An Australian facilities journal
Est. 2004 · Australia
Commercial CleanersWorkplace hygiene, contracts and practice for Australian facilitiesIndependent writing for facility managers, contractors and the people who still have to clean the building on Monday.
Long-form facilities writing
An independent Australian journal for facility managers, cleaning contractors and building owners. Long-form reporting on commercial hygiene, procurement, safety and the people who keep workplaces clean.
Lead essay
A specification that only a contract manager can read will not be cleaned. This piece walks through rooms, tasks, outcomes, frequencies, exclusions and inspection language that a night crew can actually follow.
Claire Nguyen · 14 January 2025
Practice
What clean actually looks like in Australian offices, tenancies and shared buildings — inspections, high-touch work, indoor air and the habits that last after the night crew leaves.
Buying
How facilities teams specify, tender, measure and live with a cleaning contract. Specifications, SLAs, KPIs and the difference between a cheap price and a cheap outcome.
Places
Cleaning is not one job. Clinics, schools, shops, kitchens, warehouses and early learning centres each have their own soil, hours and inspectors.
Duty
WHS duties, hazardous chemicals, food premises rules and the infection-control work that sits beside a mop and bucket.
Materials
Certifications that mean something, water and microfibre programs, and the waste a cleaning contract quietly produces.
Crews
Induction, night shift, equipment and the relief roster. The human side of a service that is still mostly people with machines.
National Regulations, toys, nappy change, sandpits and chemical choice around children. After-hours work does the floors; during-session work does the mess. Neither needs a hospital protocol copied onto a kindy trolley.
Ellen Marks · 16 September 2025
Casual pools are not a system. Award minimums decide whether a two-hour gap is fillable. Multi-site jumping and sick season take the rest. Buyers should specify relief hours, not hope.
Priya Raman · 2 September 2025
Liners, drums, spent pads and the difference between tenant rubbish and cleaner rubbish. Landfill versus comingled is a bay problem. Weighbridge theatre is a reporting problem.
James O'Connor · 19 August 2025
Concrete dust, oil, ride-on scrubbers, line marking and cold stores decide whether a warehouse floor lasts the week. Food-grade sites and 3PL sheds are not the same specification, even when the machine looks identical.
Ellen Marks · 5 August 2025
Capex versus opex, battery versus cable, and the Friday-night machine that has no spare. Who owns the kit on a contract decides who waits. Filters and training are the real lease conditions.
Priya Raman · 29 July 2025
Response times, rectification, credits versus termination, force majeure after storms, indexation, and labour-hour floors. An SLA is a bargain you can inspect, not a scorecard from a software demo.
Tom Bradley · 22 July 2025
Gastro and respiratory clusters ask different things of a workplace. The PCBU, the public health unit, the limits of fogging, and the decision to close a floor sit above a single invoice for a Sunday clean.
Guests see rooms and a lobby. Councils, auditors and night auditors see kitchens, linen, grease and the dock. How hotel housekeeping and back-of-house cleaning actually split, and what an outbreak does to that split.
One national contractor versus regional firms, Award and travel differences, building managers who do not share a standard, dashboards that flatter the average, and quarterly reviews that still look at rooms.
FSANZ sets the Code, states write the Food Acts, council EHOs walk the floor. Cleaning schedules as evidence, allergens, grease traps versus floor soil, and the point where pest control and cleaning have to meet.
Body clocks, lone work and alarms. The last floors get the leftover attention. Transport home is a WHS question. Award night penalties pay for the hour; they do not make it safe.
Dust reservoirs, vacuum filtration, chemical volatiles and damp after mopping sit on the cleaning side of a building. Plants will not save a tenancy that soils itself every night.