Worked Example — Professional Services
Rebuilding a Nightly Clean for a Hunter Street Mall Office
This is a worked example rather than a report on a named client. It covers a 40-desk professional services firm across two upper floors of a heritage building on the Hunter Street Mall, Newcastle NSW 2300 — open-plan desks, four meeting rooms, a client-facing reception, two kitchens and four bathrooms. The familiar starting point is an argument nobody can settle: staff say the office is not being cleaned properly, the contractor says it is, and no record of any visit exists. No client outcome is claimed.
Diagnosis: the right work at the wrong hour
What a walkthrough usually finds is a competent cleaner in an impossible slot. A 5.30pm start puts a two-person crew onto a floor where roughly a third of the firm is still working, and the outcome is predictable:
- Occupied desks get skipped and never revisited, so a third of workstations go untouched on any given visit
- Meeting rooms in use at 5.30pm are simply not cleaned, and those are the client-facing ones
- Bathroom consumables get replaced only when the crew happens to notice, producing mid-week stockouts
- Kitchen fridges have no scheduled clear-out at all, which is reliably the loudest internal complaint
- No signed log, no photographs, no audit — so the office manager has nothing to take to the building manager or the contractor
How we rebuild it
- Start time moved to 7.30pm, with building security sign-in and the goods-lift procedure documented in the site access notes so the crew never lost twenty minutes at the desk
- Scope rewritten room by room across both floors, with meeting rooms and reception listed as mandatory-every-visit items rather than discretionary
- Weekly fridge clear-out and kitchen degrease written into the schedule and published to staff, which ended the argument entirely
- Consumables brought under our management at cost plus handling, restocked to a par level rather than on sight
- Signed checklist left after every visit, plus a monthly photo audit emailed to the office manager covering the same fixed locations each time
- One named supervisor attending monthly, with the same two police-checked cleaners rostered permanently to the site
What the firm gets in writing
A room-by-room scope across both floors with meeting rooms and reception as mandatory every-visit items, a start time set behind occupancy rather than into it, a published fridge clear-out and kitchen degrease schedule, consumables restocked to a par level, a signed checklist after every attendance and a monthly photo audit of the same fixed locations. The same two police-checked, directly employed cleaners are rostered permanently with a named supervisor attending monthly. Pricing is fixed and itemised, cover is $20 million public liability with the certificate of currency on request, and the contract runs month to month with 30 days notice.
Questions about this scope
What kind of business does this cover?
A 40-desk professional services firm occupying two upper floors of a heritage building on the Hunter Street Mall in Newcastle 2300 — open-plan desks, four meeting rooms, a client-facing reception, two kitchens and four bathrooms.
What usually goes wrong before?
The incumbent is rostered at 5.30pm while roughly a third of staff are still working, so desks and meeting rooms get skipped. Bathroom consumables run out mid-week, and with no visit record at all the office manager cannot prove what has or has not been done.
What does the rebuilt program change?
Service moves to a 7.30pm start with building security sign-in documented, the scope is rewritten room by room, consumables come under our management on a restocking schedule, and a signed checklist is left after every visit with a monthly photo audit to the office manager.
How is it priced?
Three visits a week at roughly 2.5 crew hours per visit, priced inside our standard Newcastle general band of $30 to $45 per hour and fixed as a monthly figure. Cleaning occupied desks and client-facing meeting rooms properly takes more time than skipping them, so we quote the new scope against the existing one line by line.
What does the firm actually receive?
A room-by-room scope with meeting rooms and reception listed as mandatory every visit, a documented site access procedure so crew time is not lost at the security desk, consumables restocked to a par level rather than on sight, a signed checklist after every visit and a monthly photo audit covering the same fixed locations. The same two police-checked, directly employed cleaners are rostered permanently, with a named supervisor attending monthly.
Recognise the symptoms?
The full specification is on our office cleaning Newcastle page, with pricing context on the cost guide and rates page. For a different building type, read the Honeysuckle waterfront strata worked example or browse the worked examples index. Multi-site operators are covered across Newcastle West and Hamilton, and common questions are answered on the FAQ page.
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