OC · StrataCommon property cleaning for Melbourne owners corporations and body corporates
OC · StrataCommon property cleaning for Melbourne owners corporations and body corporates
S03Programs
A strata cleaning and maintenance program puts your routine cleaning and the small, recurring building jobs on one twelve-month plan with one contractor. Globes get changed, graffiti gets removed and defects get photographed and reported, by the same crew that is already in the building every week.
This page is for committees and managers who are tired of chasing five small contractors for five small jobs. It explains what a program includes, what it deliberately leaves out, how the contract is shaped around your annual general meeting, and how it is priced.
The idea is simple. Your cleaner already walks every corridor, stairwell and basement level on a regular round. If that person also carries a ladder, a box of the right globes and a way to report what they see, most of the small annoyances in a building get fixed before a resident has to complain. Anything bigger goes to the right trade with a photo attached, so your manager spends less time finding out what is wrong. Programs sit alongside the other scopes in our strata cleaning services and can include any of them.
01Why bundle
Because a crew on site every week is the cheapest defect-detection system a scheme can have. Combining strata cleaning and maintenance means small problems are noticed and fixed on the next visit, and bigger ones reach the manager in days rather than months.
Consider how most buildings find out about a problem. A resident notices a dead light in the fire stair, tells a neighbour, who eventually emails the manager, who then books an electrician for a minimum call-out to change one globe. That can take weeks and cost more than the globe is worth.
On a program, the cleaner working that stairwell sees the light out on Tuesday, swaps the globe from stock and notes it in the report. If the fitting itself has failed, the manager gets a photo and a location the same day and can book the electrician for a proper job, not a guess.
There is a second benefit that committees value just as much: fewer invoices, fewer contractor inductions and fewer people holding keys. Older Melbourne walk-ups in suburbs like Elwood and Brunswick often have no manager at all, and a volunteer secretary doing the chasing. For them, one contractor who notices things is worth a great deal.
The same logic applies to graffiti. In the inner north and inner west, tags appear on laneway walls and bin enclosures most weeks. A building that removes them within days tends to stay clean; one that waits for a quarterly contractor tends to become a regular target. A crew already on site can deal with a fresh tag on its next visit.
How a problem gets found
02The core
The cleaning core is your routine scope set out by frequency: weekly or more for entries, lifts, stairs and corridors, fortnightly or monthly for detail work, and quarterly or yearly for periodic jobs like gutters, glass and carpets. All of it sits on one calendar the committee approves once.
The calendar below is an example for a mid-rise apartment building of about sixty lots. Your building's version is written after a walk-through and adjusted at each review.
| Scope | Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Routine clean | ||||||||||||
| Maintenance round | ||||||||||||
| Gutters | ||||||||||||
| External glass | ||||||||||||
| Pressure cleaning | ||||||||||||
| Carpet extraction | ||||||||||||
| Program review |
Every weekPeriodic jobReview with manager
Periodic jobs are placed so they help each other. Gutters come before winter and again in spring. Pressure cleaning follows in late spring, once the paths have dried and the second gutter clean is done. Carpets are extracted in the middle of the year, well away from the dusty outside work. The detail of what happens on each routine visit follows the same checklist as our residential strata cleaning scope, adjusted to your building.
Underneath the calendar sits the routine checklist, grouped by how often each task happens:
The same small crew does the routine clean and the maintenance round, supervised by one person who knows the building. That continuity is the point. A cleaner who has walked your fire stairs for six months notices the new crack in the render; a stranger on a one-off job does not.
Because the whole year is priced up front, the committee knows the total before the budget is set. Nothing arrives as a surprise invoice in August.
03The maintenance layer
The maintenance layer covers small, repeatable jobs that need no licence: changing globes in existing common-area fittings, removing graffiti and stickers, tightening loose screws on signage and door stops, and photographing every defect for the manager. It is deliberately narrow so it is always done well.
Everything on the list happens in common property. Smoke alarms, taps and fittings inside apartments belong to each lot owner, and we do not enter private lots as part of a program, even when a resident asks nicely in the corridor.
We keep the list short on purpose. A program that promises to fix everything ends up doing nothing properly, or doing work it should not touch. The four jobs below are the ones that come up every week in almost every building and can be handled safely by a trained cleaner with the right equipment.
A few practical details make the maintenance layer work. Globes are held as a small stock in the cleaner's cupboard, recorded on the report when used and reordered before they run out. Graffiti removal starts with the gentlest product that works, because the wrong solvent can strip paint or stain render. And every defect photo is taken with something for scale and a wide shot showing where it is, so a trade can find it without a second visit.
Every entry in that log reaches the manager in the visit report, and the month's list can go straight into the owners corporation's maintenance records. Larger schemes that must keep a maintenance plan find it useful evidence of what the building actually needed during the year.
04Referral, not improvising
Electrical work, plumbing, gas, lift servicing, fire equipment, pool water and any building repair stay with licensed or specialist trades. We find the problem, photograph it and report it; your manager books the right person. We never improvise a repair to save a call-out.
Energy Safe Victoria's advice is to use a registered electrical contractor for any type of electrical work and to get a Certificate of Electrical Safety for it. A cleaner changing a globe is not doing electrical work; a cleaner replacing a sensor light is, and we will not do it. Fire safety equipment, including exit signs and fire doors, is inspected and serviced by specialists under the building's own essential safety measures regime, so we report problems with it and leave the fix to them.
Referral works best when the manager keeps a short list of preferred trades. We send the defect report, the manager books the trade, and if the job needs access to a plant room or cleaner's cupboard we can open up on our next visit. Once the fix is done, the next report shows it, so the loop is closed in writing.
Specialist contractors visit most buildings on their own cycles: lift technicians monthly, fire services on the schedule set for the building, pool technicians weekly in summer. We keep a note of when they are due, so our cleaning does not clash with their work, and we mention in the report anything we notice in their areas, such as a lift that stops short of the floor or a fire door that no longer closes.
This line matters for insurance as much as safety. If an unlicensed repair fails, the owners corporation can end up carrying the cost. Keeping the maintenance layer small and honest protects the scheme as well as our crew.
Source: Energy Safe Victoria, working with tradespeople. Checked September 2026.
05Contract shape
A program runs for twelve months, with a review after the first three and another before renewal. Either side can end it with 30 days' written notice, so there is no lock-in. Renewal quotes are sent early enough for the committee to table them before the annual general meeting sets next year's budget.
Long enough to plan the periodic jobs properly, short enough to review every year.
Month three to fix early teething problems, and month eleven to shape the renewal.
Either party can end the program in writing. No exit fees and no automatic multi-year rollover.
Sent about three months before the AGM with any changes marked.
Tabled at a committee meeting alongside other contractor renewals.
Owners approve the budget that includes the program.
Updated calendar issued; any added scopes begin.
Hours and frequency checked against three months of reports.
Scope can change during the year without rewriting the contract. If the committee decides to add a quarterly carpark scrub in month five, we send a one-page variation with the price and the months it falls in. The committee or manager approves it and it joins the calendar. Prices for the agreed scope are fixed for the twelve months.
Victorian owners corporations hold an annual general meeting every year, and that is where the owners see the budget. Many committees also delegate day-to-day contractor decisions to a manager. Either way, what matters is that the program's cost is known before the budget is drafted, so we work to your meeting date rather than to a calendar year.
06Pricing
A program is priced as a fixed monthly fee covering the routine cleaning and the maintenance round, plus a set price for each periodic job placed in its month. Materials like globes are either charged at cost or supplied by the owners corporation, as the committee prefers.
The maintenance round usually adds a small amount of time to each visit rather than a separate visit, which is why programs often cost less than hiring handymen on call. The time is shown as its own line, so the committee can see exactly what the maintenance layer adds.
Compare that with the alternative. A handyman or electrician called out to change two corridor globes usually charges a minimum call-out. Three or four of those in a year, plus a graffiti contractor and a separate gutter quote, can cost more than the maintenance round, and each needs its own induction, access and invoice approval.
GST is shown on every line, and the quote states the annual total as well as the monthly figure, because the annual number is the one owners see in the budget.
Periodic jobs are priced once for the year and spread across the months they happen in, or evenly across twelve instalments if the committee wants a flat monthly figure. Both options produce the same annual total.
Our page on strata cleaning cost explains how routine visits are priced by building size, and the same logic applies to the cleaning core of a program.
Lines on a program quote
07Getting started
Tell us your building's size, current cleaning arrangements and AGM date. We walk the building with the manager or a committee member, note the defects already there, then return a twelve-month calendar and quote the committee can approve in one resolution.
Small schemes can run a program too. A twelve-lot walk-up with no manager might have a fortnightly clean, a maintenance check on the same visit, gutters twice a year and nothing else. The paperwork is the same single page, and the owners get one invoice instead of four.
The first walk-through doubles as a baseline. Every defect we find on that day is photographed and listed, so nobody later wonders whether a crack or a stain appeared on our watch. Committees tell us that list is useful in its own right, even before the program starts.
Timing the start is worth a thought. The cleanest handover happens straight after your current cleaning contract ends and a few months before the AGM, so the first review lands in time to shape the renewal. If the timing is awkward, we can start with routine cleaning and add the maintenance round from the next month.
If you manage several buildings, we can set up the same program shape across all of them with one reporting format. Portfolio setup is explained in the pages we have written for strata and owners corporation managers.
Send the basics and we will book the walk-through. If you would rather send plans and photos first, get a quote using the longer enquiry form. For how we work across the city, see strata cleaning Melbourne.
Book the walk-through08Questions
Three questions we are asked before almost every program is approved.
