Regulated sites
School Cleaning Tenders and Contracts in NSW
Cleaning tenders for NSW schools and campuses, answered as two bands rather than one: a term-time roster built around when the buildings actually empty, and a vacation programme scheduled against your break dates so the deep clean is a budget line, not a surprise.
- Term time and vacation priced as separate scopes
- Toilet blocks at the top of every shift, not the end
- WWCC-cleared operators, including relief
- Specialist rooms cleaned to a written boundary
Engagement summary
- Roster window
- After bell, term weeks
- Insurance
- $20m public liability, certificate on file
- Turnaround
- Written submission inside 24 hours
- Agreement
- Rolling, 30 days notice either way
How should a school cleaning tender be structured, and what should the contract cover?
A school cleaning contract covers an education campus: classrooms and learning spaces, toilet blocks, halls, libraries, canteens, staff rooms, administration areas and circulation space. A tender for one should be answered as two priced scopes rather than a single monthly figure, because term time and the vacation periods are genuinely different jobs.
It is normally structured as two separate scopes. The term-time scope is a recurring roster performed after the campus clears each day. The vacation scope is a project performed during term breaks: hard-floor stripping and resealing, carpet extraction, deep cleaning of storage, and high-level work that cannot be done while students are on site. Pricing them separately keeps the vacation work visible in the budget rather than hidden inside a monthly figure.
Every operator working on a school campus must hold a current Working with Children Check in New South Wales. Clean Best prices school cleaning after walking the campus once it has cleared, and issues both figures in writing within 24 hours on 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
The detail
A school cleaning tender business managers can actually budget
The problem with most school cleaning tenders in NSW is not the cleaning. It is the arithmetic. The deep clean that has to happen in January gets folded into the monthly figure, which makes the monthly figure look competitive and makes the January work invisible. And invisible work is work that does not get done — quietly, gradually, and never in a year anybody notices until the floors have gone.
So we price the campus as two scopes, and hand the business manager two numbers.
Term time: a roster built around when the campus really empties
The bell is not the end of the day and every business manager knows it. After-school care runs until six. Sport uses the hall. Music is in the performance space until half past five. Staff are in the block until well after that. A cleaning roster written to start at 15:30 is a roster that will be worked around, interrupted and eventually abandoned. So we roster from when the buildings actually clear, work the blocks in an order that follows the activity out of the campus, and give the spaces that run late their own slot rather than skipping them.
The toilets, which are the only thing parents judge you on
Nobody has ever complained to a front office about a classroom skirting board. Student toilets generate more complaints than every other area of a campus combined, they are the most visible signal of how a school is run, and they are the area a contractor is most tempted to rush when the shift is long and the light is going. So they go at the top of the shift, every visit. And where the campus genuinely needs it, we scope a daytime amenities pass as its own band rather than pretending an evening clean will hold a Year 8 toilet block until 3pm the next day.
Specialist rooms, and where our responsibility stops
Science laboratories, technology workshops, art rooms and food-tech kitchens all have areas that belong to the school’s own staff under its own procedures — fume cupboards, chemical storage, machinery, kilns. We clean floors, general surfaces and amenities in those rooms, and we write the boundary into the scope so that the lab technician knows exactly where their job starts and our operator knows exactly where theirs stops. It is a boring paragraph that resolves an argument most campuses have been having quietly for years.
The vacation programme, booked in October
Floors stripped and resealed. Carpets extracted. Storage rooms emptied, cleaned and put back. High-level dusting done properly with the campus empty. Toilet blocks taken back to the grout. None of this is possible in term time and all of it is what keeps a campus from ageing badly. We price it up front, book it against your break dates months ahead, and sequence it across a multi-campus group so the whole programme fits inside the window.
Clearances, and the relief operator nobody checks
Every operator on a campus holds a current Working with Children Check and a police check, and the confirmations go to the business manager before the first shift. That includes the relief operator who covers annual leave — the single most common gap in school cleaning compliance, and the one a regulator will find. Where the school runs its own contractor induction or sits under a departmental clearance process, we complete it before we attend, not in the fortnight before mobilisation.
What it costs to find out
A walk of the campus after it clears. A term-time scope with a figure, a vacation programme with its own figure and its own dates, and the clearance confirmations attached — all back within 24 hours. A rolling agreement on 30 days notice. Call 1300 494 983.
Vacation programmes
Four weeks in January decide how the campus looks in October
A campus does not deteriorate during term. It deteriorates because the work that can only be done in the holidays never quite gets done in the holidays — the vinyl never gets stripped, the carpets never get extracted, the storage room nobody has opened since 2019 stays shut. Two years of that and the buildings look tired in a way no nightly clean can fix.
We schedule the vacation programme months ahead, against your actual break dates, and sequence it across every building so the whole thing fits in the window rather than running out of time in the last week. It is priced separately and invoiced separately, which means when it is done you can see that it is done, and when it is not, so can you.
- Hard-floor stripping and resealing, building by building
- Carpet extraction across classrooms, library and staff areas
- Storage and back-of-house deep cleaned while the campus is empty
- Sequenced across a multi-campus group to fit the break
Scope of works
What sits in a term-time school cleaning scope
The recurring band. The vacation programme is a separate document with its own tasks, its own dates and its own figure.
- Student and staff toilet blocks at the top of every shift: pans, urinals, basins, mirrors, rails, floors and restocking
- Classrooms: desks and tables wiped, chairs stacked or set to the teacher's arrangement, floors vacuumed or mopped
- Whiteboards cleaned properly, and the ledge beneath them where the marker dust collects
- Waste and recycling from every room and every external bin along the circulation route
- Library: floors, tables, chairs, shelving fronts and the entry mat that collects the oval
- Hall and performance space: floors mopped or machine-cleaned to the surface, stage and wings included
- Canteen front-of-house: counter, tables, chairs, floors and waste; back-of-house to the boundary in the scope
- Specialist rooms cleaned to the written boundary — floors, general surfaces and amenities only
- Staff rooms and administration: kitchen, benchtops, sink, fridge exterior, floors and touchpoints
- Circulation: corridors, stairwells, handrails, entry glass, entry mats and door handles disinfected
- Sweep covered outdoor areas, walkways and the immediate apron of each block
- Report at sign-out anything that could not be completed, so it appears in the monthly audit
Priced and scheduled as a separate vacation programme: floor stripping and resealing, carpet extraction, storage deep cleans, high-level work, and toilet blocks taken back to the grout. Outside our scope entirely: fume cupboards, chemical stores, machinery and kilns — those stay with the school's own staff under its own procedures.
Commercial terms
How a school cleaning contract gets priced
Three bands by the shape of the campus — and every one of them produces two figures, term time and vacation, because they are two different jobs.
Small campus
A primary school or a small independent campus: a handful of teaching blocks, one hall, two or three toilet blocks.
- Nightly term-time roster built around the actual end of day
- Toilet blocks at the top of every shift
- Vacation period priced and scheduled as its own band
- WWCC-cleared operators and cleared relief
Fixed figure, issued in writing before mobilisation.
Secondary campus
A larger campus with specialist rooms, a library, a canteen, multiple toilet blocks and a hall used outside school hours.
- Roster behind after-school activities, not through them
- Optional daytime amenities pass for student toilets
- Specialist rooms cleaned to a written boundary
- Named supervisor with a monthly audit against the scope
Fixed figure, issued in writing before mobilisation.
Multi-campus or precinct
A school group, a K–12 campus with separate junior and senior sites, or an education provider holding several sites.
- Separate scope per campus, one supervisor across all
- Vacation programmes sequenced across sites within the break
- One clearance register for every operator in the group
- Consolidated invoicing and a single escalation contact
Fixed figure, issued in writing before mobilisation.
Free site walk, then a written scope and fixed price inside 24 hours.
Mobilisation
How a campus changes cleaning contractor
Four stages. Clearances start the day the scope is accepted, because they are always the critical path.
- Stage 1
Send the campus plan and the bell times
Call 1300 494 983 with the block count, toilet blocks, hall, canteen, after-school activity times and your vacation dates.
- Stage 2
We walk it after the campus clears
Which is later than the bell — after-school care, sport, staff. We roster from when the buildings are actually empty.
- Stage 3
Two scopes, two figures
Within 24 hours: the term-time scope and figure, and the vacation programme priced and scheduled separately against your break dates.
- Stage 4
Clearances, induction, mobilise
WWCC and police checks for every operator and every relief, plus your contractor induction, all completed before the first shift.
FAQ
School cleaning tenders: what campuses ask
The questions a business manager asks before taking a cleaning contract to a board.
Why do you price term time and vacation periods as separate bands?
Because they are different jobs, and pretending otherwise is how a school ends up with a surprise invoice in January. Term-time cleaning is a nightly recurring scope built around the bell. Vacation cleaning is a project: floors stripped and resealed, carpets extracted, storage emptied and cleaned, high-level work done. Blending them into one monthly figure hides the second job inside the first, and the first is the one that gets cut when a budget tightens.
Do your operators hold Working with Children Checks?
Every operator rostered to a school holds a current Working with Children Check and a police check, and the confirmations go to the business manager before the first shift. That includes relief operators covering leave, which is the gap most contractors leave open. Where the school has its own contractor induction or a departmental clearance process, we complete it before we attend rather than discovering it the week before mobilisation.
How do you clean around a campus that runs after-school activities?
By rostering behind them rather than through them. Most campuses have a real end to the day somewhere between four and six, and it is later than the bell suggests — after-school care, sport, music, staff working late. We roster from when the buildings actually clear, not from 15:30, and we work the blocks in an order that follows the activity out of the site. Halls and specialist rooms that run late get their own slot rather than being skipped.
What happens to the toilets, which are the thing parents actually judge you on?
They go at the top of the shift, every visit, and on many campuses they need a mid-day pass as well. Student toilets are the single most visible indicator of how a school is run, they generate more complaints than every other area combined, and they are the area a contractor is most tempted to rush at the end of a long shift. So we scope a daytime amenities pass separately where the campus needs one, rather than pretending an evening clean can hold them until 3pm the next day.
Can you handle a canteen, a hall and specialist rooms like science labs?
Canteens, halls, libraries and general learning spaces, yes — on their own bands, because a hall used for assembly, sport and hire on weekends is not a classroom. Science laboratories we clean to a defined boundary: floors, general surfaces and amenities, but not fume cupboards, not chemical storage, and not anything the lab technician is responsible for under the school's own procedures. That boundary is written into the scope so nobody has to make a judgement call at eight at night.
How quickly can you mobilise on a campus mid-year?
Usually within a fortnight, and the constraint is clearances rather than rostering. Every operator has to hold a current WWCC, clear a police check, and complete whatever contractor induction the school or its system requires. We start that process the day the scope is accepted. What we will not do is put an uncleared person on a campus to hit a date, and any contractor who offers to should not be on your shortlist.
How is a school cleaning tender priced in NSW?
Not from a rate card. A campus scope is driven by the number of teaching blocks, the toilet block count, whether there is a hall and a canteen, the surface mix, the amount of hard floor that needs machine work, and how far apart the buildings are — a spread-out campus costs more in travel time between blocks than in the cleaning itself. We walk it, count it, and give the business manager two figures: term time and vacation.
Related scopes
Scopes campuses commonly hold alongside the term-time clean
Same clearances, same supervisor, one invoice.
Answer a school cleaning tender with two honest numbers instead of one
Term-time scope and vacation programme, priced separately, back within 24 hours of the campus walk. Call 1300 494 983.