How to Vet a Commercial Cleaning Vendor: A Facility Manager’s Checklist

Most commercial cleaning contracts are awarded on price, a walkthrough, and a handshake. That works fine right up until something goes wrong — a worker is injured in your lobby, a piece of equipment is damaged, or the crew that impressed you in the interview is nowhere to be found six months in because half of them have already turned over.

Vetting a cleaning vendor properly takes maybe an hour of due diligence. Skipping it can cost a lot more than an hour to unwind. Here is what that hour should cover.

Start with the bid itself, not the price

A cleaning bid that comes in dramatically below the rest of the field is not a discount — it is a disclosure. Commercial cleaning is a labor-heavy business; there is no proprietary efficiency that lets one vendor do the same work for a third less. Something in the bid was removed, and it is usually one of a small number of things:

• Labor hours. The scope of work reads the same on paper, but the crew is staffed for two hours where the building actually needs three.
• Product. Correctly diluted, EPA-registered cleaning chemistry costs money. Diluting it further is invisible until results slip.
• Continuity. Low wages tend to produce high turnover, and turnover means nobody assigned to your building has actually learned it.
• Coverage. General liability and workers’ compensation are real line items. A bid that quietly omits them is transferring that risk to you.

The single most useful question to ask during a bid review is not "can you go lower?" It is: how many labor hours per visit does this price assume, by area? Get it in writing. The monthly price is a negotiation; hours per visit is a fact you can hold a vendor to later.

A certificate of insurance is not proof by itself

"Fully insured" shows up on almost every cleaning company’s marketing. It covers two distinct things: general liability, which responds to third-party bodily injury and property damage — a slip in your lobby, a floor scratched by equipment — and workers’ compensation, which covers the vendor’s own employee if they are hurt on your property. That second one is the coverage most likely to reach your organization if it's missing, because without it, an injured worker's claim can become your claim.

A PDF landing in your inbox is not proof of coverage by itself. Before you sign anything:

1. Request the certificate of insurance from the vendor’s broker, not the vendor. A COI issued directly by the insurance agency is much harder to alter than a forwarded attachment. If a vendor sends it from their own inbox, ask for the broker’s contact and request a reissue — a legitimate vendor will not push back on this.
2. Check the effective and expiration dates, not just the coverage lines. A certificate documents coverage as of its issue date. Mid-contract lapses happen and are invisible unless you check.
3. Confirm workers’ comp appears alongside general liability.
4. Ask to be named as additional insured, and confirm the vendor can produce a COI reflecting that on request. Without that endorsement, the vendor’s policy protects the vendor — not you.
5. Ask for notice of cancellation. You want the carrier telling you if coverage drops, not finding out after an incident.
6. For institutional buildings — landlords, REITs, larger portfolios — ask directly whether the vendor's coverage levels meet your ownership's requirements. Not every vendor sized for a single small office can meet the coverage a national landlord requires.

Ask about the staffing model directly

Two questions here tell you more than a glossy brochure:

• Are the people cleaning my building employees of this company, or subcontracted? Some vendors resell contracts to subcontractors or staffing agencies with little oversight of who actually shows up. There is nothing inherently wrong with a subcontracting model, but you should know which one you are buying, because it affects accountability, training consistency, and who is liable if something goes wrong. (Our own field staff are direct W-2 employees, never subcontractors or staffing-agency labor — it's a fair question to ask any vendor, including us.)
• What is your screening and training process for new hires? A vendor should be able to describe their actual process — not just assert that it exists. If the answer is vague, that is the answer.

If a specific screening or vetting claim matters for your contract (background checks, specific certifications, particular training programs), get it confirmed in writing rather than assuming it applies. A vendor that will not put a specific claim in the contract is telling you something about how firmly they stand behind it.

Ask what "medical-grade" or "hospital-grade" actually means to them

"Medical-grade cleaning" is not a regulated term — any vendor can put it on a website. If a facility has real infection-control requirements (a medical office, a school nurse’s suite, a lab), the useful move is to stop asking whether a vendor does medical-grade cleaning and start asking what their protocol actually specifies:

• What products do they use, and are they EPA-registered for the pathogens relevant to your facility?
• Do they follow a specific cleaning sequence (clean-to-dirty, high-to-low), or is it left to the technician?
• Do they use color-coded or zone-segregated equipment so a restroom cloth never touches a clinical or food-prep surface?
• Is there a documented, per-room sign-off, or is completion just assumed?

A vendor with a real protocol will answer specifically. A vendor without one will answer in adjectives.

Check references the right way

Don’t just ask for references — ask for references at buildings similar to yours in size, use, and complexity, and ask the reference two specific questions: how did the vendor handle a mistake or a missed visit, and how long has their current crew been assigned to the account. The second question surfaces turnover, which is one of the best predictors of service consistency over a multi-year contract.

Put it in writing before day one

Once you have picked a vendor, confirm the following in the contract itself, not just in conversation:

• Scope of work, broken out by area and frequency (not a single line item called "cleaning")
• Labor hours per visit
• Certificate of insurance with your entity as additional insured, plus workers’ comp
• The specific products or product categories to be used in sensitive areas
• How mistakes, missed visits, or damage claims are handled

None of this is exotic. It is the same due diligence you would apply to any vendor with unsupervised access to your building — it just rarely gets applied to cleaning contracts, because cleaning is treated as a commodity purchase instead of a facility-access decision.

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Want a second opinion on a bid or a scope of work you already have? Contact us — we’re happy to walk through it, no pitch required. If you’re specifically comparing janitorial programs, our janitorial services page covers how we scope a program from the ground up.