In-house versus contracted cleaning: a facilities decision that lasts longer than the quote

Facilities teams are asked, every few years, to “look at in-house versus contract”. What they are usually handed is a contractor quote and last year’s wage bill. Those two numbers do not answer the question. The question is who will supervise a washroom at 11pm in year four, who owns the scrubber when it dies, and what happens to industrial relations when you try to reverse the decision.

This sits in the contracts and procurement hub because it is a make-or-buy choice, not a vibe about loyalty. Commercial Cleaners is not a contractor and not a union. The useful comparison is labour, supervision, capital and risk — over a period longer than the quote.

Price the Award, not the brochure

Whether you employ cleaners or buy a contract, someone pays the Cleaning Services Award 2020 or an enterprise agreement that sits on or above it. Night penalties, broken shifts, part-time minima, allowances and overtime are not optional colour. A contractor who is cheaper than your wage bill by a margin that cannot be explained by scale, roster design or genuine productivity is cheaper because something was left out.

Build both models on the same scope. Same rooms, same frequencies, same periodics, same consumable rule. Then add:

• Direct wages or the contractor’s labour line, with penalties
• Supervision: leading hands, a day supervisor, an after-hours on-call
• Relief and annual leave cover — not “we’ll manage”
• Superannuation, workers compensation, payroll tax where it applies
• Uniforms, training time, induction time
• The facilities hours you will spend either rostering or managing a contract

In-house looks expensive when you forget that the contractor’s price includes profit, idle relief, and the risk of a sick Tuesday. Contract looks cheap when you forget your own contract-management time, the variations, and the equipment that was never in the weekly rate.

Do not use a square-metre rate as the decision. Use hours. Then decide who employs the people inside those hours.

If you are going to market, tender the contract as a specification, not as a referendum on your current staff. A tender run to “prove” in-house was right will get theatrical prices.

Supervision is the job you cannot subcontract away in your head

A crew without a supervisor who can be found is a complaint generator. In-house, that person is yours: recruited, rostered, covered on leave. Contracted, they are the contractor’s — until 2am, when your phone rings.

Ask who briefs the shift, holds the store key, signs attendance, allocates rework, and covers the leading hand on a Tuesday. Contractors do this well when the price contains a supervisor you have met. They do it badly when the “area manager” is in another city and the leading hand is unpaid for the title. In-house teams fail the same way when the supervisor is a facilities officer who leaves at five.

WHS does not care which logo is on the shirt. Contracting labour does not contract away the host’s duty. In-house does not make the work safer by sincerity. Both models need the same induction, chemical discipline and lone-work rule.

Equipment is capital, not a footnote

Scrubbers, vacuums, carpet machines, auto-dose systems, high-dust gear — someone buys them, maintains them, and replaces them. In-house, that is your capex and your workshop, or your lease and your call-out. Contracted, it is usually the contractor’s, until the machine on site is a domestic vacuum doing commercial hours and you have no contractual right to reject it.

Price a replacement cycle. Commercial kit in a busy tower does not last a decade of neglect. Put service, bags, pads, batteries and downtime in the model. A contractor quote that says “equipment included” should still list what will live in this store. If you want a particular filtration standard because indoor air is a live issue, write it. Otherwise you will inherit whatever is on the van.

A hybrid that works: you own the specialist kit and the contractor owns the daily machines. Write who maintains which. Consumables behave like a capital argument. In-house purchasing can chase price and empty the dispensers. A contractor inclusive price can chase product occupants hate. Name the rule.

Industrial relations is not a reason to pretend

Cleaning labour in Australia is organised in some buildings and atomised in others. In-house teams on a university or hospital agreement can be stable, expensive, and difficult to change. Contracted teams on the Award can be flexible, poorly supervised, and difficult to see. Neither is a moral category. Both are industrial facts.

If you bring work in-house, you inherit recruitment, discipline and the ability to train people for this campus. If you contract out an in-house team, you inherit consultation, possible redundancy, and a political argument a quote cannot settle. Do not announce “market testing” if the decision is already made.

Enterprise agreements change the arithmetic. A CBD tower on the Award is not a public hospital on a health EBA. A model that only works if people are paid less than the instrument is a finding waiting for a regulator.

Hybrid models, and the sites that already use them

Most mature portfolios are already hybrid. They just have not named it.

The hybrids that already exist

In-house day, contracted night is common in campuses and some hospitals. Day staff handle spills, toilets, VIP rooms and the political work. A night contractor does the floors and the empty offices. It fails when the two specifications disagree about the tea point, or when the in-house day team is used as free relief for the contractor.

In-house specialist, contracted general. Your people do theatres, labs or quarantine. The contractor does offices and teaching space. It fails when the contractor is asked to “just finish the lab” at 1am without the induction.

In-house supervisors, contracted cleaners. You keep control of quality and the occupier relationship. The contractor supplies bodies. It only works if direction, discipline and WHS roles are written down. Two bosses on a night shift is how nobody is the boss.

Contracted core, in-house relief. Rare, and usually a historical accident. Relief is the hard part of the job. If you can build a relief roster that holds, you already have the capability most contractors sell. Ask why you are buying the rest.

Name the hybrid. Fund the join. The join is where the microwave lives.

Universities and hospitals are not CBD towers

A multi-tenant CBD tower has a thin host, changing occupiers, after-hours access controlled by a security contractor, and a facilities manager who may be looking after several buildings. The cleaning job is repetitive, night-heavy, and politically quiet until it fails. Contracting is usually the default because the host does not want to be an employer of a night workforce it barely sees. That default still requires a specification, an SLA and attendance KPIs. Outsourcing is not a substitute for management.

A university is a small town: teaching, research, residences, food, dirty labs, ceremonial spaces, and a union environment that remembers the last outsourcing. In-house or a long hybrid is common because the campus is always on and the political cost of a bad contractor is high. The failure mode is an in-house team that has not been trained or relieved, wearing a quality story that stopped matching the lecture theatres.

A hospital or large health campus adds infection control, clinical waste, and a 24-hour occupancy that does not care about your night window. Many health services keep environmental services in-house or under a tightly specified panel for that reason. A CBD-office contractor dropped into a ward without a health induction is a clinical incident wearing a mop. If you contract here, you are buying a health-capable workforce, not a cheaper office run.

Complexity, hours of occupancy and the cost of a public failure push toward in-house or a hybrid with real supervisors. Simple night work in a building you do not occupy pushes toward contract — if you tender it as work, not as a rate.

A decision you can still explain in year four

Write down whether you can recruit and relieve a night workforce, fund supervision at the hour the work is done, own the kit, and live with your industrial environment. Then fund the model. A starved in-house team is not a values win. A contractor paid for two hours on a four-hour floor is not a market win. Training commercial cleaners still has to happen in both pictures.

Revisit when the building changes, not when a cheaper email arrives. The cleaners will still be there, under someone’s logo, when the slide deck is forgotten. Choose who employs them as if you will have to explain it to them, to an auditor, and to the occupier who opens the microwave. You will.