Office and commercial cleaning

Commercial cleaning is a contract rather than a service call, and the contract is the product. A specification that names each task and its frequency, a defined site, agreed hours and a route for complaints will outperform any amount of goodwill from a crew working without one.

How a specification is built. Tasks sort into daily, weekly, monthly and periodic. Daily is typically washrooms, kitchens, bins, entrance glass, high-touch surfaces and traffic-lane vacuuming. Weekly adds full vacuuming, desk-level dusting where clearance is granted, and interior glass. Monthly covers vents, high dusting, baseboards and appliance interiors. Periodic covers carpet extraction, floor stripping and sealing and window cleaning, usually priced separately. Anything absent from that document will not happen.

Step one: the site walk and the measurement. A credible quote follows a walk-through that counts washroom fixtures, measures cleanable floor area by surface type, notes the staff headcount and identifies restricted areas, server rooms, waste streams and after-hours access arrangements. Quoting per square foot without that walk produces the contracts that get cancelled in month four.

Step two: staffing, hours and who the people are. Establish whether the crew are employees of the contractor or subcontractors, because it changes who is liable and who is covered. Establish access: keys, fobs, alarm codes, and what happens when a cleaner leaves the company. In a clinic, a law office or any site with confidential material, that last question is the one the client should care about most.

Step three: hazardous products and WHMIS. Commercial cleaning uses concentrates, and that brings duties. WHMIS applies to every workplace covered by the Occupational Health and Safety Act except farms, and the employer's obligations are to ensure hazardous products are properly labelled, to obtain safety data sheets from suppliers and keep them accessible in the workplace, and to provide instruction and training to workers (Ontario). A contractor should be able to produce the safety data sheets for everything they bring into your building, and if they cannot, that is a finding about the whole operation. Where genuine disinfection is required rather than cleaning, a Health Canada authorised product carries a drug identification number on the label (Health Canada).

Step four: measurement and the complaint route. The contract should say how performance is checked, how often, and by whom, and should name one person on each side. Inspection logs signed at the site are worth more than a monthly email, and for any site with a public liability exposure a dated log is the only record that exists when something is disputed.

What it costs in Ottawa in 2026. Indicative ranges. Small office nightly cleaning is commonly $0.10 to $0.25 per square foot per month on a straightforward site, or $30 to $55 per cleaner-hour where smaller sites are priced hourly. A 2,000 square foot professional office cleaned three nights a week often lands between $700 and $1,500 a month. Clinics and food premises run higher. Periodic work is separate: carpet extraction $0.25 to $0.60 per square foot, strip and seal on vinyl composition tile $0.75 to $2.00. Labour is nearly the whole cost base, so the minimum wage moving to $17.95 on 1 October 2026 (Hicks Morley) will appear in renewals.

What is specific to Ottawa. Winter, again, and in commercial terms it is measurable. Salt and grit carried into a lobby destroys floor finish and fills carpet at the entrance, so any Ottawa commercial specification should name entrance matting of adequate run, increased entrance frequency between December and April, and a neutral rather than alkaline cleaner on salt residue. Budget for extra periodic floor work in March. The second local factor is the tenant mix: a large share of Ottawa's office space is federal, para-public or leased by contractors serving them, and those buildings often impose security screening, escorted access and their own product restrictions, which narrows the field of contractors who can bid and raises the price. Ask early whether your building imposes any of that.

Licences, certifications and what they mean. There is no licence to operate a cleaning company in Ontario, and cleaning is not a compulsory trade (Skilled Trades Ontario). WSIB registration, on the other hand, is not optional for a business with employees: registration is required within 10 calendar days of hiring the first worker, and sales and services businesses are in the mandatory group (WSIB). Ask for a clearance number, valid for up to 90 days (WSIB), and re-request it annually, because a lapsed account can leave the building owner exposed. One real certification exists for cleaning services rather than for products: Green Seal's GS-42 standard certifies the service provider, requires written building-specific cleaning plans reviewed annually, third-party certified products, specified equipment performance, and 12 hours of initial training with a further 12 in the first year and 24 hours annually thereafter (Green Seal).

What to ask before you sign. Can I see the specification with frequencies. Who is the named contact on each side. Are the cleaners your employees or subcontractors. Can I have the WSIB clearance number and a certificate of insurance naming us as additional insured. Can I see the safety data sheets for the products you will bring into the building. How is performance inspected and logged. What is the notice period, and what happens to keys and fobs at termination. Is periodic floor and carpet work included or extra, and at what rate. Get the frequencies in writing, because a contract without them is a price with no scope attached.