Contract schedules
Cleaning Service Level Agreement for a Commercial Contract
Most cleaning proposals promise quality and stop there. A service level agreement is the schedule that replaces the promise with a measure, a commitment and the evidence that proves it — and it is the document that decides whether a cleaning contract can be enforced or merely complained about.
- Six measures, each with an evidence column beside it
- No percentage quality scores nobody can define or audit
- Send your own schedule — we will say which lines we can sign
- Rolling agreement, 30 days notice either way
Engagement summary
- Roster window
- Reviewed monthly, in writing
- Insurance
- $20m public liability, certificate on file
- Turnaround
- Written submission inside 24 hours
- Agreement
- Rolling, 30 days notice either way
What is a cleaning service level agreement, and what should it contain?
A cleaning service level agreement, or cleaning SLA, is the schedule attached to a commercial cleaning contract that defines how the contractor’s performance will be measured. It is a separate document from the scope of works: the scope states which tasks are performed and at what frequency, while the service level agreement states the standard those tasks are held to, the time within which failures are corrected, and the evidence produced to prove compliance.
A usable cleaning SLA has three columns. The measure is the thing being assessed — quote turnaround, roster attendance, defect rectification, audit frequency, compliance currency, escalation response. The commitment is what the contractor undertakes to do against that measure. The evidence is the artefact that demonstrates it after the fact: a sign-in record, a dated audit report, a reissued certificate of currency. A measure with no evidence against it cannot be enforced and should not be in the schedule.
Clean Best attaches the six-measure schedule below to every commercial cleaning contract it holds across Sydney and New South Wales, and will read a client’s own service level schedule before the site walk and state which lines it can sign. Call 1300 494 983.
- Contract cleaning since 2015Holding scopes across Sydney since 2015
- Police-checked cleanersInducted for offices, warehouses, strata, clinics and campuses
- $20m public liabilityCertificate of currency supplied before the first shift
- Written submission inside 24 hoursScope, roster and fixed price, all in writing
Service levels
The cleaning service level agreement we put in the contract schedule
Six measures. What we commit to against each one, and the document that proves it after the fact. This is the whole schedule — there is no longer version held back for the contract.
Quote turnaround
- What we commit to
- Written scope and fixed price back to you within 24 hours of the site walk, with the compliance pack attached.
- How it is evidenced
- Timestamped submission email; the scope document itself carries the date it was issued.
Roster reliability
- What we commit to
- Every rostered visit is attended. If your named operator is unavailable, the relief operator who has already walked your building attends instead.
- How it is evidenced
- Sign-in and sign-out records for every shift, available to your building manager on request.
Defect rectification
- What we commit to
- Anything reported below the agreed standard is rectified before the next scheduled visit, at no charge.
- How it is evidenced
- Rectification is logged against the scope line it relates to and confirmed to you by email.
Quality audit
- What we commit to
- A named supervisor walks the site monthly against the signed scope and reports the findings, whether or not anything was raised.
- How it is evidenced
- Written monthly audit sent to your nominated contact; the record is yours to keep and to hand upward.
Compliance currency
- What we commit to
- Insurance certificates, SWMS, chemical registers and police check confirmations are kept current for the life of the contract.
- How it is evidenced
- Renewed certificates are issued to you as they are reissued — you should never have to ask for one.
Escalation
- What we commit to
- A direct mobile number for the supervisor responsible for your site, and a response the same working day.
- How it is evidenced
- The escalation contact is named in the scope document, not buried in a call centre queue.
If your organisation has its own service-level schedule, send it with the brief. We will tell you before the site walk which lines we can sign and which we cannot, rather than agreeing to everything and renegotiating in month three.
The detail
Why most cleaning service level agreements cannot be enforced
A cleaning service level agreement fails for one of two reasons, and both are visible in the document long before they are visible on the floor. Either the measures are things nobody can check, or there is no evidence column at all — so the schedule becomes a page of adjectives that gets read once at tender and never again.
The fix is unglamorous. Write measures a third party could verify, and name the document that verifies each one.
An SLA is not a scope of works
These get conflated constantly, and the confusion is expensive. The scope of works lists every task against a frequency band: what happens every visit, weekly, monthly, quarterly. The service level agreement says nothing about tasks. It says how quickly a defect is rectified, how often the site is audited, how the audit reaches you, and what happens when a rostered visit is missed. You need both. A scope with no service levels gives you a list you cannot enforce; service levels with no scope give you standards attached to nothing.
The percentage trap
“We commit to a 98 per cent quality score.” It appears in a great many cleaning tenders and it is worth almost nothing, because the number is produced by a method nobody has written down, run by the contractor, and audited by no one. It is designed to be impressive at tender and unfalsifiable afterwards. We will put a percentage in a schedule only where the method that produces it is defined in the document and both sides can run it — which, in practice, is rarely. A commitment with a document behind it is less flattering and far harder to wriggle out of.
Evidence is the column everybody omits
Ask a contractor how you would know their roster reliability commitment had been met. If the answer is a version of “we would tell you”, there is no service level, there is a courtesy. Sign-in and sign-out records exist for every shift and should be available to your building manager on request. The monthly audit should arrive whether or not you raised anything — an audit you only receive after you complain is a customer service gesture, not a control. Renewed certificates should be issued as they reissue, so you are never the party chasing a document that expired last month.
What a defect clause should actually say
Anything reported below the agreed standard is rectified before the next scheduled visit, at no charge, and the rectification is logged against the scope line it relates to. That last clause is the one that matters: logging it against a line turns a complaint into a data point, and three data points against the same line stop being a cleaning problem and start being an operator problem — at which point the operator is replaced. Without the log, the same failure recurs for a year and nobody can prove it.
Term, notice, and the only self-enforcing service level
A multi-year lock-in with an exit fee is a service level agreement with the teeth removed, because the one sanction that reliably changes contractor behaviour is your ability to leave. Our agreement rolls month to month on 30 days notice from either side. No minimum term, no exit fee, no automatic annual uplift buried in a clause you skim. If the audits stop being clean, you should be able to go — and a contractor who knows that behaves differently at two in the morning in a building nobody is watching.
Send us your schedule
Plenty of organisations — particularly government, health and education buyers — have a service level schedule of their own, and some of it is better than ours. Send it with the brief. We will read it before we attend the site and come back with a line-by-line answer: this we can sign, this we cannot and here is why, this we would like to adopt. It is a slower conversation than nodding at a tender document, and it is the reason our contracts do not get renegotiated in month three. Call 1300 494 983.
Scope of works
What belongs in a cleaning service level agreement
A checklist you can hold any contractor's schedule against, including ours. If a line here has no answer in the document you have been sent, that is the line to ask about.
- A measure for quote and variation turnaround, with the date the document was issued as the evidence
- A roster attendance commitment, evidenced by sign-in and sign-out records available to the building manager
- A named relief arrangement — who attends when the regular operator is on leave, and whether they have walked the site
- A defect rectification window, expressed in visits or working days rather than in adjectives
- A requirement that rectifications are logged against the scope line they relate to, not just fixed quietly
- An audit frequency, and an explicit commitment that the audit is sent whether or not anything was raised
- The format the audit arrives in, and who at your organisation receives it
- Currency of insurance: certificates of currency reissued to you as they renew, not produced on request
- Currency of compliance: SWMS, chemical register and background checks maintained for the life of the contract
- A named escalation contact with a direct number, written into the document rather than a call centre queue
- A response time for escalations, stated in working hours or working days
- Term and notice: the period, the notice required, and any uplift mechanism stated in plain words
- An evidence column against every single measure — if a line has no evidence, it cannot be enforced
Outside a cleaning SLA by design: percentage quality scores produced by an undefined method, guarantees of member or staff satisfaction, and any commitment that cannot be evidenced by a document either party can produce. We will not sign those, and you should be wary of a contractor who will.
Tenders and procurement
The compliance pack that evidences half the schedule
Several lines in a cleaning service level agreement are only as good as the documents behind them. These are attached to the submission rather than produced after award, so procurement can verify the schedule before it signs it.
- Day 0Brief received by phone, email or the form
- Within 48 hrsSite walk attended, at the hour the work would run
- Within 24 hrs of the walkScope, fixed price and compliance pack submitted
- Before the first shiftInductions completed and access procedure signed off
Attached to every submission
- Certificate of currency — $20m public liability
- Workers compensation certificate of currency
- Task-specific SWMS for every activity in the scope
- Chemical register with safety data sheets for every product
- Police check confirmation for each rostered operator
- Working with Children Checks where the site requires them
- Written scope of works broken out by frequency band
- Referee contacts at comparable Sydney sites
Anything else your prequalification requires, ask for it by name. If we do not hold it, we will tell you that rather than let you find out at contract award.
Mobilisation
How a service level schedule becomes a contract
Four stages. The schedule is agreed before mobilisation, not reconstructed after the first complaint.
- Stage 1
Send us your schedule, or use ours
Call 1300 494 983 with the site brief. If your organisation has its own service level schedule, attach it — we read it before we attend, not after.
- Stage 2
We walk the site and price the scope
Service levels are meaningless without a scope to measure. The site walk happens inside 48 hours, at the hour the work would actually run.
- Stage 3
Scope, schedule and fixed price together
Back within 24 hours: the scope of works by frequency band, the service level schedule with an evidence column, and the compliance pack attached.
- Stage 4
The evidence starts arriving unprompted
Sign-in records per shift, the written monthly audit whether or not you raised anything, and renewed certificates as they reissue.
FAQ
Cleaning service level agreements: what procurement asks
The questions that come up when a facilities or procurement team sits down to compare two cleaning schedules.
What is a cleaning service level agreement?
It is the schedule attached to a cleaning contract that states how performance will be measured, what the contractor commits to against each measure, and what evidence proves it after the fact. It is not the scope of works. The scope says what will be done; the service level agreement says how well, how fast, and how you will know. A contract with a scope and no service levels gives you a list of tasks and no way to enforce them.
What should a cleaning SLA actually measure?
Things a third party could check. Quote turnaround, roster attendance, defect rectification time, audit frequency, currency of insurance and compliance documents, and escalation response. Each one needs an evidence column beside it — a sign-in record, a dated audit, a reissued certificate. If a measure has no evidence against it, it is not a service level, it is a sentiment, and it will be argued about in month nine rather than enforced.
Should a cleaning SLA include a percentage quality score?
Be careful with them. A contractor who commits to 98 per cent quality is committing to a number nobody has defined, measured or audited, and it sounds impressive precisely because it means nothing. We will not put a percentage in a schedule unless the method that produces it is written down and both sides can run it. Everything in our schedule is a commitment with a document behind it, which is less flattering and considerably more useful when something goes wrong.
What insurance should a cleaning contractor carry?
Public liability and workers compensation, both current, both evidenced by a certificate of currency rather than an assurance. Clean Best carries $20m public liability cover, plus workers compensation for every operator on the roster. The service level that matters here is not the cover itself but the currency of it: certificates should be reissued to you as they renew, so you are never the one chasing a contractor for a document a month after it expired.
How long should a commercial cleaning contract run?
Long enough for the contractor to invest in learning the building, short enough that they cannot coast. In practice that argues for a rolling agreement rather than a fixed multi-year term with an exit fee. Ours rolls month to month on 30 days notice from either side, with no minimum term and no automatic annual uplift buried in a clause. If the audits stop being clean, you should be able to leave — that is the only service level that is genuinely self-enforcing.
What happens if a cleaning contractor misses a service level?
It should be written down before it happens, not negotiated after. In our schedule, anything reported below the agreed standard is rectified before the next scheduled visit at no charge, and the rectification is logged against the scope line it relates to and confirmed to you by email. Repeated failures against the same line are an operator problem, and we replace the operator. If none of that works, the 30 days notice is there for a reason.
Can we use our own service level schedule instead of yours?
Send it with the brief. We will read it before the site walk and tell you which lines we can sign and which we cannot, with a reason against each. That is a more useful conversation than agreeing to an entire schedule at tender and renegotiating it in month three, which is what happens when a contractor signs a document they never intended to be measured against. Some of your lines will be better than ours. We would rather adopt those.
Related scopes
Where the schedule attaches
The service level agreement sits on top of a scope of works. These are the scopes it is most often attached to.
Get a cleaning service level agreement procurement can actually enforce
Send the brief, and your own schedule if you have one. Free site walk in 48 hours, then the scope, the service levels and the fixed price 24 hours after it. Call 1300 494 983.