How Do You Inspect and Score Janitorial Work?

Ways to score cleaning quality, compared

Most programs combine a scored checklist with occasional objective tests. Each method has a place, and none works alone.

Building a janitorial inspection checklist

Write the checklist from the scope, not from a generic template, so every line is something the crew was actually asked to do. Group items by room type and keep wording observable: "no dust on horizontal surfaces below head height" can be judged; "office clean" cannot.

• Restrooms: fixtures, partitions, mirrors, dispensers stocked, floor edges and corners, drains, odor, trash
• Entries and lobbies: glass, mats, floor condition, furniture, directory and reception surfaces
• Offices and open areas: trash and recycling, cleared surfaces dusted, carpet vacuumed edge to edge, spots
• Break rooms: counters, sinks, appliance exteriors, tables, floors, waste and organics bins
• Corridors and stairs: floor finish condition, baseboards, handrails, door glass and kick plates
• High and low: vents, ledges, light fixtures within reach, under desks and behind doors

How to score: sampling, weighting and severity

Few buildings can inspect every room every month, so inspect a rotating sample: a fixed share of rooms each month, chosen so every room is seen over a quarter, plus every restroom on each inspection. Divide the points a room received by the most it could have scored to get a room score, then weight room types to build the building score.

Severity matters as much as the score. Classify failures as critical (a health or safety issue such as an empty soap dispenser, a wet floor without signage or a soiled toilet), major (a missed task occupants will notice) or minor (detail work). A building can post a high average and still have a critical failure that needs action the same day.

Supervisor inspections vs client audits

The two serve different purposes. Supervisor inspections are the vendor's own quality control: frequent, detailed and used to coach the crew and assign fixes. Client audits are less frequent and check whether the vendor's system is working, ideally on the same form so the two sets of scores can be compared.

Every few months, walk the same rooms together and score them independently, then compare. Large gaps between the scores usually mean someone is reading the scale differently, and calibrating together fixes that faster than arguing about results.

Timing inspections so scores are fair

For night-cleaned buildings, inspect early in the morning, after the crew has finished and before occupants arrive. An afternoon inspection measures how the building held up under use, which is useful for day porter coverage but unfair as a test of the night crew. Record the date and time on every inspection, photograph failures, and reinspect each deficiency after it is corrected so the record shows both the problem and the fix.

How EBS inspects its own work

EBS Maintenance supervisors inspect each site on a routine schedule, including unannounced audits, and log every inspection in eHub: what was checked, what needs attention and the corrective action taken. Clients can walk inspections with a supervisor or run their own audits alongside.

That record of routine inspections, quality tracking and documented completion gives facility managers a history of how each area has performed over time, not just a snapshot from one morning.