Sentence:  Accepting that incidents will always happen, what then matters is how quickly we can <WSD>clear up</WSD> the mess, something British Rail was better at. [...] I would turn up as quickly as possible in the on-call Hillman Avenger and assess how quickly we could <WSD>clear up</WSD>. 
Meaning of the word marked with <WSD> tags:  (transitive) To clean up.