What we have learned scoping, pricing and running cleaning contracts across the DMV and San Diego — written for the person who has to buy it, sign it, or answer for it when something is missed.
A walkthrough is free and takes half an hour, and it is the only part of buying cleaning where you have all the leverage. Here is what to use it for.
Most people who change cleaning companies waited a year longer than they meant to, because switching sounds like more trouble than the problem. It is a week of admin, and most of it can be done before you give notice.
Nobody enjoys this part, and it takes about twenty minutes. It is also the difference between an incident that is your cleaning company's problem and one that is yours.
Everybody asks the price first and almost nobody gets a straight answer. Here is what the number is actually made of, so you can tell a real quote from a guess.
In a managed building, the slowest part of hiring a cleaning company has nothing to do with cleaning. It is getting the crew through the door.
We run crews in both the DMV and San Diego County, and the scopes are not interchangeable. Here is what actually changes when the building is in California.
If your lobby looks fine at 8am and rough by 2pm, more nightly cleaning will not fix it. That is a different product.
Every day a unit sits empty costs a day's rent, and the fastest way to lose three of them is to clean it in the wrong order.
The most important line in a medical or dental cleaning scope is the one that says what the cleaners do not touch. Get it written down and the rest of the relationship is straightforward.
Post-construction cleaning is three separate jobs at three points in the schedule. Most projects budget for one of them and then wonder why the space is not photo-ready.