WHAT YOUR CLEANING CONTRACT HIDES

Walk into any building and you know within five seconds whether it’s well run. Nobody reads the by-laws on their way through the foyer; they look at the carpet, the lift buttons, the bin room door propped open with last week’s smell still lingering.

Most committees only look closely at their cleaning contract when something’s gone wrong: a complaint at the AGM, a resale falling through over a scruffy lobby, a “but I thought that was included” moment mid-dispute. By then it’s too late to ask the questions that would have avoided it.

Here are five questions worth asking before the next renewal lands on the agenda.

Who Actually Cleans Our Building?

A revolving door of cleaners means residents are perpetually dealing with strangers who don’t know the building’s quirks: which lift mirror smudges easily, which bin room door sticks, which resident always has a question.

Staff turnover is one of the biggest hidden drivers of inconsistent cleaning, and it rarely shows up in a proposal. Ask your provider how long their cleaners typically stay on a site, and what they do to keep the same team on your building rather than rotating people through it.

What Exactly Are We Paying For?

“Standard strata clean” does a lot of heavy lifting in most contracts, and it pays to know exactly what sits inside and outside it.

Daily or routine strata cleaning of lobbies, lifts and stairwells is usually the baseline. Periodic services, such as carpet steam cleaning, pressure cleaning of car parks and driveways, window cleaning and bin room deep cleans, are often quoted separately and not always included by default. Get the specifics itemised in writing before someone discovers the gap mid-dispute.

What Happens After Hours?

Flooding and vandalism have a habit of happening at 11pm on a Saturday, not 11am on a Tuesday.

Ask who actually picks up the phone after hours, and whether they can mobilise a team or just take a message. A provider without a genuine emergency response plan passes that risk straight back to the building manager, usually at the worst possible time.

How Do We Know the Work Was Done?

Vague reassurances don’t hold up at an AGM. Photo evidence, digital audits and regular inspections do.

This is also where compliance sits, not off to the side of it. A provider working across shared residential spaces should be able to show how it handles infection prevention and Work Health and Safety (WH&S) requirements as a matter of course, rather than needing the committee to raise it. In mixed-use buildings that combine residential strata with medical or commercial tenancies, expectations can differ floor to floor, so it’s worth confirming the provider understands that distinction.

Has Our Schedule Kept Pace?

There’s no universal answer to how often a building should be cleaned, only the right answer for that building, at this point in its life.

A small, low-traffic complex might run well on a weekly service. A high-rise with a pool, gym and busy lobby usually needs daily or near-daily attention to keep up with foot traffic. Queensland’s wet season adds another variable: mud, humidity and tracked-in debris can turn an adequate schedule into a visibly inadequate one almost overnight. The common mistake isn’t picking the wrong frequency at the start; it’s never revisiting it as occupancy or amenities change.

Before The Next Renewal

Bring these questions to the meeting and ask the current or prospective provider to answer each one in writing:

• Who is cleaning our building, and how long do they tend to stay?
• What’s included in daily, weekly and deep-clean visits?
• Who answers after-hours calls, and what can they actually do?
• How is quality reported back to the committee, and how often?
• When did we last check that our cleaning frequency still matches how the building is used?

A provider who can answer all five clearly is one worth keeping.

This article is general guidance for strata committees and doesn’t take the place of advice tailored to a specific building or contract.

Article Contributed by Coraline Dufroux, CEO at Innova Services Group.

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