Mon–Sun

Three patterns, and the nights each one falls on

A scheduled clean is a pattern before it is a task list. The pattern names the nights, and the task list then hangs off them. Three patterns cover almost every building on the round, and the choice between them is made on how the building is used rather than on how large it is.

Footfall through the entrance decides more of it than floor area does. A building with one door and forty desks soils differently from a building with three doors and twenty. Where the matting run is short, the pattern usually has to be the denser one, because the soil arrives faster than a weekly visit can lift it.

Mon–Fri

What a five-night pattern actually covers

Five nights buys repetition, and repetition is what keeps a building level. Nothing is allowed to accumulate for more than a day, so the work stays light and predictable and the trolley carries the same load every night.

On a five-night pattern the desk area is taken every visit: bins, tops, touch points, and carpet along the runs people actually walk. Hard floor is dust-mopped and then damp-mopped in sections every visit as well, which is why hard floor on this pattern rarely needs more than the six-weekly buff to keep its finish.

Stairs are swept nightly and mopped on the Tuesday and Thursday visits. Handrails are wiped nightly along the top and along the underside, which is the half a hand actually holds. Lift cars are vacuumed nightly and the door tracks are raked out on the Wednesday visit, because tracks are where grit collects and where a door starts to judder.

Washrooms are worked in full every night and replenished in the same pass. The shelf is counted on the Tuesday visit, so the order can go up on the Wednesday and land before the Friday.

Last week a floor on a five-night contract was handed over mid-refit, with tradesmen still on it at 19:00. We took the bins and washrooms, left the floors, and wrote the reason on the visit record. The floors were taken the following night once the floor was clear.

Mon, Wed, Fri

Where an alternate-day pattern gives ground

Three nights covers the same task list with a day of accumulation between visits, and the accumulation shows in three places before it shows anywhere else.

The entrance goes first. Matting holds a day of soil rather than a night of it, and the band of floor just inside the door needs more than a pass with the vacuum. The second place is the kitchen, where a sink left overnight is a different job from a sink left two nights. The third is the washroom shelf: a building on three nights runs its consumables down in longer steps, so the count matters more and the cupboard is kept deeper.

The pattern suits a building with lower footfall, hard floors through the circulation routes, and a tenant able to keep bins on desks tidy between visits. Where it does not suit, the fault usually turns up on the entrance first, and the rota is changed rather than the task list.

Working day

Changing a pattern, and the week it takes effect

A pattern is changed in writing, to scheduling@jpklgreenfox.space, and it takes effect from the start of the following rota week rather than the next visit. The gap is deliberate: the supervisor covering the building has to be told before the round is altered, and a round altered at the door is a round that gets written up wrongly.

Where a building shuts for a period, the visits are suspended and the periodic cycle is held rather than reset, so the four-weekly and eight-weekly tasks resume at the point the cycle had reached. Which week each task falls in is worked out on the front page, and the intervals themselves are set out under periodic work.