Janitorial covers more ground than office cleaning: the whole building, including areas most office specifications never mention. Here’s a full facility checklist.
Daily
Entrances and lobbies
- Entry glass and doors, both sides
- Entry matting vacuumed
- Lobby floor cleaned
- Reception or concierge counter
- Seating
- Lift interiors, floor, walls, buttons, handrail
- Directory boards and signage
Bathrooms (all)
- Full sanitise, restock, mop
- Bins emptied
- Drains checked
Kitchens and breakrooms
- Benches, sinks, appliances
- Tables and chairs
- Floor
- Bins
Office and tenancy areas
- Bins emptied
- High-traffic floors
- Desks where clear
- Meeting rooms reset
Corridors and stairwells
- Floors
- Handrails sanitised
- Spot-clean walls
Waste management
- All waste consolidated and moved to the store
- Recycling separated correctly
- Bin store kept clean
- Bins presented for collection per schedule
Weekly
- Full vacuum including edges and under furniture
- Skirtings and door frames throughout
- Internal glass and partitions
- Window sills
- Stairwell full clean
- Lift tracks and door channels
- Bin store washed out
- Cleaner’s cupboard tidied and stocked
- Exterior entry swept, cobwebs cleared
Monthly
- High dusting throughout
- Vents and grilles
- Light fittings and diffusers
- Behind and under furniture
- Upholstery vacuumed
- Fridge interiors
- Plant rooms and service areas swept
- Fire equipment cabinets dusted (exterior only)
- Car park litter and sweeping
Quarterly
- Internal windows, tracks and frames
- Blinds
- Carpet spot treatment
- Storage and archive areas
- Exterior pressure wash of entries
- Signage cleaned
- Roof gutters checked (if in scope)
Periodic
| Task | Frequency |
|---|---|
| Carpet steam cleaning | 6–12 monthly |
| Strip and seal hard floors | 12–24 monthly |
| Machine scrub and burnish | Monthly to quarterly |
| External window cleaning | Quarterly – 6 monthly |
| Upholstery cleaning | Annually |
| High-level dusting (EWP) | 6–12 monthly |
| Duct cleaning | Per building services schedule |
Areas office specs forget
These belong in a janitorial scope and rarely make it into an office cleaning specification:
- Lift interiors and tracks. Door channels collect grit and it’s visible.
- Bin store. Gets genuinely unpleasant if never washed.
- Plant and service rooms. Dust accumulation is a fire and equipment risk.
- Car park and grounds. Litter, and the entry approach that visitors see first.
- Loading dock.
- Fire stairs. Used rarely, cleaned rarely, inspected occasionally.
- Roof access and terraces.
- External signage.
Building-specific additions
Multi-tenant: common area standards need defining separately from tenancy standards, and access arrangements per tenancy.
After-hours access: alarm codes, security company liaison, lone worker arrangements.
Shared services: who cleans what where a lease boundary is ambiguous, this is worth resolving in writing before it becomes a dispute.
Record keeping
For a multi-area facility, per-visit task records matter more than in a single office, because no one person walks the whole building daily. A record showing which areas were completed each night is the only realistic way a facility manager can supervise a building they aren’t in at 10pm.