No. Hiring a cleaning company does not make your workplace OSHA compliant, and a vendor that promises it is selling something it cannot deliver. Your safety program, your training and your records stay with you, the employer. What a good crew can own is narrower and still worth buying: written housekeeping tasks, done on schedule, inside your rules.
That’s the standard a building should be held to. If you’d rather have it in writing, tell us about the space — we walk it and come back with a scope of work and a price, usually within one business day.
Why a cleaning contract can’t carry your compliance
A boundary first: JAS Cleaning is a commercial cleaning company, not a safety consultant, and this is not legal or regulatory advice. OSHA’s rules are yours to read, on osha.gov or with your own safety advisor. What we can describe is the part a crew actually touches, because that part is our job.
In OSHA’s general-industry rules, housekeeping turns up in more than one standard, among them walking-working surfaces, 29 CFR 1910.22, whose paragraph on surface conditions is addressed to the employer. Hire an outside crew and your floor has two employers on it: you, and a cleaning company that answers for its own people and its own work.
A contract can hand over tasks. It can’t hand over the obligations that come with being the employer.
We gave medical practices the same answer in our guide to cleaning standards for medical and dental offices: “No, and a vendor that says otherwise is selling something it cannot deliver.” If your workplace is clinical, start there. This page is for everyone else: warehouses, distribution and fulfillment centers, auto and fleet shops, light-manufacturing plants and multi-tenant offices.
What a crew can own: housekeeping, written task by task
Housekeeping is the part of the safety conversation a janitorial crew can genuinely carry, as long as every task is written down with a frequency. “Keep it clean” can’t be checked. Lines like these can:
- Walkable floors. Main aisles, staging lanes and entries swept and scrubbed on a set cadence, with drips and tire marks spot-treated where people walk.
- Dock plates, thresholds and door tracks. The first surfaces to collect grit, shrink-wrap and pallet splinters, and the first to get wet.
- Drain grates. Kept clear, with the floor around them degreased, wherever water or wash work runs.
- Restrooms, break rooms and locker areas. Every visit, because every shift uses them.
- Trash and cardboard. Out to your compactor or baler area, under your dock rules.
- Rack faces and reachable ledges. Dusted within safe reach; anything higher is scoped on its own.
On paper, it reads like our warehouse cleaning page: “Ride-on scrubber passes on slab floors: main aisles, staging areas and dock approaches on a set cadence” and “Dock doors, dock plates, thresholds and man doors cleaned and degreased,” where “the cadence is set at the walkthrough.” On how the crew moves through your building: “Crews follow your traffic rules: pedestrian lanes, high-visibility vests, staying clear of active forklift aisles.” Your rules, followed; not a certificate. And the same page draws its own edge: “Chemical or hazmat spills also stay with your certified spill-response process.”
Timing. A floor scrubbed at 5:30 for a 6 a.m. start can still be wet when the first shift walks in. Ask for wet work to finish with real drying time, one section at a time with signage up, so there is always a dry path through.
Weather. In South Florida, summer afternoon storms blow rain through open dock doors and entries, onto exactly the plates and thresholds above. Write a storm rule into the scope: on wet days, docks and entries come first.
Your rules. Traffic lanes are only the start. The scope can name whatever else your program asks of outside workers: site orientation, sign-in, the PPE it requires, and the language the safety briefing is given in.
Where the crew stops
Every honest scope has an edge, and the edge is where your own program takes over. Write these out of the crew’s work by name:
- Chemical and hazmat spills. To your spill-response process, whoever finds them.
- Machines. Our light manufacturing page states it outright: “Machine interiors, anything behind a guard or under lockout/tagout, and line maintenance stay with your maintenance team.”
- Regulated waste. Used oil, solvents, soaked absorbents, sharps and red bags stay in your licensed waste streams.
- Product and equipment. Pallets, inventory and forklifts stay with your operations team; upper rack levels are scoped on their own or left out.
- Anything clinical. That belongs to your clinical staff and their program, as the medical guide above explains.
- The middle of the day. Commercial cleaning usually happens after hours, so a 2 p.m. spill lands between visits. Unless daytime coverage is scoped in writing, it is your process.
Some conditions end a visit outright. Our Terms reserve “the right to refuse or stop service where conditions are unsafe for our team — such as mold, infestation, biohazards, or abusive behavior.” That is a refusal, not an offering: those conditions go back to you and to the specialists your program names.
The chemicals a crew brings onto your floor
Your safety lead will want to know what a crew brings onto your site. In OSHA’s rules, Safety Data Sheets fall under the hazard communication standard, 29 CFR 1910.1200, and each one comes from the product’s manufacturer or importer. So the practical ask is a name: have every product listed in the written scope, so anyone on your side can pull its sheet. We take that question apart in what to ask a cleaning service about its products.
Two more lines belong in the scope. Products arrive in their original, labeled containers, and no two products get mixed together. And if the vendor keeps supplies on your property, the scope names one agreed spot, away from your own chemical storage, so nobody finds an unlabeled jug beside the break room.
Put the line in the scope
None of it protects anyone until it is written down before the first visit. A scope that serves your safety file, not just your invoice, carries six lines:
- Each housekeeping task, with its area and its frequency.
- The exclusions, by name: spills, machines, regulated waste, product, and upper racks unless they are scoped on their own.
- Timing: the latest finish for wet work, and the storm rule.
- Your site rules: orientation, sign-in, PPE, traffic lanes, and who the crew reports to on site.
- The product list, and where supplies are stored.
- The vendor’s terms for stopping work.
What JAS does, and what it won’t claim
What we publish, on our janitorial services page: “Evening slots (6pm–10pm) are our default for commercial work,” and on daytime coverage: “we do not staff day porters today.” “What we can do is scope it,” the page goes on, and it adds that we will “tell you plainly whether we can staff it for your building or not.” Until that coverage is in writing, the 2 p.m. spill stays yours. On eligible completed visits we send a CleanCheck report with “that visit’s task-list status, customer-safe photos, and the team’s notes.” And for your vendor file: “JAS Cleaning carries $2M general liability, and every cleaner passes a background check. If your property manager needs a certificate of insurance naming the building as certificate holder, we send it within 2 business hours, and a W-9 is available on request.”
What we won’t claim: that we are OSHA-certified, that hiring us makes your facility compliant, or that we provide OSHA programs, training, records, audits or inspections. The exclusions quoted above stand as published, from chemical and hazmat spills to anything under lockout/tagout, and we make no slip-resistance claims about any floor or product. A CleanCheck report is evidence for your own file, never a substitute for your program.
Part of the JAS operating playbook, and not legal or regulatory advice.
FAQ
Who is responsible for OSHA compliance when we hire a cleaning contractor?
You are, for your own program, people and site; the cleaning company answers for its own crew and its own work. A contract can divide tasks, but it can’t move your obligations onto the vendor. How responsibility works on a shared site is a question for your safety advisor or OSHA’s own guidance, not a sales pitch.
Can a cleaning company take over our OSHA training or records?
No. The written program, the training and the records stay the employer’s responsibility. A crew can follow your program as written and give you a record of its own visits, but that record sits in your file next to your program, never in place of it.
Who handles a spill in the middle of the workday?
Your own process, unless daytime coverage is scoped in writing. Commercial cleaning usually runs after hours, so a 2 p.m. spill lands between visits. A chemical or hazmat spill goes to your spill-response process whenever it happens.
Should our cleaning vendor give us Safety Data Sheets?
It’s a fair ask, and the useful answer starts one step earlier: the product names. Safety Data Sheets come from each product’s manufacturer or importer, so a product named in your written scope is one your safety lead can look up. A vendor that can’t name what it brings onto your floor can’t point you to a sheet either.