Area recording: the basis of every cleaning calculation
Every cleaning calculation is only as good as the figures it is based on. And right at the start is a seemingly simple question: how much area actually needs cleaning? And of what type? Area recording is the most important first step.
Why the area determines everything
The cleaning effort essentially results from area, performance value and interval. The area is the basic figure: if it is inaccurate, the calculated effort, the workloads and the quote are inaccurate too. Careful recording therefore pays off across the entire process.
The reason lies in the calculation method. The area is not used once but multiplied many times over by the interval and the operating weeks. A classroom cleaned five times a week over 39 weeks enters the annual hours 195 times. A few square metres too many per room are thus counted again with every pass. Added up over twenty classrooms, this quickly produces over a hundred extra hours per year, i.e. several FTE percent, without a single square metre actually being cleaned. For details of how the calculation works, see the article Cleaning calculation explained.
Cleaning area is not gross floor area
Plans and building insurance records usually state the gross floor area, measured by external dimensions. For cleaning, this figure is useless, because it includes construction, shafts and rooms that are never entered. What matters is the Cleaning area, that is, the floor area that can actually be walked on and that actually has to be cleaned.
| Item | Area m2 |
|---|---|
| Gross floor area (all floors, external dimensions) | 3'800 |
| less walls, construction, shafts | -320 |
| less rooms that are not cleaned (heating, electrical, attic) | -260 |
| less areas under fixed furniture (built-in cupboards, stage, grandstand) | -220 |
| Cleaning area | 3'000 |
Indicative values for orientation, as at October 2026.
In this example, the cleaning area is around 21 percent below the gross floor area. Anyone who calculates with the larger figure unchecked budgets a fifth too much. Conversely, it happens just as often that areas are missing: stairwells, forecourts under canopies, lifts, cleaning rooms and outside stairs often do not appear as rooms in plans, but still have to be cleaned.
What counts and what does not
- Counts: all walkable floors in usable rooms, corridors, stairs and landings, lifts, entrance areas, changing rooms, sanitary facilities, kitchenettes, cleaning rooms as well as storage rooms and archives that are cleaned regularly.
- Counts with limitations: Plant rooms, attics and cellars that are cleaned only once or twice a year. They are recorded, but with a very long Interval.
- Does not count: Construction areas, shafts, areas under permanently installed furniture, cavities, inaccessible areas and areas let to third parties with their own cleaning.
- To be recorded separately: Glass and window areas, walls and ceilings, furniture and outdoor areas. These items follow their own units of measurement and intervals and do not belong in the floor area.
Not just square metres, but also type
What matters is not only the size but also the type of area:
- Floor covering: different coverings have different performance values.
- Room type: a sanitary room is cleaned differently from an office or a gym.
- Indoors or outdoors: Outdoor areas follow their own rules and seasonality.
Only with these details can the correct performance value be assigned. Only then does a realistic effort become calculable at all. Which coverings and area types are distinguished in practice is shown in the article Area types and floor coverings.
What is recorded for each room
A fully recorded room needs five pieces of information. More is rarely necessary, less leads to queries later on.
- Area in m2: measured on the plan or on site, rounded to the square metre.
- Floor covering: Linoleum, PVC, parquet, ceramic, natural stone, carpet, concrete, sports flooring. In mixed rooms, a split by covering is made as soon as the smaller part accounts for more than around 10 percent.
- Room type: Classroom, office, corridor, sanitary room, changing room, gym, storage. The Room type governs work steps and surcharges, not just the covering.
- Interval: how often cleaning takes place, plus the operating weeks of the room. A multi-purpose room used only for events has a different interval from the classroom next door.
- Special features: Degree of furnishing, soiling, visitor traffic, hygiene requirements, difficult access. This information later justifies the surcharges.
Procedure: on the plan and on site
Measuring areas by hand is laborious and error-prone. Recording them directly on the floor plan is considerably more efficient: rooms and outdoor areas are drawn in and the square metres calculated automatically. That saves time, reduces errors and creates a clean, verifiable Asset inventory.
In practice, a combination of both has proved its worth, in this order:
- Obtain the plans. Floor plans from the building authority, the architect or the building documentation, ideally with a scale and room numbers. A scan is sufficient if the scale is known.
- Check the plan. Does the plan match today's condition? Conversions, relocated walls and repurposed rooms are the most common source of error with old plans.
- Draw the rooms on the plan. Record area, covering and room type; number the rooms consecutively. This produces a list that matches the plan.
- Site visit. What the plan does not show: the actual covering, degree of furnishing, condition, accessibility, furniture, cleaning rooms and water connections. Take the room list with you as a checklist.
- Record deviations. Enter corrections from the site visit directly into the list, not into a separate notes document.
- Check plausibility. Total per floor, total per covering, ratio of usable area to circulation area. Circulation areas are usually 15 to 25 percent of the indoor area; if the value deviates strongly, a stairwell is usually missing or a corridor has been recorded twice.
The module Objects and areas supports exactly this process: store plans, draw rooms, record properties and transfer the areas directly to the Cleaning calculation module.
Outdoor areas are part of it
At school campuses and administrative buildings, the Outdoor areas are often larger than the indoor area, but they are regularly forgotten or only estimated as a lump sum. They are recorded by area type, because each type has its own effort and its own season:
- Hard surfaces: Playground, access routes, forecourts, parking spaces. Sweeping, leaves, winter service.
- Lawn and meadow: Mowing 12 to 25 times per season depending on use, edge care separately.
- Planting and hedges: Pruning once or twice a year, weeding several times per season.
- Play and sports areas: Impact protection, sand, all-weather pitches with their own inspection and maintenance work.
- Winter service: what matters is the area to be cleared plus the length of the paths, calculated with an expected number of call-outs per winter.
These areas do not enter the cleaning calculation but the outdoor areas task block of the Workforce calculation. They must, however, be managed in the same asset inventory, otherwise they are missing from the workload.
How accurate does it have to be?
Accuracy costs time. The effort required depends on the purpose of the recording.
| Purpose | Level of detail | Tolerance |
|---|---|---|
| Rough budget, initial orientation | Room groups per floor, main coverings | ±10 % |
| Annual budget, workload review | Room by room, covering and room type per room | ±5 % |
| Tender, specifications | Room by room with intervals and special features | ±2 to 3 % |
| Binding quote from a provider | Room by room, verified on site | ±2 % |
Indicative values for orientation, as at October 2026.
For a tender the highest level is mandatory: inaccurate quantities lead to variation claims or to bids that cannot be compared. For an initial orientation, by contrast, a rough recording is sufficient, as long as it is clearly communicated that it is an order of magnitude. The procedure for tenders is described in the article Tendering cleaning for the public sector.
Typical sources of error
- Outdated plans. The plan shows the condition at the time of construction, not today's. Changes of use and new partition walls are missing.
- Stairs counted as floor area. Their performance value reaches only a fraction of what is possible in a corridor. Counted in with the floor area, this difference disappears.
- Duplicate recording at floor boundaries. Landings and stairwell voids are easily recorded twice, once per floor.
- Covering taken from the plan instead of from inspection. Floors get refurbished, plans do not. What matters is today's covering.
- Windows in the floor area. Glass areas are a separate unit of measurement with their own interval and do not belong in the cleaning area.
- Outdoor areas as a lump sum. A single figure for everything prevents any differentiation between hard surfaces, lawn and planting.
- No updating. A recording without a maintenance process is back to being an estimate after two conversions.
Example: the object structure of a school building
This is what the object structure of a medium-sized primary school building looks like: 3,000 m2 of indoor cleaning area and 4,000 m2 of outdoor area, together 7,000 m2 of managed area. The table shows the indoor rooms, condensed into room groups per floor, with the calculated effort of routine cleaning. The outdoor areas do not appear in this list because they belong to caretaking and are calculated separately there.
| Level | Room type | Floor covering | Interval | Hours per year |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| GF | Classroom | Linoleum | 5× per week | 290 |
| GF | Hall, corridor | Tiles | daily | 120 |
| GF | Administration | Carpet | 3× per week | 110 |
| 1st floor | Classroom | Linoleum | 5× per week | 290 |
| 1st floor | Corridor | Linoleum | 5× per week | 75 |
| 2nd floor | Classroom | Linoleum | 5× per week | 250 |
| 2nd floor | Group rooms | Linoleum | 3× per week | 40 |
| 2nd floor | Corridor | Linoleum | 5× per week | 50 |
| all floors | WC facilities | Tiles | daily | 366 |
| all floors | Stairwells | Tiles | 5× per week | 48 |
| Gym | Gym | Sports floor | 5× per week | 195 |
| Gym | Changing rooms | Tiles | daily | 210 |
| Basement | Storage, plant | Concrete | monthly | 47 |
| Total | 2'091 |
Indicative values for orientation, as at October 2026.
What stands out is how unevenly the hours are distributed. The classrooms make up the largest block because they are numerous and cleaned on every school day. However, small room types with a high interval, such as WC facilities and changing rooms, reach values far exceeding their modest area. Storage and plant rooms, on the other hand, hardly count, although they take up a fair amount of space on the plan.
What this structure makes visible
The WC facilities make up only a small part of the indoor area. With their low performance value and daily cleaning over 39 school weeks, they produce around 366 hours per year and thus about 18 percent of the cleaning effort. The corridors and stairwells are several times larger in area terms but need less time at 293 hours.
Across all items, the routine cleaning of this school building comes to around 2,091 hours per year. With deep, window and special cleaning it is around 2,300 hours, so with a net annual working time of 1,840 hours, about 125 FTE percent for cleaning alone. This very statement depends entirely on the quality of the area recording.
One asset inventory, many uses
Once recorded, the areas are the basis for everything else: calculation, workloads, planning, quotes and reports all access the same data. If an area is changed, the change is consistent everywhere, without duplicate maintenance.
In concrete terms, the following build on it: the calculation of the annual effort, the Workloads and allocation per member of staff, the Route and annual planning, the quotes and reports as well as the assignment of tasks and notifications to the correct room. For this to hold, a rule for updating is needed: who reports a change of area and who enters it? Without this responsibility, every set of data becomes outdated.
FAQ
Do walls and windows count towards the cleaning area?
No. The cleaning area is the floor area. Glass, walls and ceilings are recorded separately and calculated with their own intervals, because they are cleaned at entirely different intervals.
How do I proceed if no plans are available?
Then measuring takes place on site, room by room, with a laser distance meter and a simple sketch. That is more work, but it delivers reliable values. For an initial orientation, room groups can also be derived approximately from floor dimensions.
How often does the area recording have to be updated?
With every conversion, every floor refurbishment and every change of use. Without such events, a review every three to five years is sufficient, ideally before budgeting.
Do I really have to record every room for a rough budget?
No. For an initial orientation, room groups per floor with the main coverings are sufficient. As soon as workloads, tenders or binding quotes are involved, however, room-by-room recording is indispensable.
Conclusion
Accurate area recording is not a tiresome preliminary step but the foundation of a robust calculation. Three points are decisive: use the cleaning area rather than the gross floor area; record area, covering, room type, interval and special features for each room; include the outdoor areas by area type. easyCAFM records areas directly on the plan and makes them the shared basis for all building maintenance. Which modules build on this is shown in the overview of the Solution.
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