Resources
Getting Ready for a Commercial Cleaning Walkthrough
A walkthrough is where a quote takes shape. Have the floor plan, room list, hours, access details, floor types and supply arrangements ready, and bring the people who know the building.
Why an hour of preparation pays off
A cleaning quote is only as accurate as what the person walking your building sees and hears. If the visit is rushed, or the one person who knows where the alarm panel is happens to be out, the gaps show up later as missed rooms, surprise add-ons and a crew that learns the building by trial and error during the first month.
Gathering a handful of details before the visit fixes most of that. It also makes quotes from different companies comparable, because each one is built from the same facts about your rooms, hours and floors instead of from guesses made on the spot.
Paperwork to have on the table
You don’t need architectural drawings. A fire evacuation map, a leasing plan or a hand sketch with room labels does the job. What matters is that every space appears on it, including the storage rooms and back hallways that nobody thinks of as part of the office.
- Total square footage, plus the portion that actually gets cleaned (warehouse floor or tenant space that is excluded should be marked).
- A room count by type: private offices, open workstations, conference rooms, breakrooms, restrooms with the number of toilets, urinals and sinks, and storage.
- Rooms with their own procedures, such as server rooms, labs, exam rooms, records rooms or food production areas.
- Your current task list or the task sheet from the outgoing company, if you are switching.
If you have a list of complaints from the last six months, bring that too. It points the walker straight to the rooms where expectations and results have drifted apart.
Hours, keys and the way in
Decide when cleaning can happen before anyone quotes it. Evening work after the last staff leave is the most common arrangement, but some offices prefer early mornings, and buildings that run late shifts need a window that avoids them. Note any rooms that are only open at certain times, such as a conference suite booked most evenings.
Mention seasonal patterns as well. An office that empties out in late December, a showroom with a busy weekend event calendar or a school building with a long summer break all change the visit pattern for part of the year, and it is easier to write those exceptions in now than to rework the schedule later.
Then cover access in detail: which door the crew uses, how keys or fobs are handed over, how the alarm is set and disarmed, whether elevators lock out after hours, and which rooms need an escort or stay locked. Show where the crew can park, where the janitor’s closet and mop sink are, and where trash, recycling and food scraps go at the end of the night. The guide to writing a janitorial task list shows how these details sit beside the room-by-room tasks.
Floors, surfaces and the trouble spots
Each floor type gets its own method and equipment, so list them by area: carpet, vinyl composition tile, luxury vinyl, sealed concrete, ceramic tile or natural stone. If you know when the carpet was last extracted or the tile was last stripped and refinished, write it down. A floor that is overdue for periodic work looks very different from one that only needs routine care, and the quote should treat them differently. The commercial floor care page explains the periodic side.
Next, name the problems you already know about. A restroom that smells by afternoon, a gray lane in the reception carpet, fingerprints on the glass entry doors, dusty supply vents, a breakroom microwave nobody wants to open. Walk those rooms first, while there is still time and attention to talk them through.
Point out the surfaces that need a light touch, too: a wood conference table with a soft finish, upholstered lobby chairs, stainless appliance fronts that streak, desks covered in electronics that should only be dusted. Small notes like these spare the crew from discovering by accident which products a surface will not tolerate.
Paper, soap and liners
Be clear about who buys the restroom and breakroom consumables today, and whether you want that to change. Have a look at the dispensers in each restroom, since refills must match them, and check where backup stock is kept and how often it runs short.
If you would rather hand the whole job off, we can supply toilet paper, paper towels, hand soap, hand sanitizer and can liners and restock them on cleaning visits, and our janitorial supplies page covers dispensers supplied and installed. Either way, the walkthrough is the moment to settle it, because supplies change both the task list and the quote.
Who should be in the room
Keep the group small and knowledgeable. The office manager or whoever fields complaints should attend, because that person knows where the cleaning falls short. Add the facilities or property manager if access, alarms or common areas are involved, and someone who can speak for any special rooms, such as the IT lead for a server room or the lab supervisor for a lab.
In a multi-tenant building, the property manager usually walks the lobby, corridors, shared restrooms and elevators, while each tenant handles its own suite. Make that split explicit during the visit so the quote does not double-count or skip a shared space. Schedule the walk during normal business hours if you can, so the walker sees how people actually use the rooms and where the traffic runs.
Before the walker leaves
Use the last few minutes to confirm the basics: which tasks happen every visit, which happen weekly and which are periodic projects quoted on their own lines. Ask how special rooms will be handled, who your day-to-day contact will be, and how a missed task gets reported and fixed.
Expect questions in return, and answer them plainly. How many people work on site on a typical day, whether anyone stays late, which restrooms the public uses and whether a move, a remodel or a new tenant is coming up. Those answers shape visit times and frequencies as much as the floor plan does.
Then send a short follow-up email with anything you forgot, such as an extra room or a change in hours, so every company quotes the same building. To book a visit for your building, request a walkthrough and quote from Loom Janitorial.
A few useful answers
Common questions
How long does a commercial cleaning walkthrough take?
A small office suite usually takes twenty to thirty minutes. A multi-floor building, or one with labs, a warehouse or a production area, can take an hour or more, especially if every restroom and closet is opened.
Is a room list enough if we have no floor plan?
Yes, as long as it names every space, including storage rooms and back corridors. A rough sketch with the rooms labeled helps the walker check that nothing was left off.
Should the walkthrough happen during business hours or after closing?
During business hours, when possible. Seeing where people gather and which restrooms stay busy tells the walker more than an empty building does, and any after-hours access questions can be covered on the same visit.
What if we don’t know our square footage?
Your lease, the property manager or the building’s floor plan usually lists it. If none of those is handy, the room list and the walk itself give enough to build the task list, and the footage can be confirmed afterward.
What does Loom look at during a walkthrough?
Every room type, the floor surfaces, the restrooms and breakrooms, your cleaning hours and access, and how supplies are handled. The written quote follows from that list.