Writing the first cleaning scope after developer handover in Zetland

Three things, and all of them drive cost. Occupancy, which may take six to twelve months to reach its intended level. Waste volumes, which follow occupancy and cannot be estimated reliably from unit count alone. And defect activity, which brings trades back into finished common areas repeatedly during the first year, generating dust and marks that the routine schedule was never designed to absorb. Each of the three moves independently, which is why a single figure set on day one rarely holds for long.

Write the scope acknowledging all three. State the occupancy the price assumes, note that waste is estimated and will be reviewed, and treat defect-related cleaning as a separate temporary line. That is an honest document. A scope written as though the building is complete on day one will need renegotiating within months, usually at the point when someone is already unhappy. Stating the assumptions also makes the eventual review a factual exercise rather than a difficult conversation.

Trades returning to rectify defects work in occupied common areas, use lifts and corridors to carry materials, and leave dust and marks behind. Their own making-good obligations cover their immediate work area but rarely the route they took to reach it. That gap falls to the building's cleaning arrangement and it is real additional work for the whole defects period. Lifts and corridors carry most of that traffic, which is why the effect concentrates in the common areas.

Handle it as a temporary uplift with named tasks and an end date aligned to the defects liability period, reviewed before that date arrives. Keep it separate from the routine schedule so it can be removed cleanly. Recording it as a distinct line also gives the owners corporation a dated record of additional cleaning attributable to defect rectification, which may be useful in its own right.

By six months the building has enough occupancy to measure, waste volumes are observable, and the areas that carry heavier use than expected have made themselves known. That review is where the permanent schedule is actually set, and the initial document should describe itself as provisional so nobody treats the review as a renegotiation of a settled arrangement. Naming the review month in the original document is what ensures it is actually held.

Bring three things to it: occupancy against the original assumption, waste volumes and collection frequency, and a note of which areas have generated complaints or required additional attention. Those three answer nearly every frequency question. Confirm the resulting adjustments in writing, and remove the defects uplift if the rectification programme has finished by then. Where rectification is still running, extend the uplift explicitly with a new end date rather than letting it continue.