Creating a cleaning concept: step by step

A good cleaning concept clearly answers what is cleaned where, how often and at what cost. It is the basis for budgets, tenders and smooth operations. Here is how it is created step by step.

A Cleaning concept is not a quality promise and not a mission statement but a calculation with explanations. It records which areas exist, how they are treated, how many hours that produces and who does the work. Everything else, hygiene plans, material lists, quality controls, builds on it. This guide works through six steps and calculates them throughout using the example of a school building with 3,000 m2 of cleaning area.

Step 1: record areas

At the start is the asset inventory: all buildings, floors, rooms and outdoor areas with their coverings and room types. The more precise this basis, the more robust the whole concept.

In practical terms, this means: take the construction plan or floor plan, go through it room by room and record four details for each area, area in m2, Floor covering, Room type and use. Rooms of the same kind may be combined as long as these details match. Twenty classrooms of the same size with the same covering thus produce a single item.

Two mistakes are common. First, gross floor areas are taken from construction records, although only the floor area that actually has to be cleaned counts. Second, areas are missing that nobody perceives as cleaning area: stairwells, lifts, cleaning rooms, plant rooms, basements, window areas and the outdoor areas. These gaps only come to light when the calculation does not match reality. Notes on how to proceed are offered in the article area recording for the cleaning calculation, with guidance on assigning the coverings in the article Area types and floor coverings.

Step 2: define cleaning types and intervals

For each area it is defined which cleaning type is needed at which interval: routine cleaning in everyday use, deep and interim cleaning at longer intervals, plus special work such as window cleaning.

This step is the only one that calls for a genuine decision. The areas are given, the performance values are empirical values, but the interval is set by the operator. It determines the budget more directly than anything else. A corridor cleaned three times a week instead of five costs 40 percent less.

A grading into three groups is helpful: areas with high hygiene requirements such as sanitary facilities and changing rooms, where no savings are made; visible areas such as entrances, corridors and meeting rooms, where the impression counts; and subordinate areas such as storage, plant and archives, where weekly or monthly intervals are sufficient. Also decisive here is the number of Operating weeks: 39 school weeks produce around 195 passes per year, whereas a continuously used administration building produces about 250. Which cleaning type accounts for which share is shown in the article Maintenance, deep and interim cleaning.

Step 3: calculate the effort

The annual effort results from area, performance value and interval, objective and transparent. From this, workloads in FTE percentages and the costs can be derived.

The calculation runs in three lines: area divided by the Performance value gives the time per pass. Time per pass times the number of passes gives the Annual hours of this area. The total across all areas and cleaning types gives the overall effort. A classroom with linoleum is cleaned in a few minutes. With 195 cleanings per year, these minutes add up to around 56 hours.

On top of the pure cleaning effort come Ancillary work: set-up times, material management, travel times between buildings, instruction, inspection and administration. Anyone who leaves them out calculates the workloads too low. The standard values on which this calculation is based come, in easyCAFM, from over 17,000 calculations by toolsuisse AG, which has been producing workforce calculations in Switzerland since 2004. The methodical approach is described in the Workforce calculation and in the Cleaning calculation articles.

Step 4: workloads and allocation

Hours become positions. The net annual working time of a full-time position is 1,840 hours, 42 hours per week, less 5 weeks of holiday, 9 public holidays and around 3 percent absences. The overall effort divided by 1,840 gives the workload in FTE percentages.

This figure is initially a calculated value. In the allocation, it becomes an organisation: how many people, with which workloads, for which buildings and zones? Here things come into play that the calculation does not know about: part-time preferences, cover arrangements and holiday cover. There are also the questions of whether one person looks after two buildings and how the hours are distributed between early and late shifts. A surcharge for cover is usual, so that holidays and absences do not lead to gaps every time. The workloads and allocations are managed as variants, so that several organisational models can be compared before one becomes binding.

Step 5: planning

The calculated effort is transferred into route, weekly and annual planning and distributed across teams. This turns the concept into an implementable process.

Three levels interlock. Route planning determines the order in which a person works through their rooms, this minimises travel times and makes the daily routine verifiable. Weekly planning distributes the work across weekdays and times of day, so that every area gets its interval and the daily load is balanced. The Annual planning schedules everything that does not occur weekly: deep cleaning during the holidays, window cleaning, interim cleaning, seasonal outdoor work.

Only in the planning does it become clear whether the calculation works in everyday practice. Typical findings: the hours are correct, but they all fall between 6 and 8 in the morning. Or the deep cleaning needs more people during the summer holidays than are employed at all. Such bottlenecks are planning problems, not calculation errors, they are resolved via intervals, time windows or by buying in external services.

Step 6: documenting and keeping up to date

A cleaning concept is not a one-off document. If areas or use change, it must grow with them. If everything is in one software, changes are immediately consistent everywhere.

What gets documented is not only the result but also how it was derived: which areas were calculated with which performance values and intervals, plus the assumptions behind them. Only then can the concept be checked later, compared with other objects and justified to authorities or providers. The Reports and evaluations supply this derivation per object, building and area.

Any change to areas, coverings or use is a trigger for a revision: an extension, a refurbishment, a new daily timetable, an additionally let gym. Irrespective of that, an annual review of the intervals and a complete review every three to five years are advisable. Feedback from operations via notifications and tasks shows between reviews where the concept does not match reality.

The structure of a model concept

A cleaning concept has a manageable structure. The following outline can be used for a single building just as well as for an entire municipal portfolio.

Indicative values for orientation, as at October 2026.

Who has which role in the concept

A cleaning concept is rarely created at a single desk. Three roles are involved. Friction usually arises where their responsibilities are not clarified.

• Municipality or property management. It owns the decisions: quality level, intervals, budget, in-house versus external provision. It approves the concept and is politically accountable for it. For public institutions it is additionally important that the derivation is documented traceably, because budgets have to be justified in committees.
• Caretaking and cleaning team. They know the building and its use better than any file. Their contribution is validation: are the recorded areas correct? Are the intervals sustainable in everyday practice? Where are there difficulty factors that the plan does not show? A concept created without this feedback rarely holds up in practice.
• External cleaning company. It is either the provider of part of the services, typically deep and window cleaning, or the bidder for the whole. Its view is that of the calculation: it needs specifications that are complete and unambiguous, otherwise it has to price in risks. For Cleaning companies the client's concept is the basis of its own quote.

The following division has proved its worth: the administration decides on the level and the budget, caretaking validates areas and processes, the external company calculates what has been contracted out. Data ownership remains with the administration. Otherwise the area inventory effectively belongs to the provider. When the provider changes, recording then starts again from scratch.

From concept to tender

A finished cleaning concept is already around 80 percent of a tender. What is missing are the formal parts: type of procedure, deadlines, qualification and award criteria, draft contract. The substantive core, the Specifications, is contained in chapters 2 and 3.

For the specifications to produce comparable bids, three things are needed. First, complete area details per room type and covering, so that each provider does not make its own assumptions. Second, cleaning types shown separately, so that it is visible whether deep and window cleaning are included. Third, intervals as a requirement rather than as a result, anyone who lets the provider choose the interval receives bids that cannot be compared.

Your own calculated effort remains internal. It serves as a benchmark for checking: a bid that lies well below your own calculation is either more efficiently organised or incomplete, in both cases it is worth asking. The procedure is described in the article Tendering cleaning for the public sector.

The concept should be reviewed with every structural or organisational change, but at least once a year during budgeting. A complete recalculation makes sense every three to five years and also before every tender. Otherwise an outdated area inventory becomes the contractual basis for the years ahead.

FAQ

How long does it take to create a cleaning concept?

The largest part of the time goes into step 1. For a single school building, one to two days are realistic for the area survey, depending on the quality of the available documents, provided usable floor plans exist. Calculation, workloads and planning follow from that and go considerably faster. For an entire municipal portfolio, it is worth proceeding building by building instead of doing everything at once.

Is software absolutely necessary for this?

For a single building, a spreadsheet will do. From several objects onwards it becomes laborious: every change to areas or intervals has to be carried through into the calculation, workloads, planning and report. In addition, standard values have to be applied consistently everywhere. It is precisely this continuity that is the reason why a shared solution pays off above a certain size.

How detailed does the concept have to be?

Exactly detailed enough for the calculation to be traceable. More detail is not needed. Every area needs covering, room type and interval. A breakdown into individual activities per room makes sense for specifications but is not necessary for the calculation. It creates maintenance effort that rarely pays off.

What distinguishes a concept from a hygiene plan?

The cleaning concept answers what is cleaned how often and what that costs. The hygiene plan answers with which agents, in which concentration and with which documentation, it is mandatory in hospitals, care homes and kitchens and builds on the concept. The two complement each other but do not replace each other.

Conclusion

A robust cleaning concept builds on clean recording and an objective calculation. The order is not arbitrary: areas, intervals, hours, workloads, planning, documentation. Anyone who skips a step has to make it up later at greater cost. easyCAFM brings these steps together in one platform, from the area through to the planning, with standard values from over 17,000 calculations and a derivation that can be demonstrated at any time. More on the background can be found under About us.

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