Splitting a multi-building Bankstown cleaning requirement into priced lots

Write the standards once at the front: reporting method, supervision expectations, screening and insurance requirements, incident escalation, consumable model and periodic review. These apply everywhere and do not need repeating. Then give each building its own area list, task schedule, frequency and service window, because those are properties of the building rather than of the portfolio. Anyone reading the document then finds the general rules in one place and their own building in another.

This structure makes the document shorter, not longer. It also makes it usable by the people on each site, who need their own schedule and rarely need the whole portfolio specification. When a new building joins, you add a schedule rather than rewrite a contract, and the standards section carries across untouched. The same applies when a site leaves the arrangement, which is rarely as tidy as adding one.

A single total for several buildings looks efficient until something changes. One site closes for refurbishment, another extends its hours, a third is handed to a different department. With a blended figure there is no defensible way to adjust, so the discussion becomes a negotiation rather than a calculation. Per-site pricing turns the same event into a straightforward addition or deduction. The figures also survive an audit better, because each one traces back to a schedule someone can inspect.

It also affects internal accountability. Departments and cost centres usually want to know what their own building costs, and a portfolio figure divided by floor area is not an answer they can act on. Separate lots let each site owner see their own schedule and price, which tends to produce better local decisions about frequency and periodic work. Local visibility of cost is usually what drives a sensible conversation about frequency rather than a blanket instruction.

Consistency should apply to standards, not to schedules. Every site should get the same reporting, the same screening, the same escalation path and the same review cycle. Very few should get an identical task list, because a public counter, a training room and a records store wear at different rates. Forcing uniform frequencies across a portfolio overspends in some buildings and underserves others. The result should look deliberately uneven, because the buildings themselves are.

A practical test at review time is to compare cost per site against complaint history and periodic work completed, rather than comparing sites with each other. A building that costs more may simply be busier. What matters is whether each schedule still matches how its building is used, and whether the standards section is being met everywhere. Reviewing schedules against use once a year keeps the portfolio from drifting toward a single average.