Cleaning Business Walkthrough Checklist: What to Document Before Every Bid
What you miss in the walkthrough, you pay for in the contract. This checklist makes sure you see everything.
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Total square footage minus non-cleanable areas (storage rooms, server rooms, areas not included in scope). Use a laser measurer for accuracy.
Number of restrooms, fixtures per restroom (toilets, urinals, sinks), traffic level (light/medium/heavy). Restroom time is calculated separately from general production rate.
Carpet (type: low/medium/high pile), VCT, hardwood, luxury vinyl plank, tile grout, polished concrete. Each surface type affects your labor time and supply cost.
Security access requirements, cleaning windows (can't be there before 6pm?), locked areas, client-sensitive areas (server rooms, executive areas), fragile items or surfaces.
Pre-existing damage to surfaces or fixtures, grout condition, stain areas. Photograph everything — this protects you from later being blamed for pre-existing conditions.
Where can your team store supplies? Is there a mop sink? Electrical outlets for equipment? Dumpster location for trash?
The Full Guide
The walkthrough is where you win or lose the account — not in the proposal. Everything you learn during the site visit becomes the ammunition for a differentiated, specific, and defensible bid.
Photograph everything during your walkthrough — not just problematic areas. A comprehensive photo record creates your baseline, protects you from 'we never had that problem before you started' claims, and lets you reference specific areas in your proposal.
Time yourself cleaning a representative sample area during the walkthrough. If they'll let you walk through a restroom and kitchen, pace yourself mentally. This gives you a real production rate for this specific facility, not a benchmark average.
Ask the client three questions during the walkthrough: 1) 'What's the biggest frustration with your current cleaning service?' 2) 'What does perfect look like to you?' 3) 'What would make you switch providers immediately?' Their answers write your proposal differentiation.
Free Free Checklist
CLEANING WALKTHROUGH CHECKLIST Client: __________________ Date: __________ Facility address: __________________________ Contact name & title: ______________________ Current cleaning service: ___________________ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ MEASUREMENTS ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Total square footage: _________ Cleanable sq footage: _________ Number of floors: _________ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ RESTROOMS ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Number of restrooms: ___ Men ___ Women ___ Single Toilets per restroom: ___ Urinals: ___ Sinks: ___ Traffic level (circle): LIGHT / MEDIUM / HEAVY Notes: ____________________________ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ FLOOR TYPES (check all present) ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ □ Carpet (pile: low / medium / high) — sq ft: ___ □ VCT/tile — sq ft: ___ □ Hardwood/LVP — sq ft: ___ □ Polished concrete — sq ft: ___ □ Epoxy — sq ft: ___ □ Other: _______________ — sq ft: ___ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ACCESS & LOGISTICS ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Cleaning window: _______ to _______ Key/access method: ____________________ Alarm code required? Y / N Supply storage available? Y / N — Location: ___ Mop sink location: ____________________ Dumpster/trash location: _______________ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ SPECIAL REQUIREMENTS ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Areas NOT to clean: ____________________ Fragile/sensitive areas: _________________ Security restrictions: ___________________ Client's current frustrations: _____________ _______________________________________ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ PRE-EXISTING CONDITIONS (photograph all) ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ □ Damaged flooring — Location: __________ □ Stained surfaces — Location: ___________ □ Broken fixtures — Location: ____________ □ Other: _______________________________ PRODUCTION RATE ESTIMATE: _____ sq ft/hr ESTIMATED HOURS PER VISIT: _____ NOTES: ________________________________
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