What we have learned from a decade in strata buildings
ARTOO has been cleaning strata buildings in Sydney for close to a decade. We have worked with committees in Pyrmont, Potts Point, Surry Hills, Waterloo, North Sydney and across the inner ring. In that time, we have had a lot of conversations with committee chairs.
The things committees consistently ask for are not complicated. They are consistently not delivered.
They want to know it was done
The most common complaint we hear from committees about previous cleaning contractors is not that the work was done poorly. It is that they could not tell whether the work was done at all.
No completion log. No response when asked. A different person each visit who did not know the building. A lobby that looked clean on Wednesday and filthy by Thursday, with no way to know whether it had been cleaned in between.
Committees want a completion record. Not a lengthy report. A log that says: the building was cleaned, here is when, here is what was done, here is what was noted. That is the minimum.
They want problems flagged before residents do
The second most common theme: finding out about a maintenance issue from a resident instead of from the cleaning contractor who was in the building two days earlier.
A dripping tap in the bin room. A light out in the car park. A damaged surface in the lift lobby. These are things a cleaning operator walks past. A professional operator flags them. A roster-based contractor does not, because nobody on the roster is responsible for your building specifically.
Committees want an operator who acts as a second set of eyes in the building, not just a mop.
They want consistency
Not perfection. Consistency. The same person, or the same small team, on the building regularly. Someone who knows where the equipment is stored, which residents are particular about noise during cleaning hours and what the committee’s non-negotiables are.
Consistency is the thing that cannot be bought cheaply. It requires a contractor who retains staff, invests in training and does not treat your building as an interchangeable item in a roster.
What this looks like in practice
A committee that has all three of these things (a completion record, early flagging and a consistent operator) runs its cleaning line differently. The monthly meeting agenda item takes two minutes: the log is circulated, issues raised by the operator are already with the building manager and nobody has to relitigate whether the bin room was done.
Compare that with the alternative, which most committee chairs will recognise: a resident email about the state of the car park, a chase to the contractor that takes a week to answer, a defensive reply with no record to check it against and a meeting spent debating whether to go back to market. The difference between the two is not the price of the contract. It is whether the contractor runs a system.
They want to be treated as principals, not problems
Committees are volunteers. They are managing significant common property on behalf of their fellow owners, in their spare time, without professional facilities management support. The best cleaning contractors understand this and make the committee’s job easier.
The worst ones treat committee communication as an interruption, respond slowly and make committees feel like they are being difficult for asking basic questions about the work.
ARTOO’s approach is simple: the committee is the client. They set the standard. We hold it.
