There is no form on this page. The template is below, in full, and you can copy it.
We have put it here ungated because a scope of work is only useful if it actually gets used, and because the most honest thing a cleaning company can do for a prospective client is help them write a document that makes us all comparable.
First, though, the problem it solves.
The sentence that kills most cleaning contracts
Procurement writing in this industry has a recognisable failure mode, and one commentator on janitorial RFPs put it better than we could:
“If the contract says ‘maintain cleanliness to professional standards,’ you don’t have a standard. You have an argument waiting to happen.”
That is the whole problem in two sentences. A scope that cannot be measured cannot be enforced, and a scope that cannot be priced accurately will be priced optimistically — by whichever bidder guesses lowest. You then spend month four discovering what they assumed.
The same source flags the usual tells: “phrases like ‘spot clean’ or ‘as required’ often signal scope ambiguity,” and “if the scope says ‘clean building nightly,’ vendors have to guess.”
Guessing is the issue. Not dishonesty — most providers are not trying to mislead anyone. They are filling gaps in your document with assumptions, and different providers fill them differently, which is why three bids on the same building can arrive 40% apart and all be internally honest.
Decide what kind of specification you are writing
Before the detail, one structural choice that most buyers never make consciously.
A prescriptive specification tells the provider what to do and how often. In government contracting terms it is a Statement of Work — “describing what the contractor must do and how.” Its advantages are “clear process control, predictable outputs, easier compliance checks.” Its disadvantage is that it “limits contractor innovation, can lead to inefficiency.”
A performance-based specification defines the outcome and leaves the method to the provider — a Performance Work Statement, “emphasizing what outcomes the contractor is expected to achieve rather than prescribing how to perform the work.” It “encourages efficiency, leverages contractor expertise, focuses on measurable outcomes,” but it “requires robust monitoring, risk of ambiguity if metrics aren’t well defined.”
Performance-based specs sound more sophisticated, and in cleaning they fail more often. Here is the test that decides it, from construction specification practice: “ensure that the performance that has been specified cannot be achieved without delivering the desired outcome.”
Apply that to a cleaning outcome and the problem appears immediately. “Restrooms shall be clean and fully stocked at all times” can be satisfied by a provider who services them twice daily, and also by one who services them once and gets lucky with occupancy. The outcome is met. The work is not comparable. And unless you are inspecting often enough to catch the difference, you will not know which you bought until the day you get unlucky too.
Which is why the honest advice is this: unless you have a real inspection regime with someone’s name on it, write a prescriptive scope. As the janitorial guide puts it, a performance spec “only works when the performance standard is clear and measurable,” and “a vendor can only own the result if you define the result well enough to inspect it.”
Most buildings should write prescriptive, with a few performance elements layered on — restroom stocking, spill response times, complaint resolution. That hybrid is normal: in construction specification practice, “most projects will involve a combination of performance and prescriptive specifications.” Just do not write task-level detail into a performance spec and call it outcome-based; that produces, in contracting language, “a PWS with task-level detail (turning it into a disguised SOW)” — the worst of both.
And whichever you choose, one rule governs the wording throughout: a specification “should be objective not subjective.”
The six things that make a scope priceable
A cleaning provider prices labour hours. Everything in a good scope exists to let them calculate those hours accurately rather than guess. Six items do most of that work, and most scopes are missing at least four of them.
- Cleanable square footage broken out by space type. Not one total. This is the single most consequential omission, because production rates differ enormously by space. ISSA 612, the industry’s production-rate reference, puts corridors and lobbies at 5,000–6,000 sq ft per hour, general office at 3,500–5,000, break rooms at 2,800–3,500, restrooms at 800–1,200 and elevator cabs at 500–700. A restroom square foot is roughly five times the labour of a corridor square foot; an elevator cab is nine times. A scope that gives a single building total cannot be priced accurately by anyone, however willing.
- Floor surface by type and area. Carpet, VCT, polished concrete, ceramic, rubber — each needs different equipment, different products and different periodic cycles. And vacuuming carpet around cubicles runs at 2,000–3,000 sq ft/hr against 3,000–5,000 in open plan, so even within carpet the layout matters.
- Fixture counts. Restrooms are fixture work, not area work. ISSA puts a toilet at 4–5 minutes, a urinal at 3–4 and a sink at 2–3. Give the counts and a provider can calculate; give the square footage alone and they are estimating.
- The treatment level for each surface — clean, sanitize, or disinfect. These are three different regulatory categories, not three intensities. Cleaning removes and needs no registration; sanitizing and disinfecting are EPA-registered antimicrobial pesticides with different proven claims. If your scope says “disinfect,” it needs to say which surfaces and for how long the surface must stay wet, because the label’s contact time is where disinfection usually fails. Most surfaces in most buildings need cleaning, not disinfection — so specifying this honestly usually reduces cost rather than raising it.
- Glass, zoned by height and frequency. Interior glass runs at 100–200 sq ft/hr — the slowest surface in any building by a wide margin. A scope line that reads “clean glass” is unpriced, and it is the easiest line in any contract to quietly reduce: hand-height smudges get wiped, the panel above eye level does not, and nobody notices for about four months. Specify which glass, to what height, how often, and put exterior glass on a separate periodic line.
- Hours per visit — stated. Ask every bidder to state the labour hours their price is based on. Every provider has that number; it is how they built the quote. Then divide your square footage by it and sanity-check the implied production rate against the ranges above. This single check takes two minutes, almost nobody does it, and it will tell you more about a bid’s realism than any reference call.
The template
Copy what you need. Delete what does not apply. The section numbering is there so you can reference it in a contract.
1. Building and operating facts
- Address, building name, total rentable and total cleanable square footage
- Number of floors; number of separate buildings or suites
- Occupancy: headcount, and typical in-office days if hybrid
- Business hours; permitted cleaning window; days per week required
- Access arrangements: keys, fobs, alarm codes, who issues and revokes them
- Janitorial closet locations, water access, equipment storage, waste compactor or dumpster location and access
- Restricted or regulated areas, and who may enter them
- Attachments: floor plans marked with areas, and a copy of this scope
2. Area schedule
One row per distinct area. This table is what makes your building priceable.
| Area / room | Space type | Cleanable sq ft | Floor surface | Traffic level | Fixture count | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Main lobby | Lobby | Heavy | — | Entry matting zones | ||
| Corridors, L1–L3 | Corridor | Heavy | — | |||
| Open office, L2 | Office — open plan | Moderate | — | |||
| Cubicle area, L3 | Office — cubicles | Moderate | — | Furniture density affects vacuum rate | ||
| Private offices | Office — private | Moderate | — | |||
| Conference rooms | Conference | Moderate | — | Turnover expectations | ||
| Break room | Break room | Heavy | Sinks: | Food handled on site? | ||
| Restrooms, L1 | Restroom | Heavy | WC: / Urinals: / Sinks: | |||
| Elevator cabs | Elevator | Heavy | Cabs: | Slowest space per sq ft | ||
| Stairwells | Stairwell | Light | Flights: | |||
| Entry and partition glass | Glass | Glass sq ft: | — | — | — | State height zones |
Use consistent traffic categories. The CRI 204 commercial carpet standard uses moderate, heavy and severe, and it is worth matching that language so your carpet cycles and your cleaning scope agree with each other.
3. Task and frequency matrix
One row per task. Frequencies as explicit counts — “nightly,” “3x weekly,” “weekly,” “monthly,” “quarterly.” Never “as needed,” “as required” or “spot clean” without a trigger and a response time attached.
| Task | Applies to | Frequency | Method or standard |
|---|---|---|---|
| Empty waste and replace liners | All areas | Nightly | Liners supplied by: |
| Vacuum carpet — full coverage | Open office, private offices | e.g. 2x weekly | |
| Vacuum carpet — traffic lanes | Open office, corridors | e.g. nightly | |
| Dust mop / sweep hard floor | Corridors, lobby, break room | Nightly | |
| Damp mop hard floor | Corridors, lobby, break room, restrooms | Nightly | Neutral cleaner unless specified |
| Clean and service restrooms | All restrooms | Nightly | See section 4 for treatment level |
| Restock restroom consumables | All restrooms | Nightly | Supplied by: |
| Clean break room surfaces and sink | Break room | Nightly | See section 4 |
| Dust horizontal surfaces to reach height | All areas | e.g. weekly | |
| High dusting above reach height | All areas | e.g. quarterly | Periodic — see section 5 |
| Interior glass — hand height | Partitions, office fronts | Nightly | |
| Interior glass — full height | Specify which | e.g. monthly | |
| Entry glass and door glass | Entrances | Nightly | |
| Clean high-touch points | Door handles, push plates, switches, rails, elevator buttons | Nightly | See section 4 |
| Service entrance matting | All entry zones | Nightly; 2x daily Nov–Mar | See section 10 |
| Spot clean carpet | All carpeted areas | Nightly, and within [ ] hours of report | No scrubbing — risk of pile distortion |
| Spill response | All areas | Within [ ] minutes during coverage hours | See section 6 |
| Elevator cab — floor, walls, tracks, panel | All cabs | Nightly | |
| Stairwell sweep and rail wipe | All stairwells | e.g. weekly | |
| Secure building and set alarm | — | Each visit | Logged — see section 9 |
4. Surface treatment level
State, per surface group, whether the requirement is to clean, sanitize or disinfect — and where disinfection is required, state that the surface must remain visibly wet for the product label’s stated contact time.
| Surface group | Clean | Sanitize | Disinfect | Contact time |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Desks, tables, workstations | ✅ | — | ||
| Floors, all types | ✅ | — | ||
| Glass, mirrors, partitions | ✅ | — | ||
| Door handles, switches, rails, elevator buttons | ✅ | Seasonal / on request | Per label | |
| Restroom fixtures and partitions | ✅ | ✅ | Per label | |
| Break room counters and sink | ✅ | ✅ | Per label | |
| Food-contact surfaces, if any | ✅ | ✅ | Per Food Code concentration |
Also state: products to be used or approved by the client; any products prohibited; any pH limits (carpet manufacturers commonly cap cleaner pH — Mohawk’s guide, for instance, states “do not use any cleaner with a pH of 10 or higher”); and a requirement that surfaces be cleaned before any disinfectant is applied, since organic matter impairs or inactivates most disinfectants.
5. Periodic and project work
Keep this separate from recurring service, with its own frequency and its own unit price. As one janitorial procurement guide puts it: “routine cleaning and periodic projects should never be buried together. If they are, you’ll never know whether two vendors priced the same thing.”
| Work | Areas | Frequency | Unit price |
|---|---|---|---|
| Carpet — interim / low-moisture cleaning | Per CRI 204 traffic band | ||
| Carpet — restorative hot water extraction | Per CRI 204 traffic band; schedule spring | ||
| Hard floor — scrub and recoat | |||
| Hard floor — strip and refinish | Schedule after March | ||
| Hard floor — burnish | |||
| High dusting above reach height | |||
| Interior glass — full height | |||
| Exterior glass / curtain wall | Separate access equipment | ||
| Upholstery extraction | |||
| HVAC vents and returns — exterior wipe | |||
| Post-event or post-construction clean | On request | Hourly or per sq ft | |
| Make-ready / turnover clean | Per suite | On request | Per suite |
Two notes worth building into the schedule. Interim and restorative carpet cleaning are different operations at different frequencies — the CRI 204 commercial standard distinguishes low-moisture interim maintenance from deep extraction, and lists rotary equipment, “with or without a brush, pad or bonnet,” among the equipment “NOT recommended for carpet cleaning.” If a bidder proposes bonnet cleaning as your carpet programme, that is worth knowing before award. And schedule heavy floor restoration for spring rather than mid-winter, because tracked-in grit abrades fresh finish.
6. Daytime coverage, if required
- Shift window and fixed hours per day — not “as needed”
- Named person and named backup
- Written round schedule, including restroom check times
- Spill response commitment in minutes during the shift
- Explicit list of what remains with the night crew — this is the clause that stops floor care quietly migrating into a day shift
- Consumable restocking responsibility during the day
7. Supplies, consumables and equipment
State who provides each. “Chemicals, paper goods, soap, liners, machinery, and maintenance of equipment should be spelled out.”
| Item | Provided by client | Provided by contractor | Notes / spec |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cleaning chemicals | Approved list | ||
| Hand soap | |||
| Paper towels / hand dryers | |||
| Toilet tissue | |||
| Can liners | Sizes | ||
| Entrance matting | See section 10 | ||
| Vacuums and floor equipment | Specify type/width where it matters | ||
| Equipment maintenance | |||
| Restocking threshold and lead time | — | — |
8. Staffing and supervision
- Labour hours per visit the price is based on, and the production-rate basis used
- Headcount per visit, and shift start and finish times
- Supervision: who, how often on site, and how reachable
- Relief coverage: who covers call-offs, holidays and vacations
- Named crew list, with advance notice of any change
- Training requirements, and any certifications required
- Language and communication arrangements for the site contact
A staffing plan is a real test of a bid. “If the bidder can’t explain who covers call-offs, vacations, or supervision, service stability is questionable.”
9. Access, security and conduct
- Background check requirement, scope, and re-check cycle
- Prohibition on subcontracting or substitution without written approval
- Individually assigned keys, fobs and alarm codes; revocation on departure
- Access logging: arrival and departure by name, retained for [ ] months
- Confidentiality covering anything observed on site
- Incident and discovery reporting — to whom, and within what period
- No-go areas, listed
- Waste handling boundaries: what the crew may and may not remove, and the shred-container rule
That last line matters in any building holding regulated records. The cleanest control is to remove judgement from the crew entirely: locked shred containers they never open, and separate waste containers that staff keep free of sensitive material. If a cleaner has to decide what is sensitive, the control has already failed.
10. Seasonal variations
Sacramento buildings have two distinct soil seasons, and a scope written for the annual average is wrong twice.
- November to March: 82% of the region’s annual rainfall arrives in these five months. Increase matting service to twice daily or mid-day swap-out on storm days; add daytime entry spot-mopping; increase entry-zone carpet interim cleaning; deploy wet-floor signage by default. Specify total matting length — industry guidance is 12–15 linear feet, because a person needs four to five steps on matting for it to work.
- Late summer: wildfire smoke particulate loads carpet and horizontal surfaces across the region. Increase dusting frequency and consider an additional interim carpet cleaning.
- Defer heavy floor restoration until after March.
11. Quality assurance
This is the section that determines whether anything above survives month three.
- Inspection regime: who inspects, how often, using what form. Attach the form to the scope.
- Area-based scoring: weighted checklists by area, with restrooms and entrances weighted highest
- Response times: how quickly missed work or a complaint must be corrected
- Escalation: what happens after a first, second and third failed inspection
- Joint walk-through: monthly or quarterly, with the supervisor present and notes recorded
- Performance-linked termination: a defined right to exit on repeated documented failure, separate from the standard notice period
- Reporting: what the contractor reports, in what format, how often
12. Insurance and compliance
- General liability — required limits and endorsements
- Workers’ compensation — certificate required; verify it covers all personnel on site
- Fidelity bond — the coverage that responds to employee theft
- Additional insured and waiver of subrogation, if required
- Certificate of insurance on award and at each renewal
- California janitorial employers: confirm current registration with the Department of Industrial Relations janitorial registry
- Any site-specific regulatory requirements — discharge rules, regulated waste boundaries, clinical protocols
13. Pricing form
Provide the form rather than letting each bidder invent one. Lump-sum pricing “hides whether supplies, periodic work, and supervision were included.”
| Line | Monthly | Annual |
|---|---|---|
| Recurring service — common areas | ||
| Recurring service — tenant or occupied areas | ||
| Daytime coverage, if specified | ||
| Consumables, if contractor-supplied | ||
| Total recurring | ||
| Periodic work — itemised per section 5 | Per occurrence | Annualised |
| Hourly rate for additional work, by shift | — | — |
| Make-ready / turnover, per suite | — | — |
| Labour hours per visit | — | — |
If you manage a multi-tenant building, those first two lines matter more than the total. Common-area cleaning is normally a CAM pass-through, allocated pro-rata and grossed up for vacancy; tenant-specific work generally is not CAM; and periodic project work should never sit inside a recurring CAM line. Require the invoice to arrive in the same four-line structure, every month, so it can be allocated and defended at reconciliation.
14. Exceptions and exclusions
Require every bidder to list, explicitly, anything in this scope they are not including. “A proposal that excludes pieces of your scope isn’t cheaper. It’s incomplete.”
How to run the bid
Four things make the difference between a tidy document and a good outcome.
Make the site walk mandatory for any building of real complexity, and confirm attendance. A bidder who skipped it is pricing a floor plan.
Publish your evaluation criteria before bids come in. Scoring categories, and their weights.
Ask for the staffing plan and the hours, not just the price. Then run the production-rate check described earlier.
Read the exceptions list first. Before the price. It tells you what you are actually comparing.
Three honest things about this document
It will probably raise your price, at least on paper. Most scopes are under-specified, and specifying properly surfaces work that nobody was pricing — the glass above eye level, the elevator cabs nobody counted, the periodic cycles that were being skipped. If your renewal price does not move at all after you tighten the scope, either you were unusually well-specified already, or your incumbent has been absorbing the difference and will stop.
Do not write a performance-based scope unless you will actually measure it. It is the more sophisticated instrument and the easier one to get wrong. An unmeasured performance spec is just a vague prescriptive spec with better vocabulary.
And we would rather you used this to re-bid us than keep us on a vague scope. A loose contract is comfortable for an incumbent provider — it is where the margin hides when nobody is checking. We would rather compete on a document where every bidder is pricing the same building, including when that means we lose.
Frequently asked questions
What should a cleaning scope of work include?
Building and operating facts; an area schedule giving cleanable square footage by space type, floor surface, traffic level and fixture counts; a task and frequency matrix with explicit frequencies; the treatment level required per surface (clean, sanitize or disinfect) with contact times; periodic and project work priced separately from recurring service; staffing, supervision and relief coverage; supplies and equipment responsibility; access and security requirements; quality assurance with an inspection regime; insurance and compliance requirements; a pricing form you provide; and a required exceptions list.
Why do cleaning bids on the same building vary so much?
Because the scope left gaps and each bidder filled them differently. Production rates vary enormously by space type — ISSA 612 puts corridors at 5,000–6,000 sq ft per hour against 800–1,200 for restrooms and 500–700 for elevator cabs — so a scope that gives one total square footage cannot be priced accurately by anyone. Ask every bidder to state the labour hours their price assumes, then compare the implied production rate against the published ranges.
Should a cleaning specification be prescriptive or performance-based?
Prescriptive, for most buildings. A performance-based specification defines outcomes and leaves the method to the provider, which encourages efficiency but “requires robust monitoring” and risks ambiguity if metrics are poorly defined. The governing test is whether the specified performance “cannot be achieved without delivering the desired outcome” — a bar most cleaning outcomes fail without frequent inspection. A hybrid is common: prescriptive tasks and frequencies, with performance elements for restroom stocking, spill response and complaint resolution.
How specific do cleaning frequencies need to be?
Explicit counts — nightly, 3x weekly, weekly, monthly, quarterly. Avoid “as needed,” “as required” and “spot clean” without a trigger and a response time, because those phrases signal scope ambiguity and are priced differently by every bidder. Periodic work such as floor stripping, carpet extraction, high dusting and window cleaning belongs on separate line items with its own unit price.
Do I need to give bidders my square footage?
Yes, and broken out by space type and floor surface rather than as a single total, along with fixture counts for restrooms and marked floor plans. Without that breakdown a provider cannot calculate labour hours and will instead estimate, which is the root cause of both unrealistically low bids and the quality decline that follows them.
Want a second pair of eyes on your scope?
JAN-PRO Commercial Cleaning in Sacramento will review a draft scope with you, measure the areas the template asks for, and tell you where a bidder will have to guess — whether or not we end up bidding on it. No form required for the template above either.
Call (916) 376-8977 or request a facility visit online.