Spend 10 minutes walking the property for a janitorial walkthrough. Count the rooms, restrooms, and workstations. Identify problem areas that need service. Additionally, count the number of trash locations, glass, and other items that may need service. This makes the process of scoping services easier. Clear scope equals less arguments about service and more accurate quotes.
What Should You Bring to a Janitorial Walkthrough?
An inspection packet isn’t necessary, but you should bring enough information for the cleaning company to get a basic understanding of the building to provide service, and enough detail to compare quotes to other providers.
Bring:
- A rough list of rooms and work areas
- Restrooms
- Preferred frequency of cleaning
- Areas of heavy traffic
- Trouble spots
- Any special requirements to access different areas of the building
- Expectations for service
Come Back Clean provides or encourages a walkthrough before quoting commercial work to gain a better understanding of the specific service areas for each office location. Published office cleaning services include work in offices, lobbies, conference rooms, restrooms and break rooms and floors, and trash and entrance glass.
The purpose of the walkthrough is to make the plan for service specific.
Check:
- Interior Entry Glass and Doors
- Handles
- Other Touchpoints
- Lobby Flooring
- Front Desk Surfaces
- Trash Receptacles
- Areas that get Visibly Dirtier than the Rest of the Office
(Come Back Clean's published office cleaning services scope includes entrance glass, trash, surface dusting, tidying, spot vacuuming, and spot mopping during service visits.)
Minutes 3-4: Hallways and Common Areas
Walk the actual routes employees use.
Look for:
- High-traffic floor paths
- Interior Glass Doors
- Light switches
- Door Handles
- Common Surfaces
- Stairwells, if the facility has them
Don’t assume all shared surfaces require the same service frequency. A walkthrough should define the highest used and determine the business expectation of cleanliness.
Minutes 5-6: Restrooms
A quick head count does not define restroom cleaning needs.
Record:
- Number of restrooms
- Number of fixtures
- Trash locations
- Sink and counter areas
- Mirrors
- Floor type
- Paper and soap dispensers
- Who is responsible for restocking?
(Come Back Clean's office cleaning services scope includes restroom trash, mirrors, sinks, counters, and floors, as well as restocking tissues, towels and hand soap.)
Minutes 7-8: Breakroom
Not all breakrooms are created equal. Consider breakroom usage when assessing breakroom cleaning needs.
Check:
- Counters
- Sink
- Appliances
- Tables and chairs
- Trash and recycling
- Floors
- Surfaces near trash
A breakroom with heavy use can be a larger cleaning concern than an empty breakroom.
Minutes 9-10: Offices and Conference Rooms
A large empty room can require less cleaning than a number of smaller, used rooms. Count the number of used rooms to help set your cleaning expectations.
Look at:
- Private offices
- Cubicles or workstations
- Conference rooms
- Desktops or other horizontal surfaces
- Chairs
- Carpet and hard flooring
- Trash cans
- Interior glass
- Blinds
- Drinking fountains or coolers
The goal is to leave the walkthrough with numbers instead of phrases like “a normal-sized office.”
Janitorial Walkthrough Tally Sheet
Use this during the walkthrough so each janitorial company is quoting the same facility.
- Offices: Record the count and any priorities.
- Cubicles / Workstations: Record the count and any priorities.
- Conference Rooms: Record the count and any priorities.
- Restrooms: Record the count and any priorities.
- Breakrooms / Kitchens: Record the count and any priorities.
- Blinds: Record the count and any priorities.
- Drinking Fountains / Coolers: Record the count and any priorities.
- Extra Trash Receptacles: Record the count and any priorities.
- Glass Entry Doors: Record the count and any priorities.
- Stairwells: Record the count and any priorities.
Do not use the tally only to count rooms.
Use your notes to document the things that affect the scope. A restroom near a public lobby may have a different use pattern from a staff-only restroom. A glass entry may need more attention than an interior door that is rarely touched.
A walkthrough helps to distinguish between a routine office cleaning and other types of facility cleaning services that may involve larger, more complex buildings and public areas.
What Should You Ask Before You Get Quoted?
What is included at each service level? What costs extra? Who handles supplies and access to the building? How are changes in scope communicated? Be sure your priorities and schedule are understood. The best quotes are based on your facility.
A quote should provide more than a total cost.
You should recognize what transpires each visit, what happens weekly or month-to-month, and what's outside the quoted range.
Take Come Back Clean's office cleaning service page for example. They separate work tasks into three categories: service visit work, weekly work, and monthly work. Daily or service visit work includes duties such as trash removal, surface dusting of horizontal surfaces, glass doors, restrooms, and breakrooms, to name a few. Blinds and full vacuuming of carpets and dust ruffing of vertical surfaces are done at varying intervals.
An interesting question from the current version of this article is:
“If you had to choose three priorities for our office, what would they be?”
It shifts the focus away from an endless checklist and toward the areas that actually motivate the plan.
Grant's brief states the three questions Grant asks personally during his walkthroughs need to be included. They are not in the confirmed Come Back Clean source materials, so they need to be omitted.
[VERIFY WITH GRANT BEFORE PUBLISHING: Include the three questions Grant personally asks during walkthroughs, using his own wording.]
How Should You Determine the Frequency of Cleanings?
Make the determination based on the facility not the price.
COME BACK CLEAN OFFERS WEEKLY, BIWEEKLY OR MULTIPLE TIMES PER WEEK OFFICE CLEANING. THE TASK LIST ON THE WEBSITE DISTRIBUTES WORK THAT OCCURS DAILY VERSUS WEEKLY VERSUS MONTHLY.
The pertinent questions are:
- How quickly do restrooms get used?
- How quickly do break rooms get used?
- Are clients coming to the office daily?
- How quickly do entrance mats and glass get used?
An office with low client interaction may not need the same schedule as a high client interaction office.
The goal of the site visits should be to allow the cleaning company to scope the work based on the conditions of the building rather than applying the same scope to every building.
Baton Rouge and Lafayette: Access, After Hours and Parking
The scheduling difference is typically not Baton Rouge versus Lafayette. It is the type of building you occupy.
A commercial walkthrough should let the cleaning company know when they can access the facility and where they can park.
In Baton Rouge, it may mean verifying access procedures to specific offices or commercial properties to finalize a quote. Come Back Clean has information about Baton Rouge and Baton Rouge area businesses may want to start there for their local service business research.
The same is true in Lafayette.
Ask about:
- Access to exterior doors or suite
- Alarm procedures
- Keys, cards, or access codes
- Parking for cleaning staff
- Elevators or stairwells
- Areas of the property that are inaccessible during business hours
- The earliest and latest service times
From what we understand, Clean Back's verified commercial information permits cleaning to occur after business hours. However, Clean Back does not have a standardized after-hours schedule. The specific property would need to be assessed.
It's important to understand the distinction, "after-hours cleaning" does not mean the same thing for every office in Baton Rouge or Lafayette.
Quality Control: What Happens After the First Cleaning?
The first cleaning is not the best test of a janitorial company.
The tenth is.
A strong scope should allow management to evaluate the cleaning against what was actually agreed, as opposed to relying on memory or subjective impressions.
For example, if the scope states a restroom task is to be performed on each visit, management can assess if it was completed. If the scope states that blinds are to be cleaned monthly, management cannot treat the blinds as a weekly task and make a complaint if they are not cleaned.
For commercial quality control, Come Back Clean has stated that complaints should not be filed unless the scope has been changed. Performance should be assessed against the agreed scope, and misses should be documented.
The three components of the simplest quality-control system are:
- A written scope
- A named point of contact
- A defined process for handling repeated misses or changes to the building
When an office adds or changes 20 workstations or opens an additional restroom, and/or the cleaning volume or traffic changes substantially, scope has changed and needs to be addressed.
How Come Back Clean Approaches Janitorial and Office Cleaning
Come Back Clean has a different approach to office cleaning services. Before providing a quote, they first perform a walkthrough. The purpose of the walkthrough is to understand the square footage, layout, and to pinpoint the areas in the building that require cleaning.
In office buildings, decisions need to be made about the level of cleaning for items that aren’t in every single visit (e.g., weekly, monthly, etc.) The same holds true for other elements of the facility (e.g., conference rooms, restrooms, kitchens, fitness centers, client areas, and so on).
Also, Come Back Clean will provide facility cleaning services, which requires a different walkthrough and quote.
There is an honest limitation here: Come Back Clean does not provide one universal janitorial price or one standard commercial cleaning rate for each building.
That would be contrary to the purpose of the walkthrough.
The scope needs to be defined to provide a quote, but the quote is meaningless without a defined scope.
How Long Does a Janitorial Walkthrough Take?
A walkthrough of a small office typically takes no longer than 10 minutes to identify the major scope issues. Larger facilities or more complex buildings may require more time. The goal is to walk through the building to collect the information necessary to allow the cleaning company to write a scope of work and bid the project.
What Information Does a Cleaning Company Need to Write a Bid?
To write a bid, the cleaning company needs to have a general sense of the layout and the square footage of the facility, the number of rooms, the level of use of the restrooms, the needs of the breakroom, the type of flooring, the location of trash, the service frequency, the access, and the unique requirements of the cleaning scope. Come Back Clean, specifically, needs to see the space in order to understand the layout and determine the level of service required. Once that happens, they can provide a bid.
What Is the Difference Between Janitorial Service and Office Cleaning?
There really is no difference. Typically, Janitorial Services is used to describe the ongoing cleaning of an office building and Office Cleaning is used to describe the same service for an office. The important question is not the label. It is the room definitions, the tasks, and the service frequencies.
How Often Should an Office Be Professionally Cleaned?
Each office is different. Come Back Clean offers professional office cleaning on a weekly, biweekly, and multiple times per week basis. Decide what level of service is required for your office based on use, visitor traffic, restroom usage and breakroom usage. Don't just base your service decision on cost.
Who Provides Restroom Paper Products and Soap?
Who's responsible for it should be determined during the walkthrough. Come Back Clean's scope of office cleaning includes restocking tissue and soap, but the agreement must confirm who is providing consumables, where the replacement inventory is stored, and which areas are included in the restocking responsibility.
Can Commercial Cleaning Be Done After Business Hours?
It can be done if the scope and building access is arranged. Come Back Clean does not have a universal after-hours cleaning schedule for its commercial customers. It is important to discuss during the walkthrough when the cleaners will have access, how codes/keys will be transferred, parking, what times the alarm will be set, and if there are any periods when the facility will not be accessible to cleaners.
How Do I Compare Janitorial Companies Fairly?
Treat each company equally. Provide the same information and ask for a quote for the same work scope. You must specify frequency, and determine if anything is done included, or done less frequently. You must provide the scope for which you are seeking a quote. Comparing two total costs without comparing the scope of the work quoted can make a cheaper quote look more expensive.
Book a Janitorial Walk Through for Your Business
Before you can ask, “How much does janitorial service cost?” You must walk the building.
Count your offices and your restrooms. Inspect your breakroom, flooring, entry glass, the location of your trash, blinds, fountains and the areas your employees/customers utilize the most.
After you identify the areas of concern, contact us for a quote based on your actual building.
Come Back Clean Maid Service is located in Baton Rouge, Lafayette and the surrounding service area. We provide comprehensive commercial cleaning services. Define the scope of services you would like, the location of your facility, the approximate size, and your desired service frequency and we will provide you with a proposal and answer the questions you may have.
