AI for commercial cleaning and janitorial companies, tried first on the bids and inspections in your files.

Buyers write cleaning in levels. APPA, the educational facilities association that began as the Association of Physical Plant Administrators, rates cleaning on five levels, on which 1 is best: Orderly Spotlessness, Ordinary Tidiness, Casual Inattention, Moderate Dinginess and Unkempt Neglect. Its Custodial Staffing Guidelines for Educational Facilities have managers choose a level first and staff to it. Each level describes floors, walls and other surfaces, ceilings and lighting, restrooms, trash and how quickly requests get answered. Universities write those levels into their own standards and into their janitorial bids, and a bid sheet that misreads the level the buyer named misprices every area that follows.

The same scale says how often someone checks. In APPA's descriptions as Michigan Technological University publishes them, restrooms at Level 2 are monitored by weekly inspections, at Level 3 by monthly ones, and at Level 4 only from time to time. An inspection report is how a customer sees whether the level it pays for is the level it gets. The supervisor notes and photos behind the reports you have already sent sit in your files beside the reports themselves, and together they make a fair answer key.

Certification asks how the company runs, not how it mops. ISSA's Cleaning Industry Management Standard, known as CIMS, is written for facility service providers and is deliberately non-prescriptive: it recommends no products, equipment or procedures. It sets out management practice in five sections, namely quality systems; service delivery; human resources; health, safety and environmental stewardship; and management commitment. A company earns it by showing an independent, accredited assessor that it complies, and ISSA runs a green building version too. In our reading, a bid sheet is service delivery written down before a contract starts, and an inspection report is the quality system written down after.

Green cleaning comes with a plan for every building. Green Seal's GS-42 standard for commercial and institutional cleaning services, edition 2.3, issued July 7, 2015 and last corrected July 26, 2024, requires a written cleaning plan for each building, with schedules that set the minimum frequency of each routine task and get reviewed at least twice a year. It also has the cleaning service hand building management a list of every cleaning product used in the building, and report pests and maintenance problems it finds. A request that asks for green cleaning is asking for that paperwork as well.

One limit covers both jobs. The proof of concept never prices or submits a bid, never sends an inspection report, never decides a pass or fail, and never contacts a customer, property manager or cleaner. It works only on copies, and nothing in it is legal or safety advice. A person on your team decides and sends.