Janitorial Scope of Work: Template for Facility Managers

IN SHORT

A janitorial scope of work, is the written list of what gets cleaned, how often, and to what standard. A good one names every zone in the building, the tasks and frequency for each, the APPA level each space is held to, who supplies what, how quality gets inspected, and the access and insurance terms. Most complaints about cleaning vendors trace back to a gap in the scope: empty dispensers, dusty vents, “as needed” tasks that never happen. Write the scope first, then ask for quotes against it.

Table of Contents

Why the scope decides how your cleaning goes

When a facility manager tells us their last cleaning company “stopped doing things,” we ask to see the scope. Nine times out of ten it’s two pages of vague lines like “clean restrooms” and “dust as needed,” with no frequency, no standard and nobody named for restocking.

Restroom complaints

Almost half

Of occupant grievances, plus 20% about paper supplies (Facility Cleaning Decisions, 2025).

Banned phrase

“As needed”

Give every task a frequency and a finish condition you can check.

The standard

An APPA level per zone

Public contracts use it too: Wilmington set APPA 3, KIPP Atlanta Level 2.

Supplies

Write down who stocks what

Empty dispensers are one of the most common cleaning complaints.

The vendor didn’t break the contract. The contract never said what they had to do.

A scope of work fixes that before it starts. It’s also the only way to compare quotes. If three companies price three different guesses about your building, you’re comparing guesses, and the cheapest guess usually left something out.

The complaints a vague scope causes

Cleaning managers report the same complaints year after year. In the Facility Cleaning Decisions survey reported by CleanLink in 2025, restrooms drew almost half of all occupant grievances, and another 20 percent of weekly complaints were about paper supplies. Each of the common complaints points back to a gap you can close in writing:

Complaint	Scope gap behind it	Clause that fixes it
Empty soap, towel and toilet paper dispensers	Nobody owns restocking, or there’s no trigger for it	Who supplies consumables, and when dispensers get checked and refilled
Dirty restrooms	No daily frequency, or no standard to hold it to	Restrooms cleaned and disinfected daily, held to APPA Level 2
Dust on vents, ledges and light fixtures	Periodic tasks left out entirely	High dusting on a stated schedule, with a height threshold
“They only clean when we complain”	Tasks written as “as needed”	A frequency for every task, and a finish condition you can see
Good one week, poor the next	No measurable standard and no quality checks	An APPA level per zone, inspection frequency and a target score
Complaints go nowhere	No response times or reporting	Response time for issues, re-clean time, and what gets reported
New faces every month and nothing improves	No supervision terms	A named supervisor and how often they inspect

One caution on the survey: it polls in-house cleaning managers, not only facility managers who hire outside vendors. The pattern still holds for outsourced cleaning, because the gaps are the same.

What a janitorial scope of work should include

Public cleaning contracts are a good model here, because cities, school districts and federal agencies have to write everything down. The sections below follow what they include.

1. Facility details and cleanable square feet

List every building, its address, its hours, and the cleanable square feet by type of space. ISSA recommends giving bidders current floor plans with cleanable square footage by area type. Fort Worth’s Rocketship charter schools, for example, listed each campus by square footage in their custodial RFP. Wrong square footage is the fastest way to get quotes that don’t match your building.

2. Zones

Break the building into the kinds of space that get cleaned differently: restrooms, entrances and lobbies, offices and open work areas, conference rooms, break rooms, corridors and stairs, elevators, and any specialty rooms like exam rooms, classrooms or locker rooms. The federal GSA custodial specification groups space the same way.

3. Tasks and frequencies by zone

This is the core of the scope, and it gets its own table below. Every task needs a frequency. Daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly or annually. Never “as needed.”

4. The cleaning standard

Name the APPA level each zone is held to. The City of Wilmington, North Carolina, set a base service level of APPA 3 in its janitorial RFP. KIPP Atlanta asked for a minimum daily cleaning level of 2. A stated level gives you something to inspect against, and our guide to APPA cleaning levels explains what each one looks like.

5. Service hours and access

When the crew works, how they get in, who locks up, and how alarms get set. Wilmington’s contract, for example, set cleaning for weekday evenings after 5 p.m. unless agreed otherwise.

6. Supplies and consumables

Say who buys and stocks each item: paper towels, toilet paper, hand soap, trash liners, cleaning chemicals. There’s no single standard. Wilmington supplies its own paper, soap and liners and has the contractor bring chemicals and equipment. Angleton, Texas, supplies everything and requires the vendor to tell the city when stock runs low. Rocketship’s Fort Worth schools had the vendor supply the expendables. Any of these works, as long as it’s written down.

7. Equipment

If you need specific equipment, say so: HEPA-filter vacuums, separate tools for restrooms, auto-scrubbers for large hard floors.

8. Staffing and supervision

A named supervisor, how often they’re on site, and how you reach them. Some school contracts go further. KIPP Atlanta capped staffing at 20,000 square feet per eight-hour custodian.

9. Quality checks and reporting

How often quality gets inspected, who does it, the score you expect, how fast a missed item gets re-cleaned, and what the vendor reports to you. KIPP Atlanta required a 90 percent average on audits and a 24-hour turnaround on deficiencies. Our janitorial inspection checklist shows how to set this up.

10. Security

Background checks for anyone working in the building, key and badge control, and what happens when a key goes missing. Wilmington charges $50 per lost key and bans key duplication. Angleton charges the replacement cost plus 20 percent.

11. Insurance

The coverage you require: general liability, workers’ compensation, and your organization named as additional insured. Private employers in Texas can choose not to carry workers’ compensation, so ask for the certificate rather than assuming.

12. Periodic work and exclusions

Carpet extraction, hard-floor stripping and refinishing, window cleaning and high dusting usually run on their own schedule and often get priced separately. List them, with a frequency, so they don’t turn into surprise invoices. Then list what’s excluded.

13. Pricing format

Ask every bidder to price the same way: a monthly price for routine service, a price per occurrence for periodic work, and an hourly rate for extra requests. Wilmington priced per visit per building. Angleton used separate price sheets for base, specialty and total. Either way, you can line quotes up side by side. For what drives the number, see our guide on commercial cleaning cost per square foot.

A zone and frequency matrix you can start from

These frequencies are a starting point for a typical office building cleaned five nights a week. They’re drawn from the federal GSA National Custodial Specification (January 2026) and public contracts like Wilmington’s. Adjust them for your traffic, your standard and your budget.

Zone or task	Daily	Weekly	Monthly	Quarterly	Annually
Restrooms: clean, disinfect, restock	●
Trash and recycling	●
Hard floors, high-traffic areas	●
Hard floors, low-traffic areas		●
Carpet vacuuming, main routes	●
High-touch points (switches, handles, buttons)	●
Break room counters, sinks, tables	●
Entry glass and door hardware	●
Stairs		●
Horizontal dusting (ledges, sills, partitions)			●
High dusting, vents and light fixtures				●
Blinds				●
Carpet extraction, common areas					●
Windows, interior and exterior					●
Hard-floor strip and refinish					●

Two notes. High-dusting thresholds vary by contract, with 6 feet and 8 feet both common, so state yours. And busy buildings often move carpet extraction and floor refinishing to twice a year or more in high-traffic areas.

Words to leave out of your scope

A few words cause most of the arguments:

“As needed.” Needed by whom, and when? Replace it with a frequency.
“Clean.” Say what clean looks like. “Restroom fixtures clean with no film or odor” can be inspected. “Clean restrooms” can’t.
“Maintain appearance.” Name the APPA level instead.
“Periodically.” Give the interval.

Every task should have a finish condition someone could check on a walk-through. And take dated baseline photos when a new contract starts, so everyone agrees on where the building began.

A janitorial scope of work template

Copy this into your own document and fill in the brackets.

1. Facility. [Building name and address]. Cleanable square feet: [total]. Hours of operation: [hours]. Cleaning window: [days and times].

2. Zones and square feet.

Zone	Sq ft or count	APPA level
Restrooms	[number of restrooms / fixtures]	Level 2
Entrances and lobby	[sq ft]	Level 2
Offices and open work areas	[sq ft]	Level [2 or 3]
Break rooms	[number]	Level 2
Corridors and stairs	[sq ft]	Level [2 or 3]
Storage and back-of-house	[sq ft]	Level [3 or 4]

3. Tasks and frequencies. Use the matrix above, edited for your building. Every task gets a frequency.

4. Supplies.

Item	Supplied by	Restock trigger
Paper towels, toilet paper	[Facility / Vendor]	[Checked every visit, refilled below X]
Hand soap	[Facility / Vendor]	[ ]
Trash liners	[Facility / Vendor]	[ ]
Cleaning chemicals and disinfectants	[Vendor]	Safety data sheets kept on site
Equipment	[Vendor]	[ ]

5. Quality. Inspection frequency: [for example, weekly on site to start]. Target score: [for example, 90 percent]. Re-clean of missed items within: [24 hours]. Reports to the facility: [what, how often].

6. Supervision and communication. Named supervisor: [name, phone]. Response to reported issues within: [time].

7. Security. Background checks: [required for all staff on site]. Keys, badges and alarm codes: [how issued, logged and returned]. Lost key charge: [amount].

8. Insurance. General liability: [limit]. Workers’ compensation: [required]. Additional insured: [your organization]. Certificate due before the first service.

9. Periodic work. [Task, frequency, priced separately yes/no].

10. Exclusions. [What’s not included].

11. Pricing format. Monthly price for routine service. Price per occurrence for periodic work. Hourly rate for additional requests.

CleanProof™ System

How Craddock’s builds a scope

Every Craddock’s account starts with a walkthrough. We measure the building, agree the standard for each area with you, and write the scope down before we price anything. That written scope is the first step of CleanProof, because it’s what every later inspection gets checked against. For daily cleaning, we start with weekly on-site quality inspections against that scope, and a supervisor reviews the photo record of every visit in between. You can see how the scope turns into a number on our how we price page, and what’s in our nightly service on our commercial janitorial services page.

Request a Site Assessment for your Dallas-Fort Worth Facility

If you’re writing a scope or rebidding a contract, we’ll walk your building and hand you a written scope you can use, whoever you hire. We cover the DFW metroplex from Lancaster and Arlington to Dallas and Fort Worth.

See how we price our commercial cleaning services before you talk to anyone.

214-460-1002

Related guides

FAQ Janitorial Scope of Work

What is a janitorial scope of work?

A janitorial scope of work is the part of a cleaning contract that lists what gets cleaned, how often, and to what standard. It usually covers the building’s zones and square footage, tasks and frequencies, the cleaning level, supplies, quality inspections, access and security, insurance, and how the work is priced.

What’s the difference between a scope of work and a cleaning contract?

The contract covers the business terms: price, length, payment and how either side can end it. The scope of work covers the work itself: what gets cleaned, how often, and to what standard. Most cleaning contracts attach the scope as a schedule or exhibit.

Should I write the scope or let cleaning companies propose one?

Write it yourself, or have one vendor help you write it and then share it with every bidder. If each company proposes its own scope, you end up comparing different jobs instead of different prices.

Should a cleaning scope be frequency-based or performance-based?

Most facilities do best with both. Set an APPA level for each space so there’s a standard to inspect against, then add minimum frequencies for tasks you can’t afford to have skipped, like restrooms and trash. The federal GSA custodial specification uses the same mix.

Who should supply paper towels, toilet paper and soap?

Either side can. Some facilities buy their own and the vendor restocks. Others have the vendor supply everything and bill for it. What matters is that the scope says who supplies each item and when dispensers get checked, because empty dispensers are one of the most common cleaning complaints.

How detailed should a janitorial scope of work be?

Detailed enough that two different cleaning companies would price the same job. That means square footage by zone, a frequency for every task, a standard for every space, and clear terms for supplies, quality checks and access. Anything left as “as needed” will be interpreted differently by every bidder.

Sources

How to Write a Janitorial Scope of Work (Template for Facility Managers)