96 | Business World Magazine |
June 2013
Since it was established a little more than
ten years ago, the NTHCL has grown into
an operation comprised by a staff just shy of
250 people who process more than 38 mil-
lion pounds of laundry per year, but make
no mistake, this is nothing like the custom-
ary sort, wash, dry and fold process. As a
healthcare laundry, NTHCL operations are
governed by a plethora of protocols which
dictate not only the way fabrics are sorted
and cleaned, but also the layout of staging
areas, the way water is used, the way air cir-
culates through the plant and much more in
the way of procedural processes. Healthcare
laundries operate under very different con-
ditions than their commercial laundry coun-
terparts, and as NTHCL General Manager
David Hernandez explains, the processing
of this laundry has to result in a level of
clean far above and beyond the capabilities
of traditional cleaners. “There simply can be
no compromise on quality or following the
rules, because the consequences for mistakes
are too great,” says Hernandez.