A commercial floor runs on three calendars. The crew pass, vacuuming and mopping, rides the regular visit: in our janitorial scope, that’s lobby and restroom floors every visit and the rest weekly. Machine scrubbing follows a cadence set by traffic and grit. Restorative work, from refinishing to carpet extraction, is a separately scoped periodic job. Your contract should say which ones your vendor owns.
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.
One floor, three calendars
Each calendar removes something different, and each decides how soon the next one comes due.
- The crew pass. Vacuuming, sweeping and mopping on the regular visit. It removes the loose grit that foot traffic would grind into fiber and finish, so it runs most often where grit arrives and floors soil fastest: entries, lobbies, restrooms.
- The machine pass. Scrubbing and, on finished floors, burnishing. An auto-scrubber washes the floor and vacuums the dirty water back up in one pass, so soil leaves the floor instead of spreading thinner, even on textured tile, grout lines, bare slab and rubber.
- The restorative job. Renewing the floor’s finish or surface, or running hot-water extraction on carpet, once the first two calendars can no longer keep up, on the interval the floor or finish maker’s guide recommends.
Run the first two well and the third moves further out.
What a janitorial scope already covers
Our janitorial services page splits a scope into three frequency tiers, and four of its lines include floor work:
- Every visit: “Entry glass, reception, and lobby floors” and “Restrooms disinfected, restocked, and mopped.”
- Weekly rotation: “Carpet vacuumed and hard floors mopped throughout.”
- Monthly detail: “Grout and tile edges in restrooms.”
The weekly-rotation tier carries its own note on the page: “On a nightly contract these ride once a week; on a weekly contract they ride with the visit.” So on a nightly contract, lobby and restroom floors get the crew pass every visit, and the carpet and hard floors throughout get it once a week; on a weekly contract, both ride the same visit.
The same page publishes the proof: “On eligible completed visits we send a CleanCheck report: that visit’s task-list status, customer-safe photos, and the team’s notes.” None of the three tiers names a scrubber, a burnisher or a finish: those are the other two calendars.
Floor by floor: the crew’s part, and the sign it’s running long
- Carpet. Vacuuming does the heavy lifting: dry grit cuts the fiber, and the vacuum removes it. Running long: gray traffic lanes, and grit collecting along edges and in corners.
- Resilient tile and LVT. Mopping lifts the daily film. Vinyl composition tile usually carries a floor finish that machines maintain and a periodic strip-and-refinish renews; LVT usually has a factory wear layer, and its maker says what may go on top, sometimes nothing. Running long: a dull stripe down the main path, scuffs, gray corners.
- Sealed and polished concrete. Dust-mopping and scrubbing. Polished concrete gets its shine from grinding and polishing the slab itself, not from a coating, so machines keep it and a concrete specialist renews it. Running long: dull lanes and tire marks.
- Stone, porcelain and terrazzo. Porcelain barely absorbs, so the work concentrates in the grout. Marble, travertine and the marble chips in traditional terrazzo are mostly calcite, which acids etch, so cleaners must be pH-neutral. Running long: darkening grout and dulling traffic paths.
- Rubber. Sweat, chalk and body oils settle into the texture, and a mop mostly moves them around. Running long: a tacky feel and an odor the room keeps after mopping.
- Sport and dance surfaces. Courts, sprung floors and marley are cleaned only as their maker approves; renewing the finish or the surface is the flooring contractor’s job.
The machine pass, and why its cadence is set on site
Machine work isn’t a line on our office tiers; we publish it on the facility pages where the floor calls for it. Our warehouse floor scrubbing scope lists “Ride-on scrubber passes on slab floors: main aisles, staging areas and dock approaches on a set cadence,” and the same page says of those runs that “the cadence is set at the walkthrough.” For gyms, the scope of our gym floor cleaning service includes “Rubber flooring machine-scrubbed to lift sweat, chalk, and grime — not smear it around.”
Neither line carries a number, deliberately. A machine cadence depends on what no national chart can see: how many people and wheels cross the floor, what they bring in, how much matting catches it, and what the floor’s maker allows. Those are walkthrough facts.
Where the janitorial line stops
The recurring visit ends where the restorative calendar begins: stripping and refinishing resilient tile, screening and recoating wood and sport floors, honing stone and terrazzo, re-polishing concrete, sealing stone and grout, and hot-water extraction of carpet. Each is specialist work, with its own machines, chemistry and drying or cure times, so it is scoped apart from the visit. JAS does not strip and wax, screen or refinish floors: that’s a flooring contractor’s job, scheduled separately, and our crew works around it.
None of them has a universal interval. It comes from the maintenance guide for your floor or finish, and from how well the first two calendars run. Find the product name, often on the installer’s invoice, and read that guide before anyone books the job. It outranks any vendor’s habits, ours included.
What South Florida does to a floor calendar
- Sand all year, storms all summer. Beach sand and parking-lot grit never take a season off, and in the rainy season the mid-afternoon storm saturates walk-off mats and wet grit travels past them. The night crew meets the result, so an entry calendar that holds in March can run long in August.
- Humidity and the AC. Any wet specialist process, from a finish coat to an extraction, dries only as fast as the building’s air allows. Book it with the AC running and enough hours before opening.
- The summer window. Schools traditionally put restorative floor work in the summer break, when the building stays empty long enough for finishes to cure.
Put the floor in the contract
Whoever you hire, five lines make floor care something you can check:
- Floor type by area. Carpet in the offices, LVT in the corridors, porcelain in the restrooms, terrazzo in the lobby, written after someone has seen them.
- Each machine pass as its own line: area, machine, frequency. “Floor care” with no frequency is a line nobody can check.
- The specialty-floor answer, in writing. It’s the line we flagged in what commercial cleaning includes: “specialty floor treatments are not on anybody’s published list by default,” so put the answer, “yes, no, or at this price,” in the scope.
- The order of work around a specialist. Regular crew first, so the specialist starts on a clean floor; then the cure time the finish maker specifies, marked on the crew’s schedule so nobody wet-mops a fresh finish.
- Proof that names the floor lines. If a vendor sends a visit record, the floor lines belong on it. Ours is the CleanCheck report quoted above, sent on eligible completed visits.
What we publish, and what we won’t claim
What we publish is the crew pass quoted above, plus machine passes where a facility page lists them, on the cadence that page describes. What we won’t do is claim restorative work our pages don’t publish.
- Hot-water extraction isn’t ours. “JAS does not shampoo carpet or run hot-water extraction,” as we wrote in how often carpets should be professionally cleaned, which also covers the manufacturers’ intervals and the warranty receipt.
- Neither is grout sealing. Cleaning a joint isn’t sealing it: “JAS does not sell grout sealing, resealing, regrouting, or restoration,” as our guide to sealing grout after cleaning puts it.
- The rest isn’t on our published scope. None of the other restorative jobs above appears on it as a service. If your floor needs one, raise it at the walkthrough and get the answer in writing.
Nor will we quote a machine frequency of our own, a restorative interval, or how long a floor will last.
FAQ
Does a janitorial contract include stripping and waxing?
Strip-and-refinish is restorative work with its own crew day, chemistry and cure time, so it is scoped apart from the recurring visit.
Can the night crew run a floor scrubber?
It can, when the scope includes it. Whether it fits depends on what the floor’s maker allows, a place to fill and empty the machine, the building’s rules on equipment and freight elevators, and time in the visit. Write it in as its own line with an area and a frequency, so someone can check it.
Who extracts office carpet, and how often?
A carpet-cleaning specialist, on the interval in the carpet maker’s care guide; if the warranty’s maintenance terms differ, follow the warranty, since coverage can depend on them. The cleaning crew’s part is the vacuuming that decides how soon that date arrives. Keep each extraction receipt with the installation invoice; a warranty claim may ask for them.