal Glamorgan Hospital. We knew from that visit and from our own installation and commissioning process that MEIKO engineers will be on site usually within four hours of placing a call and that the parts to fix whatever needs fixing will be on the van.
“Another key factor was the amount of time we would need to take to maintain the equipment daily. The ergonomics of these new generation machines really has improved; they are easier for staff to use, the blue colour-coding on components makes daily cleaning easier and the fact that the doors open out, not up, is much better for the staff because there is no lifting to be done.
“To cap it all, we could get as much training as we needed, as often as we needed it, from MEIKO Regional Sales Director Malcolm Pumford and Regional Sales Manager Craig Collins.
“It really has been plain sailing!”
