Checking after-hours access arrangements before appointing a Chatswood cleaner

Every set of keys issued to a contractor should be recorded, numbered and tied to a named person, and there should be a process for returning them when that person leaves. Ask each provider how they do this. A company with a register and a sign-out process is managing a real risk. A provider who keeps keys loose in a vehicle is not, and the consequences of that fall on your building rather than on them.

Ask also what happens at the end of the arrangement. Keys, cards and fobs should come back within a stated time, and the agreement should say so. Buildings routinely discover after a change of provider that nobody can account for two access cards, which then means a rekey or a reprogramming exercise nobody budgeted for. Settling the return process during the comparison costs nothing and prevents exactly that outcome.

Alarm codes are the quiet risk in an after-hours arrangement. Ask whether each cleaner has an individual code or whether one code is shared, since a shared code cannot tell you who entered and cannot be revoked for one person. Ask how quickly a code is disabled when a cleaner leaves the provider, and who at the provider is responsible for telling you that a change is needed.

Then agree the false alarm position in advance. Callout charges from a monitoring company are usually modest individually and irritating repeatedly, and they arrive without warning. A provider willing to accept responsibility for callouts caused by their own error is being reasonable. A provider who has never considered the question will consider it for the first time when the first invoice appears and the conversation becomes difficult.

In managed buildings, after-hours work may require a security escort, a dock booking or an authorisation lodged in advance. Each of those constrains when cleaning can occur and how long it takes. Ask providers whether they have worked under those conditions and how they would build them into the schedule, because a plan that ignores them will not survive its first week in a building that enforces the rules.

Give every provider the same information about these constraints before they quote. If the dock closes at a particular hour or escorts are only available on certain nights, that changes the staffing and therefore the price. A provider who prices without knowing will either revise later or absorb the difference by shortening attendance, and neither outcome is one you would have chosen deliberately and the shortfall lands on the areas nobody inspects closely.