SEPANG, March 27 — Ten thousand toilet rolls, 1,000 litres of cleaning liquid, 400 litres of hand soap.

The list is just one aspect of the length Sepang International Circuit (SIC) is taking to ensure race weekend is ready to receive droves of spectators, teams and drivers during the Formula 1 Petronas Malaysia Grand Prix.

It also has 150 cleaners to keep the grandstand area and F1 Village clean.

Overall, there are 500 workers daily during the three-day race weekend involved in other aspects of cleaning and maintaining the circuit.

This is besides the landscaping and pest control work.

After the day is done, they clean up from 7pm to 3am to ensure all is perfect for the next day.

“We need to make sure we have a clean image,” said SIC senior facilities manager V. Elenggo.

He said up to 150 tonnes of rubbish from Friday to Saturday will be collected with 60 per cent of it recyclable.

“We can make more than 20 trips a day to put the rubbish collected at a dumping ground before sending it off,” he said.

There is also a dedicated team to collect rubbish every hour during down times and this can move up to every half hour.

Elenggo, who left Qatar Sports City to return home last year, said he and his staff have to make sure everything electrical, mechanical and civil are up to date. 

They outsource the cleaning work to a company, which was recently issued with a KPI to ensure everything was up to standard.

“We will deduct their payment if it is not,” said the 46-year-old who holds a Master’s in facilities management and has been in the business for 16 years.

Among the touch-ups that were done for this year was repainting the seats at the grandstand and the tunnels from the paddock to the mall area of the circuit.

About RM5 million was also spent to upgrade the television system from analogue to HD.

He said it was important to have a quick response time in case anything went wrong.

“It is not easy to handle and everyone has been working up to 18 hours a day for the past three weeks,” he said.

He said implementing green technology was something he and SIC chief executive officer Datuk Razlan Razali would like at the circuit.

“It is great I have a dedicated team. There is even a woman who is about eight months pregnant and she is still coming to work. She’s a workaholic,” he said.