Your knowledge and experience as a Property Manager are invaluable in determining the right cleaning service frequency. Trust in your expertise to ensure you’re not paying for unnecessary services.
Managing your property’s maintenance is a proactive task that goes beyond post-service inspections. Regular analysis is necessary to ensure the service frequency and scope are always aligned with the property’s current needs.
Conditions such as tenants, seasons, landscaping growth, and constantly changing employees can affect the property’s condition. Many property managers have generic frequencies and scopes that may need to be updated. The reality is many managers don’t know what frequency of service their property needs and some vendors will take advantage.
For this reason, we must do the following things to determine if the scope and frequency are proper.
1. Visit the property before the service is complete and document the conditions. Determine potential problem areas, photo document, and note them.
2. Visit the property promptly after the service to ensure your vendor addresses the problem areas. The post-check ensures we are getting a fresh start.
Remember, things accumulate on a commercial property quickly after a service visit. Ensure your post-service visit is as close to the service as possible.
3. Schedule a visit midway between services to check the property’s condition. Refer to your pictures and visit the problem areas. Note and photo-document your findings. Does the property still look acceptable at this point?
5. Revisit the property the day before the service is performed to check its condition. Note if there are any other problem areas. Refer to your pictures and photo document the condition. It’s best to match your photos to the ones taken earlier. This helps when creating a photo timeline for building a case to increase the frequency.
Tip: Talk to security guards, day porters, or anyone else who provides service on the property. Talking with them will often give you inside information that will help you understand the property better.
Notes:
* Normal buildup is inevitable; however, over time, you will be able to gauge excessive accumulation.
* Completing a few services before beginning this process would be preferable.
* It’s essential for the property to reach a maintainable level, which usually takes about three regular services.
What should you do with the information you have gathered?
Now, you have visited the property several times and have extensive knowledge of its traffic volume, where things build up, and possibly other discoveries.
Based on your inspections and the knowledge you now have, you can determine whether the frequency and scope fit.
How do we determine if the scope is a fit or not?
You have now visited the property at its dirtiest and cleanest times; this should give you perspective for your Mid-service visit. Provided the property was clean after your prompt post-service visit, your first indication would be the difference between the Post-service and Mid-service visits. Was there extensive accumulation? If so, consider increasing the frequency.
If the accumulation is acceptable, then your frequency is okay.
Example Frequency Determination Process:
If you are analyzing a twice-monthly service and your mid-service visit is one week after the cleaning, and there is already a considerable accumulation, consider a once-weekly service.
Conversely, the service frequency is likely okay if you visit a week later with little to no accumulation. After a clean mid-service visit, if you revisit the property just before the next service and it is still clean, you may be servicing too often. Consider lowering the frequency to only once monthly.
Adjusting your Scope of Work:
Determine what can be done to address any shortcomings in your service. Is the frequency good, but does the scope need to be more extensive? Were areas left out that need to be addressed? If so, can your vendor handle it without a price adjustment? Check your scope of work to ensure all your problem areas are clearly defined in your scope.
If there are areas of high traffic, do they need to be cleaned at a higher frequency?
During a monthly steam cleaning, the center has a coffee shop, yogurt shop, ice cream shop, donut shop, or any other high-traffic food user that people typically eat on site or spill while walking back to their car; these areas may require a higher frequency. The same goes for trash enclosures with grease bins or coffee shops and food tenants enclosures.
The center may not require a second complete cleaning in a month. An additional service in just the high-traffic areas is often enough, and most vendors will accommodate it.
Areas such as the following will accumulate faster and will require an additional service mid-month:
1. Food users
2. Grocery store entrances
3. Back/front doors of food users, donuts, coffee
4. Sitting areas close to food tenants, yogurt shops, or where employees take breaks.
5. Trash enclosures used by food tenants
6. High-traffic tenants or where patrons gather
7. Food courts
8. Temp agencies, vocational schools, bars, internet cafe
Once areas have been determined to need additional service, you can develop a service plan, choose the schedule, and create a map. Be sure to archive the photos and notes you took during your analysis to be used next time.
Terms to Consider:
A proper “frequency” will keep all areas evenly clean throughout the property until the next service.
A proper “scope of work” will eliminate confusion, indicate areas of service, and outline expectations.
A miscommunication of service expectations usually causes job loss due to performance.
Our Secret Sauce:
At RueVac Property Services, we perform periodic service analyses for all properties. Over the years, we have found that as a commercial property maintenance service provider:
1. We earn credibility with our customers by presenting our services in a way that creates the best and most cost-effective results.
2. We provide our Property Managers with relevant information to help them make the best service decisions for the properties they manage.
3. Our property managers and commercial building owners generally approve of the service recommendations we provide using this process and consider us an asset to their team.
