Offices, retail & restaurants
The ordinary buildings. Most of what we do, and the reason the routes exist at all.
What it is
This is the bulk of it. Most commercial cleaning is not a data center or a surgical suite — it is an accounting firm on the second floor, a credit union branch, a furniture showroom, a dental office, an insurance agency, a dining room that closes at ten. These buildings do not need a specialist method. They need the same person turning up, doing what the scope says, and locking the door properly, several hundred times a year.
That sounds like the easy version and it is actually the hard one, because it is entirely a consistency problem. Anyone can clean an office well once. The difficulty is the four hundredth time, on a Tuesday in February, when nobody is watching and the person who cleaned it the first time left the industry eight months ago. Which is the whole reason our turnover figure is the number we lead with rather than a list of equipment.
The second thing that decides these accounts is restrooms and floors. Almost every complaint in a small commercial building is one of those two. Everything else — dusting, glass, trash — matters, but nobody calls their landlord about a dusty ledge.
The third is the frequency actually matching the building. Plenty of offices are cleaned five nights a week that need three, and plenty of busy branches are cleaned twice that need five. We would rather write the frequency the building needs and be cheaper than the alternative, than sell nights that do nothing.
What we clean
Every visit
- Restrooms cleaned and disinfected, dispensers restocked, floors mopped to the corners
- Trash and recycling emptied and liners replaced
- Break rooms and kitchens: counters, tables, sink, appliance exteriors, floor
- Floors vacuumed or swept and damp-mopped to their type
- Entry glass and interior glass at hand height; entry mats cleaned and, in winter, managed hard
- Desks, counters and touch points wiped — door handles, switches, rails, shared equipment
On a rotation
- High dusting: ledges, sills, vents, light fittings, tops of partitions and cabinets
- Baseboards, door frames and edges — where a building visibly ages if nobody does them
- Interior glass in full, including partitions and display cases
- Appliance interiors, where that is on the scope
- Detail work in low-traffic rooms that do not need nightly attention
Retail and dining specifics
- Sales-floor hard floors cleaned to type; fixtures, display bases and glass kept clear of prints
- Fitting rooms, mirrors and seating
- Dining rooms: tables, chair legs and bases, booth seating, banquettes and the floor under all of it
- Front-of-house restrooms held to a standard that matches the dining room, which is where most restaurants lose people
- Entry, vestibule and exterior glass — a retail entrance is judged before anyone walks through it
- Dining rooms, not kitchens. Commercial kitchen exhaust and hood cleaning is a separate trade with its own certification and inspection regime, and we do not claim it. Kitchen floors and back-of-house hard surfaces can be on the scope; the hood system is somebody else's job and we will say so.
Programmed and seasonal
- Carpet deep cleaned on a cycle, traffic lanes more often
- Hard floors stripped and refinished to the finish they carry
- Window cleaning inside and out on a schedule
- Power washing of entries, sidewalks and dumpster areas
- Restroom and cleaning supplies delivered on the cleaning schedule, so nothing runs out between orders
How service works here
Held back for review: this part of Build4 named a customer or a person, or carried a figure, so it was held back. It is listed in the doorway ledger.
Getting started
- Walkthrough, about twenty minutes for a typical office or store. We look at restrooms, floor type and traffic, because those three set the price.
- Written scope and a flat monthly price, with the frequency we think the building needs and why.
- Start. Keys, alarm and access arranged, a supervisor on the first shift, and a check-in after the first two weeks.
- Ongoing. Scheduled inspections, a named account manager, and changes handled without renegotiating the contract.