Meridian Facility ServicesCommercial janitorial, Chicago
Multi tenant towers, single tenant headquarters, coworking and flex.
Ambulatory surgery, dental, imaging, dialysis and physician practices.
K to 12 districts, charter networks, private schools and campuses.
Distribution centres, light manufacturing, cold storage and depots.
Office cleaning
Nightly janitorial and day porter coverage for multi tenant towers, single tenant headquarters and flex space across Chicago and the collar counties.
Nobody emails you about the ninety eight percent of the building that was cleaned. They email you about the third floor restroom at 2pm, the lobby glass with yesterday's handprints, and the conference room that was not turned before an 8am board meeting.
Every one of those is a scheduling problem rather than a cleaning problem. They happen in daylight, with occupants present, hours after the night crew has gone home. Which is why an office scope that funds only a night crew is structurally incapable of fixing them.
We split the work the way the building experiences it. The night crew does volume, floor care, detail and anything that needs the space empty. A day porter holds the visible surfaces and responds to the things that go wrong while people are in the building.
Every line names its cadence and the document it produces. A task with no artefact is a task nobody can verify.
Standard nightly office scope
| Cleanable area | Night crew | Supervision | Day porter |
|---|---|---|---|
| Under 60,000 sq ft | 2 technicians | Working lead on shift | Optional, part day |
| 60,000 to 150,000 sq ft | 3 to 4 technicians | Working supervisor on shift | 1 porter, 8 hours |
| 150,000 to 300,000 sq ft | 5 to 8 technicians | Dedicated supervisor | 1 porter, 8 hours |
| 300,000 to 500,000 sq ft | 9 to 14 technicians | Supervisor plus lead | 2 porters, staggered |
| Above 500,000 sq ft | Zoned crews | On site account manager | 2 to 3 porters |
Crew sizes are derived from measured cleanable area and space type mix, not from gross leasable area. A floor of private offices takes roughly a third longer per square foot than open plan.
In a multi tenant tower the ownership group pays for common areas and each tenant either buys suite cleaning through the building or contracts it separately. That boundary is where most disputes start, usually over the elevator lobby on a full floor tenancy.
We draw the line explicitly on a floor plate diagram in the scope of work, with the elevator lobby, corridors, common restrooms and stairwells named on one side and the demised premises on the other. It takes one extra page and removes an argument that otherwise recurs annually.
Paper, soap and liners are usually the second largest line after labour, and the one most often mismanaged. Over ordering ties up your capital in a janitor closet. Under ordering produces the empty dispenser your CEO finds on a Friday afternoon.
Where consumables are in scope we manage par levels against actual usage, report monthly consumption by product, and flag the fixture that is burning through paper because its dispenser is broken rather than because your headcount grew.
Compliance
Training is recorded per person with dates, and the roster is part of your monthly pack. A vendor who cannot produce a training record has not delivered the training.
Questions
They can, and in a 24 hour operation they have to, but the result is worse and more expensive. Vacuuming around occupied desks is slower, wet floors around occupants are a liability, and detail work does not happen. Where a floor genuinely cannot be vacated we zone it and work the vacated portions on a rotation, which is written into the scope so nobody is surprised.
However your building already works. Card access issued by property management, a key box with a signed log, or an escort where security requires one. Every technician on the account is badged individually. We do not use a floating pool, so the same named people are in the building every night and your security desk learns their faces.
Exterior high rise window cleaning, carpet extraction beyond spot treatment, hard floor refinishing, kitchen exhaust hood cleaning, and biohazard remediation are all scoped and priced separately. Naming them as exclusions in the contract is not a way to charge you more later. It is how you avoid discovering at month four that nobody owns the lobby stone.
Eighteen business days from a signed scope is typical, and that time is almost entirely background checks, badging and equipment staging rather than hiring. An emergency takeover where the incumbent has walked off can be mobilised in three to five days with a temporary crew while permanent staff clear.
Ninety minutes on site with an account manager and an operations lead. You leave with a measured cleanable square footage, a draft scope of work and a price, in writing, within five business days.