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Bob Allan delivered a talk entitled “Getting cleanroom cleaning right” at the International Society for Pharmaceutical Engineering (ISPE) Australasian Division Meetings in Sydney and Melbourne on 16 and 17 September. He asked the audience to consider the lengths that they have gone to in creating an operational cleanroom --- from design through to the building phase, followed by certification and full production. Should cleaning their facility be taken any less seriously? Regardless of whether cleaning is done in-house or outsourced, whoever cleans their cleanroom must have the Cleanroom Mindset. No shortcuts at any stage are acceptable. Bob discussed matching the cleaning to the type of service (post-construction, pre-certification and routine), the ISO Class and the sterility level of the room. The audience particularly agreed with his point that post-construction cleaning is an area not well covered by standard operating procedures or scopes of works. After listing 20 different types of cleanrooms BACS has serviced, Bob shared his most confronting --- cleaning mould from rollers in an active morgue.
Bob opened his presentation by explaining how BACS transitioned from a data centre cleaner to a cleanroom cleaner. In the early 1980s, BACS started cleaning computer environments to remove dust that interfered with the fly heights of read-write heads, only 0.0038 micron above the computer media. Because the Australian IT industry was searching for something to clean these read-write heads with, BACS began distributing Texwipe TechniCloth® wipers shortly thereafter. Through this relationship with Texwipe, a worldwide leader in contamination control supplies and critical cleaning products, Bob leveraged the ability to clean IT controlled environments to secure his first cleanroom cleaning contract in 1992, controlling particulates in the area where repeaters for the Trans-Tasman submarine telecommunications cable were being manufactured. During his presentation, Bob shared other first-hand experiences gathered over 22 years of cleaning critical environments of all sizes and classes around Australia, from non-sterile ISO Class 9 up to sterile Grade B pharmaceutical and research facilities.
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