What the contract covers around Milton Keynes

JPKL GREEN FOX LIMITED cleans commercial buildings under contract: occupied offices, the communal parts of managed buildings, and the washrooms in both. The work is scheduled: a named set of tasks at a named frequency, on nights agreed with the building manager, carried out the same way every visit. A contract of this kind carries three things: the nightly or twice-weekly clean of occupied space, replenishment of washroom consumables from stock held on site, and a round of periodic tasks falling due on a longer cycle. The register below is the whole of it, area by area.

Between 18:30 and 22:00, in the order it happens

A nightly visit to an occupied office begins at 18:30 and the team is off site by 22:00. The order is fixed, because a fixed order stops a floor being walked twice and a bin missed once.

Bins go first: desk and kitchen bins into the sack on the trolley, liners changed where marked, sacks down to the bin store on the way past. Desk tops are wiped clear and loose paper left where it lies. Handles, switches and the touch points on printers are damp-wiped.

Floors follow. Hard floor is dust-mopped, then damp-mopped in sections, so half a corridor stays walkable while the other half dries. Carpet is vacuumed along the desk lines. Last week one second floor was found locked; we hold the door code, not the key, so it was cleaned on the following visit.

The visit closes at the record. A leak under a sink, a failed stair light, a propped fire door — each goes in the folder and by e-mail to the office before the team leaves.

Stairwells, lifts, entrance matting and glass

Communal parts are used by everyone in the building, so they are cleaned on the frequency the building carries and not on the frequency of any one tenant.

Entrance matting takes the most traffic and shows it first: vacuumed through nightly, lifted every six weeks with the floor beneath it cleaned, because grit that works under matting grinds the floor it sits on. Stairs are swept nightly from the top landing down and mopped twice weekly, landings last.

Handrails are wiped nightly along the top and along the underside, where a hand actually sits. Lift cars are vacuumed nightly and the door tracks raked out weekly, because tracks are where grit collects and where a door starts to judder. Entrance glass is cleaned nightly to hand height and in full every four weeks.

The washroom round and the stock check that follows it

The washroom round runs once inside the nightly visit, and a second time on any building where a daytime call is written into the contract.

Pans, urinals and seats are cleaned with cloths that stay on the washroom trolley. Basins, taps and splashbacks are wiped and then dried, so that water leaves no mark. Mirrors are finished dry. Floors are mopped last, corners first, and the mop head is changed between buildings.

Replenishment follows in a single pass — hand towel, tissue, soap. Stock comes from the cupboard held on site, and the shortfall is what matters: the supervisor counts what is left on the shelf, not what was put out, and that count is what the office orders against. A cupboard reading low at the end of a week is flagged the same night.

What is done in each area, and how often

The register in plain words: each area, then its tasks one to a line, each line ending in the frequency the contract carries for it. The boxes are a walking aid for anyone reading this on a phone mid-round.

Offices and desking

Desk bins and kitchen bins emptied and liners changed where marked — nightly. Desk tops wiped clear and shared touch points damp-wiped — nightly. Carpet vacuumed along the desk runs and under the pedestals that move — nightly. Hard floor dust-mopped and then damp-mopped in sections — nightly. Skirtings, window sills and cable trunking dusted along their length — twice weekly.

Stairs, lifts and the entrance

Stairs swept from the top landing down — nightly. Handrails wiped along the top and along the underside — nightly. Stairs mopped section by section, landings last — twice weekly. Lift car vacuumed and the stainless panels wiped — nightly. Lift door tracks raked out with a thin tool and wiped dry — weekly. Entrance matting vacuumed through in both directions — nightly. Matting lifted and the floor underneath it cleaned — six-weekly.

Washrooms

Pans, urinals and seats cleaned with washroom-only cloths — nightly. Washroom floors mopped, corners first — nightly. Hand towel, tissue and soap replenished from site stock — nightly. Cubicle partitions and doors washed on both faces — weekly. Descale run over pans, urinals and tap outlets — four-weekly.

Kitchens and tea points

Worktops, sink and taps cleaned and dried off — nightly. Fronts of the fridge, dishwasher and microwave wiped — nightly. Microwave cleaned out inside and the turntable washed — weekly. Fridge emptied of items past their date and wiped through — monthly.

Glazing and high level

Internal glass cleaned to hand height, marks off both faces — nightly. Entrance doors, side panels and reception screen cleaned in full — four-weekly. High-level dusting of ledges, door frames and vent grilles — eight-weekly. Internal partition glazing cleaned on both faces — twelve-weekly.

Ticked so far on this walk: 0 lines of the twenty-five. The ticks keep the place of whoever is walking the building; the browser lets them go when the page closes.

Getting hold of us out of hours

The office answers during the working day and the out-of-hours number reaches the supervisor on shift that night. Both numbers are printed on the visit record left in the folder, so the number is inside the building before anyone needs it. E-mail reaches the scheduling desk at scheduling@jpklgreenfox.space.

A change to a key, an alarm code or an access route is notified in writing to that address and confirmed back the same working day. A change given verbally at the door is written up by the supervisor and confirmed by the office before the round changes, so that the round and the paperwork agree.

Working out which week a periodic task falls in

A periodic task carries its interval as part of its definition: carpet spot-clean every four weeks, hard-floor buff every six, high-level dusting every eight, internal glazing every twelve, washroom descale every four. Tick the tasks your contract carries and the twelve lines below name the week each one lands in, with the division printed alongside.

The arithmetic is the whole of it. Shutdown weeks and the week a floor is stripped and sealed sit outside it, so the twelve lines are the order the work wants to fall in, and the signed contract is what was agreed.

Tasks carried by the contract carpet spot-clean, every 4 weeks hard-floor buff, every 6 weeks high-level dusting, every 8 weeks internal glazing, every 12 weeks washroom descale, every 4 weeks

Week 1 — nothing falls due.

Week 2 — nothing falls due.

Week 3 — nothing falls due.

Week 4 — carpet spot-clean (4 ÷ 4 = 1), washroom descale (4 ÷ 4 = 1).

Week 5 — nothing falls due.

Week 6 — hard-floor buff (6 ÷ 6 = 1).

Week 7 — nothing falls due.

Week 8 — carpet spot-clean (8 ÷ 4 = 2), high-level dusting (8 ÷ 8 = 1), washroom descale (8 ÷ 4 = 2).

Week 9 — nothing falls due.

Week 10 — nothing falls due.

Week 11 — nothing falls due.

Week 12 — carpet spot-clean (12 ÷ 4 = 3), hard-floor buff (12 ÷ 6 = 2), internal glazing (12 ÷ 12 = 1), washroom descale (12 ÷ 4 = 3).

Keys, alarms and what the supervisor writes up

Keys are signed out to a named supervisor for the length of a contract and signed back in when it ends. They are carried on a tagged ring whose tag reads to a building reference known only at the office. Alarm codes are held against that same reference and released for the shift being worked.

At the end of a shift the supervisor writes the visit up: buildings entered, rooms found locked, anything a tenant reported at the door, stock drawn down, and any task carried over with the reason. That write-up is what the office reads the next morning, and it is what a periodic task gets moved on.