Why Cleaning Contracts Slip in Year Two

In the first year of a contract the cleaning company is proving itself. Supervisors visit the account, crews know the client is paying attention, and everyone is building credibility. Then the account becomes routine, and some vendors stop spending the energy that won it.

Reliable Cleaning and ProShine both publish on this, and both describe the same shape: a strong first year, a quieter second one, and a client who cannot point to the week it changed.

Facility managers rarely see performance fall off a cliff. It arrives in increments small enough that each one is easy to excuse.

• The supervisor who used to walk the building weekly now walks it monthly.
• A missed task gets fixed on the second reminder rather than the first.
• Requests start going to whoever answers instead of to a named person.
• The crew changes and nobody tells you it changed.

There is usually a real cost problem behind the drift rather than indifference. The account was priced against a scope. Then the scope grew. A suite came online, a restroom was added, the schedule stretched, and the price was never re-cut.

Labour is the overwhelming majority of what a cleaning contract costs, so when the work grows and the invoice does not, the hours are what gets trimmed, and nobody announces it. The building receives less time than it needs, and it shows first in the places a walkthrough looks at last.

The remedy is a visible contract rather than a stricter one. Ask for the things that make a slide impossible to hide.

• Documented inspections, on a stated frequency, that you receive rather than request.
• One named point of contact, and an agreed response time when something is missed.
• A written scope specific enough that "it was done" is a checkable statement.
• A commitment to re-cut the scope when the building changes, instead of absorbing it until the service degrades.