Hallam local and Quayclean Australia venue supervisor Chris Sageman has returned from working at some of England’s largest sporting events and venues as part of a leadership exchange program.
In partnership with CleanEvent UK, he spent six weeks working alongside Quayclean Australia contract manager Paul Pritchard where they helped operate cleaning, hygiene, waste management, disinfection, and decontamination services at major sports venues and events including Royal Ascot Racecourse, the British Formula 1 Grand Prix at Silverstone, the Old Trafford Ashes cricket test match and Tottenham Hotspur Stadium.
Mr Sageman is the venue supervisor at Rod Laver Arena and Margaret Court Arena, while Mr Pritchard is Quayclean’s contract manager at Melbourne Racing Club sites.
More than 350,000 racegoers attended the five-day Royal Ascot racing carnival, while 400,000 fans flocked to the British Formula 1 Grand Prix.
Quayclean operations executive general manager Tom Mills and CleanEvent UK operations manager Jay Adderley designed the program to develop emerging leaders’ skills and to enable them to gain further industry knowledge and insights.
They previously worked together in Australia and travelled to England to work at the 2012 London Olympic Games, have been developing the leadership exchange program following the lifting of COVID-19 restrictions.
“The exchange program is a great opportunity for identified leaders to work at big international events in another country and be able to share that knowledge with fellow leaders and the wider business on their return,” Mr Mills said.
“The program was a wonderful extension of our Quay Academy program where we seek to identify and develop authentic leaders within the business.
“It also compliments Quayclean’s commitment to the Venue Management School program through the Venue Management Association.”
He said they would be passing on the knowledge they gained in England to assist their teams back in Australia.
Mr Adderley said Mr Sageman and Mr Pritchard’s help was invaluable.
“It was amazing to have Paul and Chris over here as part of the project,” he said.
“Their insight and ideas were fantastic and helped support our busy event season.
“I look forward to sending two of our up-and-coming managers over to Australia later this year with the hopes they have the same impact.”
Quayclean chief executive Mark Piwkowski said Mr Sageman and Pritchard witnessed first-hand how labour services, equipment and waste management processes were utilised in England.
“The exchange program is about knowledge sharing so that more leaders within our business can grow and be elevated to assume more senior roles and take on greater responsibilities,” he said.
“We received fantastic formal feedback on their work with one Silverstone site manager commenting that Chris was a credit to the team and he would be honoured to work with him again.
“We thank CleanEvent UK for their exchange program partnership and we look forward to offering more leaders this exciting working opportunity in the years ahead.”
Later in the year, two CleanEvent UK staff would head to Australia where they will work at cricket test matches at the SCG and the Gabba, plus the Australian Tennis Open in Melbourne.
