Commercial cleaning · Thomastown
Established industrial rather than new estate industrial: engineering and fabrication workshops, manufacturing, warehousing and trade businesses on a tight street grid. Older buildings, smaller units, and amenities that carry nearly all the cleaning hours.
Established industrial
Thomastown is long established industrial rather than new estate industrial, and that difference runs through everything about how a building here is cleaned.
The street grid is tight and the units are smaller. Buildings are older, which means concrete that has absorbed thirty years of traffic, amenities that were built for fewer people than currently use them, and crib rooms that are genuinely small. A modern estate shed has one large amenities block. A Thomastown workshop often has a toilet at one end, a crib room at the other and a shower somebody added later.
That matters commercially because it defeats any attempt to quote from floor area. It also means an honest contractor has to say what a floor will and will not do. A slab that has been worked on since the 1980s will come up cleaner after a machine scrub, and it will not come up looking new. Anyone promising otherwise has not seen the floor.
About 18 minutes from our Broadmeadows base · no travel charge · covers Thomastown and Lalor
Scope
This is the part of the job that people either buy properly or complain about for two years. Written out in full, because vagueness here is where industrial cleaning contracts go wrong.
Workshops start early. A 6:30am or 7am start is normal in Thomastown, and a 3pm finish is common, which makes the cleaning window either before the shift or straight after it rather than late at night.
A start before 6am is quoted at $64 an hour plus GST because the award pays a loading for it. A late afternoon attendance after a 3pm finish sits inside the standard window at $58. Which one is right depends on your roster rather than on our preference, and it is worth asking, because the difference over a year is real money.
Whichever window it is, your site induction is completed before the first shift, our cleaners work in hi-vis and are briefed on forklift routes and exclusion zones, and safety data sheets for every chemical we bring in are added to your register.
Floors
The most common disappointment in industrial cleaning is a floor that was swept when somebody expected it scrubbed, or scrubbed when they expected it resurfaced.
Removes loose material: swarf, offcuts, packaging, dust. Fast and cheap and the right recurring task for most workshops. It will not touch oil, tyre marks or ground in film, and on an old floor it will not visibly change anything except the debris.
Water, detergent and a powered scrubber lifting the film sweeping leaves behind. This is what actually changes the appearance of a slab. Best bought as a periodic, quarterly or half yearly, rather than as a weekly task nobody needs.
Oil that has soaked into unsealed concrete, worn or faded line marking, spalling and cracking, and thirty years of colour change. Those are a resurfacing or line marking job. We will tell you which of your floor problems are cleaning and which are not, rather than quoting all of them.
Full detail on industrial floors, high dusting, racking and make good work is on warehouse cleaning in Melbourne, and the complete Victorian rate card is on commercial cleaning in Melbourne.
Nearby
Thomastown connects west into Campbellfield and Somerton and north into Epping industrial, with Lalor between them. Operators holding units in more than one are quoted as a single agreement with a scope per address, and travel between sites in the same corridor is absorbed rather than charged per stop.
Where a Thomastown business runs a showroom or a trade counter alongside the workshop, that front of house is quoted the way office cleaning in Melbourne is, and it is usually the part a customer judges the business on.
Questions
Yes. Workshops here commonly start at 6:30am or 7am, so the practical windows are before the shift or straight after it. A start before 6am is quoted at $64 an hour plus GST because the award pays a loading for it. A late afternoon attendance after a 3pm finish sits inside the standard window at $58. Ask us to price both, because over a year the difference is real money.
No, and we will say so before you buy it. A machine scrub with water and detergent lifts the film that sweeping leaves behind, and it will make an old slab visibly cleaner. It will not remove oil that has soaked into unsealed concrete, restore faded line marking, or undo thirty years of colour change. Those are resurfacing and line marking jobs, and we would rather tell you than take the money.
It is written out task by task rather than summarised, because vagueness here is where these contracts go wrong. Crib room benches, sink, tables, chair frames, microwave inside and out, fridge exterior, the floor under the seating and behind the fridge. Toilets including the wall behind the urinal, which is the surface most often skipped. Basins, dispensers restocked, showers including grout and drain surround, change room bench and locker fronts, and the site office.
Yes, and we complete it before the first shift rather than on it. Our cleaners work in hi-vis with site appropriate footwear and any additional protective equipment your site requires, and are briefed on forklift routes, pedestrian paths and exclusion zones. We also give you safety data sheets for every chemical we bring in so they go into your register.
Possibly not on its own. Our minimum recurring commercial contract in Victoria is $750 plus GST a month, and a single small workshop with one toilet and a crib room on a weekly scope may sit under it. A fortnightly scope sometimes fits better, and where an operator holds units in Thomastown, Lalor, Epping or Campbellfield the portfolio clears the minimum comfortably.
Yes, and the two are quoted differently. A furniture or stone showroom on a main road is front of house work, glass heavy and judged by customers, and it is quoted the way office and retail cleaning is. The workshop behind it is quoted by counting amenities. Most Thomastown businesses with both end up with a single scope covering the two at different frequencies.
Yes, at $74 an hour plus GST or as a fixed job price once we have seen it. Floor swept and scrubbed including under racking once it is removed, high dusting on services and lighting, roller doors and tracks, the office cleaned through, and amenities stripped and detailed. Tell us the handover date first, because it is the one thing in the job that will not move.
Next step
We walk the crib room, the toilets and the change room first, because that is where the hours are, then the floor. Written scope and three options in two business days.