NDIS & disability services · Melbourne
Supported accommodation, day programs, respite and provider offices across Melbourne's northern suburbs. Cleaned to a documented protocol, by screened cleaners who attend the same sites every week, with records written to sit in your evidence file rather than in ours.
Who this is for
Disability and NDIS services are the densest single category in our Melbourne prospect list, 50 organisations out of 403, and no two of their sites want the same scope. A contractor who quotes all four the same way has not looked at any of them properly.
Someone's home first and a service delivery site second, and that ordering decides everything about how the clean is run. Bedrooms are private space. Attendance is scheduled around the residents rather than around our roster. The scope separates common areas, shared bathrooms and kitchens from personal rooms, and personal rooms are only entered on the terms the house sets.
Heavy daytime use, shared equipment, art and cooking activities, accessible bathrooms and change facilities including adult change tables. High touch surface work matters far more here than floor appearance, and cleaning is scheduled around the program timetable rather than dropped into the middle of it.
Turnover cleaning between stays is the real job: bedrooms, bathrooms, linen areas and shared living reset to a known standard, on a checklist, within a short window. This is the site type where a written scope earns its keep, because the person doing the handover is rarely the person who did the last one.
Coordination offices, therapy rooms, plan management and back office space. Closest to ordinary commercial cleaning, but usually holding participant records, so access, key control and confidentiality are handled the same way we would handle them in a medical practice.
Providers in Melbourne's north are concentrated around Preston, Broadmeadows, Craigieburn, Epping and Coburg, and several run more than one site inside our catchment. Where that is the case we quote the portfolio rather than each address in isolation.
The audit
The NDIS Practice Standards deal with the environment supports are delivered in. An auditor reads that as covering whether the premises are clean, safe and suitable for the participants using them, and whether you can show it rather than assert it.
Almost every provider we speak to can describe their cleaning arrangements accurately. Far fewer can hand over a document. That gap is the whole reason this page exists. What we give you is not a better description, it is a set of records that sit in your evidence file and answer the question before it is asked.
We use Whiteley Viraclean, a TGA listed hospital grade disinfectant, AUST L 69000. You can search that number on the Australian Register of Therapeutic Goods yourself, which is the point of naming it. "Hospital grade products" with nothing after it is not evidence.
Red for toilets and urinals, yellow for other bathroom surfaces, green for kitchens and food areas, blue for general surfaces and glass. The chart goes on the wall of the cleaner's cupboard at your site, not only into a manual nobody opens.
NDIS worker screening where a site requires it, which is portable between Victoria and Western Australia, plus a national police check on every cleaner. Where a site also supports children, the cleaner holds a Victorian Working With Children Check, which is not portable and has to be the Victorian one.
Every area, every task, every frequency, dated and version numbered, in a document you can attach to an evidence file without reformatting it. Plus the monthly scored inspection, which is a record of performance rather than a promise of it.
Participants
A cleaner who treats a supported independent living house like a commercial site will cause problems that no amount of technical quality fixes. This part of the work is not about chemicals.
We attend at times the house agrees to, not at times that suit our run. The same cleaner attends each visit so residents are not meeting a stranger in their kitchen every week. Personal bedrooms are cleaned only on the terms the house sets, which in some houses means with the resident present, in some means only when they are out, and in some means not at all. That is recorded in the scope so nobody has to renegotiate it at the door.
Our cleaners knock and announce themselves, work around residents rather than through them, do not move or handle personal belongings beyond what the scope names, and do not discuss anything they see in the house anywhere outside it. Where an incident occurs, or where a cleaner notices something that should be reported, it goes to your nominated contact the same day rather than being mentioned in passing next month.
Shared bathrooms, shared kitchens and residents who may have reduced immunity or difficulty with hygiene tasks make the infection control side of this work closer to a clinical scope than to an office one.
The same method underpins our medical centre cleaning and our childcare cleaning, which is why providers running a therapy room and a day program under one roof usually put both on one scope.
Cost
The disability services rate is $68 an hour plus GST. It sits above the standard commercial rate of $58 because the protocol genuinely takes longer, not because the sector is assumed to have money.
The two step clean and disinfect with observed contact time, colour coded equipment kept separate per site, the documented scope and version control, the monthly scored inspection, and cleaners screened and briefed for the setting. Each of those costs us time, and time is the only thing in a cleaning quote that is real.
One house rarely reaches the $750 plus GST monthly minimum on its own, and we would rather say that than dress up an undersized contract. Two or three houses in the same corridor usually do. Where a provider has one site only, a fortnightly or monthly periodic scope often works better than a stretched weekly one.
Quoted as a portfolio: one agreement, one point of contact, one consolidated invoice, and a scope per address because the addresses are not the same. Travel between sites in the same corridor is absorbed rather than charged per stop, which is the main reason a portfolio prices better than the sum of its parts.
Marlow does not hold a Victorian labour hire licence. Cleaning is a prescribed industry under the Labour Hire Licensing Act 2018 (Vic), and whether a cleaning contractor performing its own contracted work with its own employees needs one is a genuinely contested question we are resolving with the Labour Hire Authority directly. Because the Act can expose a host organisation as well as a provider, you should ask that question of every contractor who quotes you. We would rather answer it plainly here than let you assume.
Where
Provider offices and coordination space concentrate along Bell Street and High Street in Preston, which is the densest commercial suburb in our whole Melbourne list. Supported accommodation is spread far more widely, through Broadmeadows, Glenroy, Fawkner, Coburg, Reservoir and out into the newer estates at Craigieburn and Roxburgh Park.
Being based in Broadmeadows matters more for this sector than for any other we work in. Supported accommodation cleaning happens in small visits at fixed times across scattered addresses, and that only works when the drive between them is measured in minutes. A contractor running these houses from the other side of Melbourne is quoting a schedule they cannot hold.
Free, about forty minutes per site. We measure, count, and ask how the house or the program actually runs before we write anything.
Sent to you before it is priced, because you will know things about the site that we cannot see, and because it has to satisfy your auditor rather than ours.
Usually the same scope at three frequencies so you can see what each change does to the monthly figure.
Screening evidence and certificates issued, cleaners briefed on the setting, and the first clean at every site supervised.
The full Melbourne rate card and compliance package are on commercial cleaning in Melbourne.
Questions
In our experience, four things: what is cleaned and how often, what it is cleaned with, who is doing it and whether they are screened, and evidence that it happened. Descriptions satisfy none of those. We supply a dated and version numbered scope of works, a chemical and safety data sheet register naming Whiteley Viraclean AUST L 69000, screening and police check records for the cleaners attending, and a monthly scored inspection report. Those four documents are the answer to the question.
Sixty eight dollars an hour plus GST, with a minimum recurring contract of $750 plus GST a month across the sites we cover for you. The rate is above the standard $58 because the protocol takes longer: two step clean and disinfect with observed contact time, equipment kept separate per site, and documentation produced every month.
Possibly, but we will be straight with you: a single house rarely reaches the $750 plus GST monthly minimum on a weekly scope, and stretching a contract to fit a minimum serves nobody. Two or three houses in the same corridor usually clear it comfortably. If you have one site, ask us about a fortnightly or monthly periodic scope, which often suits the house better anyway.
Only on the terms the house sets, and those terms go in the written scope. Some houses want personal rooms cleaned with the resident present, some only when they are out, and some not at all. We do not decide that. What we do guarantee is that the same cleaner attends each week, that they knock and announce themselves, that they do not handle personal belongings beyond what the scope names, and that nothing they see in the house is discussed outside it.
Where a site requires it, yes, alongside a national police check for every cleaner. NDIS worker screening is portable between Victoria and Western Australia, which is useful for us as a two state business. The Working With Children Check is not portable, so where a site also supports children the cleaner attending holds the Victorian check specifically.
Yes, and we would rather agree how that works before it happens. We can write an outbreak response scope alongside your standard one, at a higher frequency and with an expanded high touch surface list, that we switch to on a phone call. Additional visits are charged at the periodic rate rather than an emergency rate where we have notice.
No. Cleaning is a prescribed industry under the Labour Hire Licensing Act 2018 (Vic), and whether a cleaning contractor performing its own contracted work with its own employees is supplying workers to a host is genuinely contested. We are resolving it with the Labour Hire Authority directly. Because the Act can expose a host organisation as well as a provider, this is a question worth asking every contractor who quotes you, and worth being suspicious of a vague answer to.
One person, not a call centre. Anything below standard is reported to us within 24 hours and rectified at no charge, which is written into the agreement rather than offered as goodwill. If your cleaner is unwell or on leave we tell you in advance and the person covering attends with your scope in hand.
Next step
One site or a whole portfolio. We walk it, ask how the house or the program actually runs, and send you a draft scope to review before anything is priced.