Strata Cleaning Services
Sydney.

A usable scope has three columns: the area, the task, and the frequency. Areas are listed as they physically exist in the building rather than as generic categories — 'ground floor foyer', 'levels 1 to 8 corridors', 'basement 2 car park', 'east fire stair'. Vague headings like 'common areas as required' are the source of nearly every strata cleaning argument in Sydney.

Frequencies must be explicit and realistic. Weekly means every week on a nominated day. Quarterly means four times a year on nominated months, not whenever the contractor gets to it. Anything listed as 'periodically' should be rewritten before the committee signs, because it cannot be audited and therefore cannot be enforced.

The scope should also state what is excluded. Window cleaning above ground level, pressure washing of external facades, pest control, gardening, and clinical or hazardous clean-up are commonly assumed to be included and almost never are. Writing exclusions down protects the committee from surprise invoices and protects the contractor from surprise expectations.

Lot count is the headline number but it is a poor predictor on its own. The real cost drivers are the number of levels and lifts, the length of corridor per level, the floor finishes, the size and condition of the bin room, whether there is a car park and how many levels it has, and whether the building has shared amenities such as a pool, gym or rooftop terrace.

Access affects price too. Buildings with a loading dock, a store cupboard and a tap on every level are quicker to clean than buildings where the cleaner carries equipment up eight flights of fire stairs because there is no service lift access. It is worth asking a prospective contractor what they assumed about access, because that assumption is where under-quoting hides.

Periodic work is where budgets are most often blown. Carpet extraction, floor sealing and garage washing are significant one-off costs, and spreading them deliberately across the financial year is the difference between a smooth maintenance budget and an unbudgeted special levy conversation.

Every strata cleaning services scope splits into two registers, and confusing them is where budgets go wrong. The recurring register is what happens on the nominated visit day: foyer floor and entry glass, lift car floors, walls, tracks and mirrors, corridor vacuuming or mopping, fire stair landings and handrails, bin room washdown and deodorising, chute hopper wiping, letterbox bank and intercom panel, and the car park sweep. On a weekly building these are all weekly. On a twice-weekly building the foyer, lift and bin room usually go to twice and the rest stays weekly.

The periodic register is everything that cannot sensibly happen every week and would blow the visit budget if it did: corridor and common-lounge carpet extraction, hard floor scrub and reseal in the foyer, high dusting of light fittings, ceiling vents and stairwell ledges, garage and ramp pressure washing, internal common glass, cobweb removal at soffit level, bin washing, and pool surround and BBQ area deep cleans in buildings that have them.

The scope should state a frequency for every periodic item in nominated months — 'corridor carpet extraction, levels 1 to 8, March and September' — not a vague annual allowance. A committee that specifies periodic work by month can check the report and see whether it happened. A committee that specifies it as 'twice yearly as required' cannot, and in practice it drifts.

A strata cleaning tender that gets comparable prices back has to be issued as a single document that every bidder quotes against. At minimum it should contain: a plan or list of every common area by its actual name and level; the recurring task list with frequencies; the periodic task list with nominated months; the exclusions; the access arrangements including whether there is a service lift, a store cupboard, a tap on each level and a power outlet in the car park; the consumables the contractor is expected to supply; the reporting format required; and the insurance and documentation the owners corporation will require before the first shift.

It should also state how the contract will be measured — a monthly audit against the scope with a score, and what happens on a failed item. Contracts that describe the work but not the measurement are unenforceable in practice, because a committee that is unhappy has nothing to point at except opinion.

Two things a tender should deliberately not do: specify hours instead of outcomes, and ask for a single lump-sum figure with no breakdown. Specifying hours invites a bidder to win on a low hour count and then under-service. Asking for one lump sum removes the committee's ability to see where a cheaper quote is actually cheaper — usually the periodic programme, which the building then does not receive.

Committees usually hesitate to change contractors because they fear a period of chaos. In practice the transition is straightforward if it is planned: keys and access fobs are transferred and registered, the incoming contractor walks the building before the first shift, and the first month is audited weekly rather than monthly so any inherited backlog is dealt with rather than absorbed into the new baseline.

The building's existing scope should be reviewed rather than copied. Buildings change — a bin room gets reconfigured, a lift is refurbished, a garden bed is paved over — and old scopes frequently describe a building that no longer exists. Re-walking the common property before quoting takes an hour and prevents a year of mismatched expectations.

Sydney Clean Group is at 77 Garfield Street, Wentworthville NSW 2145. Call 02 9139 8401 and we will prepare a written scope for your building at no cost, whether or not you appoint us.