Most disputes about office cleaning services come down to scope. The cleaner is doing what was agreed, the tenant expected something broader, and nobody read the schedule closely enough at the start.

What standard office cleaning services include

Rubbish and recycling emptied. Kitchen and amenities cleaned. Toilets cleaned and restocked. Desks wiped where they are clear. Floors vacuumed and hard floors mopped. Glass doors and entry areas spot cleaned.

That is the baseline for most office cleaning services and it is what a per square metre rate is built around.

What is almost never included by default

Interior window cleaning above reach height. Carpet extraction. Upholstery on office chairs and soft seating. High level dusting of ducts, ceilings and light fittings. Cleaning inside kitchen appliances. Cleaning personal desk clutter.

None of these are exclusions to be annoyed about. They are periodic work, and pricing them into a nightly rate would make the nightly rate worse.

Schedule the periodic work, do not wait for a complaint

Carpets once or twice a year. Interior glass quarterly. High level and ventilation every six to twelve months. Upholstery annually. Put them in the calendar at the start of the year and the office never reaches the state where someone raises it in a meeting.

It also costs less than dealing with it reactively, because the work is scheduled rather than urgent.

Who is responsible for what

Desks are the usual grey area. Most contracts cover clear desk surfaces only, which means a desk buried in paper gets vacuumed around rather than wiped. Kitchens are the other one: cleaners empty and wipe, but nobody is contracted to deal with a fridge full of somebody else’s lunch from three weeks ago.

Neither is unreasonable, but both cause friction when they are not spelled out. A short internal note to staff about what the cleaners do and do not touch solves most of it.

Read the schedule, then walk it

The single most useful thing a facilities manager can do is walk the building with the cleaner in the first week, agree what is in and what is out, and write it down. Almost every ongoing complaint traces back to that conversation never happening.

We take on commercial and industrial sites across Auckland. Call 021 157 2350.