Owners corporation · Melbourne
Foyers, lifts, stairwells, corridors, bin bays and car parks across Melbourne's northern suburbs. One named point of contact, a written scope an owner can be shown, and a monthly report that reaches you before the complaint does.
The actual problem
An owners corporation manager running a portfolio does not lie awake about lobby floors. They lie awake about the owner who has now emailed three times about the bin bay, the contractor who has not answered since Thursday, and the committee meeting where both of those will be raised.
Almost everything we do differently on common property is aimed at that, rather than at the cleaning itself. A written scope means an owner can be shown what was bought instead of being argued with. A monthly report means the manager has an answer before the question arrives. One named point of contact means nobody is chasing a contractor through a general enquiries inbox.
The cleaning is the easy part. What fails in this sector is the reporting loop, and it fails quietly for months before anyone changes contractor.
One page per building, sent on the same day each month whether or not anything has gone wrong, and written so it can be forwarded to an owner without you editing it first.
That last line is worth more than it looks. A cleaner attends your buildings more often than anyone else does, so they see maintenance problems first. Reporting them costs us nothing and saves a manager a site visit.
Scope
Common property only. Anything inside a lot is the occupier's, and the boundary is written into the scope so nobody discovers it in the middle of a dispute.
Entry glass and door furniture, mat wells, letterboxes, intercom panel, floors mopped or vacuumed, seating and planters wiped, cobwebs removed. The first ten metres of the building is what an owner shows a prospective buyer, so it is cleaned every visit.
Lift floors, walls, mirrors, handrails and the button panels, which are the highest touch surfaces in the building. Stair treads, landings, handrails and the underside of nosings. Fire stairs are included where they form part of common property, and they are usually the dirtiest part of a building nobody looks at.
Carpet vacuumed or hard floor mopped, skirtings, door frames, apartment door furniture, light fittings on a periodic cycle, and spot cleaning of marks. Common laundries, gyms, meeting rooms and rooftop areas where the plan includes them.
The single largest source of owner complaints in most buildings. Floor washed, bins wiped, chute doors cleaned, spillage removed, and illegal dumping reported to you with a photograph the same day rather than quietly cleared away and forgotten.
Swept, cobwebs removed, oil spot treatment, visitor bays and pedestrian routes kept clear. Pressure cleaning of the driveway and entry apron is periodic work, quoted separately and scheduled rather than assumed.
Where a building needs bins taken out and brought back on collection day, that is quoted as its own line with its own frequency. It is the task most often assumed into a contract without being priced, and the task most often missed.
Not included, and said plainly: anything inside a lot, external windows above ground floor, gardening and lawn maintenance, pest control, gutter clearing, pool plant, graffiti removal from rendered or porous surfaces, and mould remediation. We report all of those and refer you to a contractor who does them, rather than attempting one and creating a second problem.
Cost
Common property is quoted per site rather than off a rate card, because two buildings with the same number of lots can carry completely different work.
A twelve lot walk-up with one stairwell and a bin bay might need ninety minutes a week. At the standard rate that is well under our $750 plus GST monthly minimum, and we would rather tell you that than inflate a scope to reach it. Two or three buildings in the same corridor clear the minimum comfortably, and that is how most owners corporation work is structured with us.
Periodic work is costed for the year and divided across twelve invoices: carpet extraction, hard floor scrub and recoat, high dusting, light diffusers, driveway pressure cleaning and internal glass detail. A levy year with no surprise line items is easier to budget and much easier to explain at a general meeting.
Even the small ones. Buildings in the same portfolio are rarely similar, and quoting them off a schedule of lots produces a number that is wrong at both ends.
Each with its own areas, tasks and frequencies. One document per building, so it can be attached to that building's records rather than to a portfolio-wide file nobody can search.
Consolidated invoicing with a line per plan number, or separate invoices per owners corporation where your accounting needs that. Either works, and we set it up the way your system already runs.
One page per building, timed so they land before your reporting cycle rather than after it.
Terminology
In Victoria the correct term is owners corporation, and it is what Victorian managers, committees and legislation use. The same arrangement is called strata in New South Wales and Western Australia and body corporate in Queensland, and plenty of contractors advertising in Melbourne still use those words out of habit or because their website was written interstate.
We mention the synonyms once so that a manager searching either term finds this page, and then we use the Victorian word everywhere else, including in the scope, the report and the agreement. Our Western Australian equivalent genuinely is strata cleaning in Perth, because that is the correct term there.
Managers and the agencies alongside them are asked constantly about exit cleans in the buildings they look after. We do those too, at a fixed published price, with a seven day re-clean guarantee rather than a promise about a bond that nobody can honestly make. The detail is on end of lease cleaning in Melbourne.
If an owner or a renter asks you what they are actually required to do when they move out, the answer is on what Victorian law actually requires, which is written to be forwarded rather than sold from. Commercial tenancies in the same buildings are quoted the way office cleaning in Melbourne is.
Questions
It is quoted per building rather than off a rate card, because two buildings with the same lot count can carry very different work. A twelve lot walk-up with one stairwell and a bin bay may need ninety minutes a week, which is well below our $750 plus GST monthly minimum on its own. Two or three buildings in the same corridor clear it comfortably, and that is how most of this work is structured.
One page per building: attendance dates, the scope with anything not completed and why, a scored quality inspection of each common area, anything below standard and the date it was rectified, and maintenance items our cleaner noticed that are not cleaning. Photographs where they help. It is written to be forwarded to an owner without editing, which is the whole point of it.
With you, unless you tell us otherwise. One named contact on our side and one on yours. We do not take instructions directly from individual owners, because that is how a scope quietly grows and a manager finds out at the next invoice. Where an owner raises something we pass it to you with what we saw, and you decide.
The occupier. We clean common property only, and the boundary is written into the scope in plain words rather than assumed. If a lot owner wants their own balcony, windows or interior cleaned, we can quote that privately as a separate arrangement, and it never comes out of the owners corporation's contract.
Yes, quoted as its own line with its own frequency and its own price. It is the task most often assumed into a contract without being priced and therefore the task most often missed. If your building needs it, say so at the inspection and it goes on the scope with a day and a time attached.
It is the same work under the correct Victorian name. Owners corporation is the term Victorian legislation, managers and committees use. Strata is the equivalent in Western Australia and New South Wales, and body corporate in Queensland. We use the Victorian term in the scope, the report and the agreement, and we mention the others once so a manager searching either word finds us.
Illegal dumping in a bin bay is removed where it is safe and ordinary waste, and reported to you the same day with a photograph rather than quietly cleared and forgotten, because you need the record. Graffiti on painted or glazed surfaces we can usually remove. Graffiti on render, brick or porous stone needs a specialist and we will refer you rather than attempt it and mark the surface.
Send it to us and we go back. Anything below standard is rectified within 48 hours at our cost, which is in the agreement rather than offered as goodwill. Then it appears in that month's report with the date it was fixed, so the record exists before the next meeting. If the same complaint recurs at the same building we change the cleaner rather than the explanation.
Next step
We inspect every building, including the small ones, and come back with a scope and a price per building rather than a portfolio-wide guess.