What to ask a commercial cleaning company before you sign

Commercial cleaning is unusually hard to compare on paper. The work happens when nobody is there to watch it, the output is the absence of a problem, and the documents tend to use the same handful of phrases whoever wrote them. Here is what we would ask if we were the ones buying.

What exactly is on the schedule, and how often

Start with frequency, per task, per area. Not how many nights a week somebody attends, but what happens on each of those nights and what happens only monthly or quarterly.

This is where two similar looking quotes usually separate. One includes periodic floor work, glass, and a restorative cycle. The other is a nightly routine with everything periodic quoted separately when it becomes urgent. Both can be reasonable. Only one of them is the number you should be comparing.

• Which tasks are nightly, which are weekly, and which are periodic.
• Whether periodic work is included in the quoted figure or billed when it comes up.
• How high traffic areas are treated differently from low traffic ones.
• What is explicitly excluded, which is often more informative than what is included.

Who covers the hours the building is open

Most commercial cleaning happens after hours, and that is the right answer for the main work. It leaves a gap. A reception area, a busy restroom or a lunch room that turns over three times a day does not stay acceptable from one evening to the next.

Day porter cover handles that running upkeep while the building is in use. Ask whether it is available, and be honest about whether your building needs it. Plenty do not. The ones that do usually know it already, because somebody in the office has quietly taken on the job.

How the standard gets checked months from now

Every cleaning arrangement is good at the start. The question is what happens in month eight, when the people who agreed the standard have moved on and the routine has quietly drifted.

Ask what the quality assurance process is, who performs it, and what happens when something is found. A programme that exists on paper and is never run is the same as no programme. What you want to hear is a specific mechanism and a named point of contact, not a reassurance.

Who actually answers the phone

When something goes wrong, and eventually something does, the thing that determines whether it is a small problem or a lasting annoyance is how quickly you reach somebody who can decide. Ask who that is. Ask whether they are the person quoting the work.

This is the honest advantage of a family owned local company, and it is worth naming plainly rather than dressing up. We are in Athens. The people quoting the work are the people who answer when something is not right.

Are consumables in or out

Hand towels, tissue, soap and can liners are either part of the arrangement or they are your problem, and the quote does not always make it obvious which. It is worth settling, because consumables are a recurring cost that can quietly exceed the difference between two quotes.

The related question is what happens when something runs out between deliveries. A supplier who also stocks consumables can usually close that gap the same week. One who does not will tell you to buy it yourself, which is fine as long as you knew that going in.

What the changeover looks like

If you already have a cleaner, ask how the handover is handled. Buildings are most likely to slip in the first fortnight of a new arrangement, when the incoming crew is still learning which areas take the most traffic and where everything is kept.

Does the quote fit the building or the template

A quote that arrives without anybody having walked the building is a quote for a generic building of that square footage. It might be close. It will not account for the entrance that takes all the grit, the carpet and hard floor transition that wears fastest, or the restroom that gets three times the traffic of the other two.

We will work together to devise a cleaning schedule that meets your needs and budget. That starts with looking at the actual building, which is why estimates are free and why we would rather come and see it.

One last question worth asking: can the same company keep the grounds as well. When the inside and the outside are split between two suppliers, the standards drift apart over a year. Call (256) 777-4927 or the office on (256) 232-9229.