The questions that come before a signature

On cleanable square feet, scope and frequency. We measure the area that is actually serviced, apply productivity rates for each space type, add supervision, consumables, floor care and equipment, then price the labour at a fully burdened W-2 rate. A 40,000 sq ft standard office floor is a very different number from 40,000 sq ft of exam rooms, and any vendor quoting you from a rent roll has not been in the building.

Every person who enters your building is a W-2 employee of Meridian Facility Services, on our payroll, under our workers compensation policy, background checked and E-Verified by us. We do not subcontract janitorial labour. Specialty trades that fall outside our licence, such as exterior high rise window work, are named in the scope and disclosed before the contract is signed.

Every one we receive, and we respond even when we are declining, with a reason. A one line no-bid is more useful to a procurement officer than silence, and it tells you something about the building. The most common reason we decline is that the scope calls for a specialty we would have to subcontract, and we do not subcontract janitorial labour.

Three years is standard in commercial janitorial and one year with two renewal options is common. What matters more than the term is the termination clause. Ours is 30 days for convenience on both sides, because a contractor who needs a 12 month exit penalty to keep an account has already lost it. If the service is right you will not want to leave.

Written into the contract as an annual review tied to a named index and to statutory wage changes, with a cap. What should never happen is a mid term increase presented as a surprise. If Illinois raises the minimum wage or your building adds 20,000 sq ft of space, both of those are foreseeable and both belong in the mechanism rather than in a phone call.

That is usually the sensible order and it is what we would suggest. Take the building with the worst current service, run it for 90 days, and read three monthly packs. Portfolio decisions made without that evidence are decisions made on a presentation.

Every person who enters your building is a W-2 employee of Meridian Facility Services, on our payroll, under our workers compensation policy, background checked and E-Verified by us. We do not subcontract janitorial labour. Specialty trades that fall outside our licence, such as exterior high rise window work, are named in the scope and disclosed before the contract is signed.

CIMS is the ISSA Cleaning Industry Management Standard. An accredited assessor visits and audits six management dimensions: quality systems, service delivery, human resources, health safety and environmental stewardship, management commitment, and green building. It is a management audit rather than a cleaning test, which is exactly why it matters to a procurement panel. It tells you the company can repeat what it did last month.

A criminal history check and E-Verify on every hire before a first shift, plus sector specific screening: the state sex offender registry for education accounts and additional screening for healthcare. Checks are refreshed on our standard cycle rather than run once at hire and forgotten. Records are available to your compliance team on request.

Retention at 24 months across the field workforce runs at 91 percent. Commercial janitorial as an industry routinely reports annual turnover above 200 percent, which is what happens when the labour is subcontracted, the hours are unpredictable and there is no path upward. Ours is the direct result of a burdened W-2 wage, fixed building assignments and promotion from within.

We operate in both union and non union buildings and we work to whatever the building requires. In a union building we work within the applicable agreement and its jurisdiction rules. Tell us during the walkthrough, because it changes the labour rate, the crew structure and sometimes which tasks we are permitted to perform.

After hours dispatch is answered by a person, not a queue. For contracted accounts we mobilise for a contamination event, a flood or a security escort within the response window in your SLA. Anything that happens on shift is written up before the crew leaves the building, so your Monday morning is not the first you hear of it.

Yes, and it is more common than a greenfield start. We run the walkthrough, write the scope against what the building actually needs rather than what the outgoing contract said, and overlap for the first three to five nights so nothing is dropped. Transitions are usually scheduled for a Friday so the first full week is a clean baseline.

Cover comes from a small pre-cleared bench who already hold the clearances for your building type, not from whoever answers a phone. If cover cannot be arranged the service is credited in full and you are told before the shift, not after. The one thing that should never happen is a silent short shift discovered in the morning.

Your account manager directly, or the operations line. Either way it enters the same log with a timestamp and it appears in your monthly pack whether it was resolved in ten minutes or escalated. A complaints process that only records the unresolved ones tells you nothing about how often things go wrong.

Where it is in scope, yes, and we would generally rather manage it. Paper, soap and liners are the second largest line after labour and the most commonly mismanaged. We run par levels against actual usage and report consumption monthly, which surfaces the broken dispenser burning through paper rather than letting it look like a headcount increase.

By logging the product, the dilution and the wet contact time, not by logging that someone sprayed something. Every disinfectant on your site is EPA registered for the pathogen claim we are making, the technician is trained on that specific label, and the surface is kept visibly wet for the full dwell time. If it dries before the time is up, the label is not satisfied and the product is reapplied.

Cleaning removes soil mechanically, and takes a large proportion of the organisms with it. Sanitising reduces bacteria to a level judged safe under a public health standard, and is the claim used on food contact surfaces. Disinfecting kills or inactivates the organisms named on the product label, at the labelled dilution and contact time. Three claims, three testing thresholds, three prices.

Every three to five years on a floor that is properly maintained. Annual stripping is a symptom rather than a programme: it usually means there is no entrance matting, the nightly dust mopping is not happening, or nobody is burnishing. Fixing those three things is cheaper than one strip cycle and the floor looks better in between.

As an adjunct in large open spaces where the product label permits that application method, not as a replacement for wiping. Fogging covers area quickly but it does not remove soil and it does not reliably hold a wet contact time on a vertical surface. Any vendor selling fogging as a substitute for touch point work is selling you the visible part of the job.

It is escalated, not improvised. Our crews secure the area and call it in under the protocol agreed in your scope. Blood and body fluid cleanup follows the exposure control plan under 29 CFR 1910.1030 with the PPE that plan specifies, performed only by technicians trained for it. Regulated medical waste always leaves through your licensed hauler under your generator number.