Strata cleaning in Subiaco usually comes down to a weekly visit covering the foyer, the lifts, the stairwells and corridors, the car park and the bin area, with the frequency lifted where a building has heavy foot traffic or a lot of short term tenants. Subiaco has an unusually wide mix of building types for one suburb, and that mix is the reason two complexes a street apart can need very different scopes.
What makes Subiaco buildings different?
Walk around Subiaco and you pass three distinct generations of apartment living. There are the older two and three storey walk ups from the seventies and eighties, often with open stairwells and no lift. There are the mid sized developments that went up through the nineties and two thousands around Hay Street and Rokeby Road. And there are the newer towers, with lifts, secure car parks, intercoms and shared amenities. The Subi East redevelopment on the old oval site is adding more to that last group.
Those three types do not clean the same way.
An open stairwell walk up is largely an outdoor job. Leaves blow in, the concrete holds dirt, and the work is sweeping, hosing where it is allowed and keeping the letterbox bank and entry tidy. There is no lift, no lobby carpet and usually no glass to speak of.
A newer building is the opposite. Most of the work is indoors on hard floors and glass, the lift is the single busiest surface in the building, and the standard people expect in the foyer is closer to a commercial reception than a residential corridor.
What should a weekly visit cover?
For a mid sized Subiaco complex with a lift, a typical weekly scope looks something like this:
- Foyer floors, entry glass, intercom panel and letterbox surrounds
- Lift floor, walls, handrails and door tracks
- Corridors vacuumed or mopped, depending on the surface
- Stairwells, including handrails and the landings people forget
- Car park swept, with rubbish and leaf litter removed
- Bin area tidied and any spillage cleared
- Paths and entry swept or blown
- Cobwebs removed from entries and ceilings in common areas
Glass above the entry, high pressure work on the driveway and carpet steam cleaning in corridors are all normally periodic rather than weekly, and they belong in the scope as scheduled extras with their own frequency so that nobody is surprised by the invoice.
How often does a building actually need someone on site?
Traffic decides it, not the number of lots. A quiet complex of long term owner occupiers can be perfectly well served once a week. A building with a high proportion of renters, a lot of turnover and a single shared bin room will show it by about day four.
The practical test is to walk the building the day before the cleaner is due rather than the day after. If the foyer glass is covered in handprints, if there is grit in the lift door tracks or if the bin room has started to smell by the end of the cycle, the frequency is light for that building. That is a scope question rather than a complaint about the work.
Subiaco has one local factor worth planning around. It is a suburb people come to rather than just live in, with the shops, the restaurants and the station all close by, so buildings near Rokeby Road and Hay Street tend to carry more through traffic in their entries than their lot count alone would suggest.
What should a strata council ask a contractor?
Four questions tend to sort out a good quote from a vague one.
What exactly is in the scope, area by area? A scope that says clean common areas weekly is not something anyone can measure or quote fairly against. A scope that lists each area and how often it is done gives the council something to hold up against what they see.
What is periodic and how often? Glass, high pressure work and carpets should each have a stated frequency rather than appearing as a surprise quote later.
Who turns up, and what happens when they are away? Continuity matters more in strata than almost anywhere else, because a cleaner who knows the building knows which door sticks and which corner collects leaves.
Are they insured, and can they show it? Public liability and workers compensation cover are basic, and a strata council is entitled to ask for the certificates rather than take it on trust.
Where cleaning sits in the strata company’s obligations
Under the Strata Titles Act 1985 (WA), the strata company has to control and manage the common property for the benefit of all owners and keep it properly maintained. The Act does not mention cleaning specifically, but a regular clean is one of the everyday ways a strata company meets that duty, which is why it sits in the budget alongside insurance and repairs rather than being voted on as an extra each year.
Talk to us about your Subiaco building
Cleanbright works across Subiaco and the surrounding western suburbs, and we are happy to walk a building with a strata manager or a council member and put a written scope together before the conversation turns to price. There is more about what we cover locally on our Subiaco cleaning page.
To arrange a walkthrough, call 1300 059 691 or email info@cleanbright.com.au.
This article is general information and not advice. What applies to your scheme depends on its own by-laws and circumstances.
