Handing a cleaner your keys: what to check first

Most commercial cleaning happens when the building is empty. Offices are cleaned in the evening once staff have gone, strata common areas get done when residents are asleep, and retail floors are handled before the doors open. It is the least disruptive way to run it, and it means handing your keys and alarm codes to a company you may have met twice.

That is a genuinely significant thing to agree to, and it deserves more scrutiny than it usually gets. Here is what actually protects you.

Liability insurance is about the worst day, not the normal one

Liability coverage exists for the day a machine damages a floor, water gets somewhere it should not, or something expensive gets knocked over in the dark. The number matters because commercial damage escalates fast once other tenants are affected.

Swept Space carries $5 million in liability insurance. Ask any cleaner for their figure, and ask to see the certificate rather than taking the number on trust. A company that is properly covered will hand it over without any friction at all.

Bonding covers the thing people do not like saying out loud

Insurance covers accidents. Bonding covers theft. Nobody enjoys raising it, and it is exactly the question worth asking when you are about to give someone unsupervised access to a building full of laptops.

Swept Space is fully bonded, and every crew member undergoes a criminal record check before joining the team. Those two together are the real answer to the question you were reluctant to ask.

WorkSafeBC coverage protects you as much as the crew

If a cleaner is injured in your building and their employer does not hold active WorkSafeBC coverage, the situation can land on the property rather than staying with the contractor. It is an unglamorous piece of paperwork that quietly matters a great deal.

Swept Space holds active WorkSafeBC coverage for every member of the team. When you are comparing quotes in British Columbia, this one is worth confirming explicitly rather than assuming.

Consistency is a security feature

A rotating cast of unfamiliar crews is harder to manage and harder to trust. Sending the same people to the same site each visit means they learn the building, they know what normal looks like, and they notice when something is not right. It also means you can put a name to whoever was in your building on a given night.

Swept Space keeps the same crew returning to a site, works against an agreed checklist, and has supervisors run their own site check-ins and cleaning audits rather than waiting for a complaint. Crews are trained to let themselves in and out of empty locked buildings and to work without drawing attention.

Being discreet is part of the job

There is a practical side to after hours work that rarely makes it into a quote. Crews are often in buildings where somebody is still working late, where residents are asleep upstairs, or where a security guard is on rounds. Working quietly, staying out of the way and leaving the building exactly as it was found is a skill, not an afterthought.

The same applies to what a crew sees. People leave paperwork on desks and whiteboards up in meeting rooms. A cleaner who is in your building unsupervised every week ends up with a quiet, incidental view of your operation, which is another reason record checks and consistent crews are worth insisting on.

What to ask before you agree

• What is your liability coverage, and can I see the certificate
• Are you bonded
• Do you hold active WorkSafeBC coverage for everyone who will be on site
• Are crew members criminal record checked before they start
• Will the same people come each visit, and who supervises them
• Who holds the keys and codes, and what happens when someone leaves the company

None of these are awkward questions to a company that has already answered them properly. If any of them produce a vague response, that is your answer.

After hours cleaning works because you never have to think about it. The point of the checks above is that you get to stop thinking about it honestly, rather than just hopefully.