Well, i have seen people often use what the heck they like, despite the fact that a colour coding policy has clearly been introduced.
It can only really work if every company uses the same policy and if every cleaner agrees to stick to it. Fact is that the cleaning industry -like so many other industries- is not regulated and i personally can't see that it ever will be. Added to which, the 5 most common colours used will sometimes have to mean different things, because not all sites will have the same rooms.
For instance, i believe the current NHS coding to be RED washrooms, YELLOW, clinical, BLUE general, GREEN food areas, WHITE theatre areas. I've not been able to find the BICS suggestions. But supposing you have 5 areas, lets say a greasy factory floor instead of an operating theatre, you could pick the white for that area. Which would of course comfuse anyone who was used to cleaning operating theatres
.
However, it does of course need bearing in mind that although colour coding is good working practice, if the cleaning cloths which are being used are disposed of as soon as that area has been cleaned, then it shouldnt really matter what cloth is used. In fact, some would argue that a brand-new cloth of any colour is far more hygenic than the correct colour cloth being rinsed out and re-used. Ditto for disposable gloves.
Floor mopping is where colour-coding really needs to be enforced, because few people will rinse their mops out suffciently to allow them to be used in other areas. One of the biggest problems i have come up against on sites where mop-heads are not laundered in a washing-machine, is the use of different cleaning products being used to wash floors and residue products on the mop-head reacting with the latest choice of floor cleaner.