Our Extreme Clean Program has three steps

Three steps built into one program

The Extreme Clean Program is how CLS brings a building up to standard and keeps it there. It has three parts, and each one leads into the next. First comes an Intensive Initial Cleaning, a deep first pass that brings a new building up to our standards before regular service starts. Second comes Surface Cleaning Testing, where we use equipment to check that the initial clean actually worked, then test again from time to time to confirm standards are holding. Third is the Everyday Cleaner Standard, the checklist our technicians follow on every visit after that. None of the three parts stands alone. The testing step only means something because there was a real initial clean to test, and the daily standard only holds because testing keeps checking it over time.

Most janitorial companies start a new contract by running the same nightly routine they would run anywhere else, on a building nobody has cleaned to their standard yet. That leaves years of buildup for the crew to work around instead of work from. We do the opposite. The Intensive Initial Cleaning goes in first and gets the building caught up, restroom tile and grout included, so the nightly crew starts from a clean baseline instead of chasing whatever the last company left behind. Building owners who switch to CLS after using a cheaper company are often surprised at what that first cleaning turns up. Once the baseline is right, keeping it right is a much smaller job than fixing it would have been.

Testing is the part most cleaning companies skip. CLS uses an ATP testing system, the same kind hospitals use, to verify that high touch surfaces are actually clean after a shift and not just wiped over. We also run UV light checks: a supervisor marks a spot with a daubber, then comes back after the shift with a blacklight to confirm the mark is gone. Daily work is carried out by technicians who average over 10 years of facility maintenance experience, and many have been with CLS for more than a decade. That is the Everyday Cleaner Standard in practice: the same trained people, checked against real measurements, night after night.

• Step one: Intensive Initial Cleaning, included at no extra cost
• Step two: ATP and UV surface testing to verify the results
• Step three: the Everyday Cleaner Standard, followed on every visit
• Technicians average over 10 years of facility maintenance experience

Why we test what other companies just promise

Most janitorial contracts run on trust. The company says the building is clean, and the property manager has no way to check beyond a walk-through and a look at the trash cans. CLS builds testing into the program instead of leaving it to a visual check. The Hygiena SystemSURE Plus, an ATP testing device, gives us a number for how clean a surface actually is, not just how it looks. It is the same testing approach hospitals use to confirm surfaces are safe, and we use it on the buildings we clean, from single office suites up to corporate headquarters. A property manager who asks how clean their building is gets an actual reading back, not just an assurance that everything looks fine.

Three things matter most when ATP testing runs in a building full of people. It confirms high touch areas, door handles, light switches, shared equipment, have actually been cleaned. It checks effective hand washing compliance in restrooms. And it verifies that common areas, meeting rooms, offices and cubicles meet the standard, not just the lobby a visitor happens to walk through. That last point matters, because a building can look clean at the entrance and still have problems three floors up. Testing does not care which floor a visitor sees. It checks the floors nobody is watching just as closely as the ones everybody sees, which is exactly where problems tend to build up unnoticed.

The UV blacklight check works differently and catches different problems. A supervisor marks a surface with a special daubber before the shift, somewhere a cleaner would need to actually wipe the area to remove it, not just glance at it. After the shift, the supervisor comes back with a blacklight. If the mark is gone, the surface was really cleaned. If it is still there, it was missed. Supervisors also run random blacklight checks in spots people do not think to look, like under a toilet bowl rim, every day, every shift. It is a simple way to catch corners that get skipped when nobody thinks anyone is checking, and it happens on a schedule the cleaning crew cannot predict.

The program scales from a single suite to a two million square foot campus

The same three steps run whether the building is a five thousand square foot medical office or a two million square foot corporate headquarters. One long time customer is a 1.2 million square foot world headquarters in Lisle. A campus that size does not get a lighter version of the Intensive Initial Cleaning because it is big, and a small suite does not get skipped on testing because it is small. The steps scale with the square footage, not around it, and the same technicians who run the program on a small suite are the ones trained to run it on a campus many times the size, following the same checklist on both.

Bigger buildings usually mean more restrooms, more elevators, more corridors, and more surfaces for dirt to hide in before anyone notices. That is exactly where testing earns its place in the program. A visual walk-through of a two million square foot building only covers what the walker happens to pass. ATP and UV testing checks specific points regardless of the building's size, so the program catches problems in a back stairwell or a rarely used conference room the same way it catches them in the main lobby, instead of leaving those far corners to be found by accident months later, once whatever was building up there has already spread. A building that size cannot rely on any one person noticing everything, so the testing points act as a second set of eyes that never gets tired or distracted.

This third step is what keeps a building from sliding back toward the condition it was in before the Intensive Initial Cleaning. It is the same checklist whether the crew has three people or thirty. A single point of contact at CLS is responsible for that standard on your building, so there is one person accountable for how the program runs there, not a rotating cast of supervisors who each only know part of the building. That contact is who a facility manager calls with a question, and who answers for the checklist on that specific property, floor by floor, from the lobby to the loading dock, on a campus of any size.

Get the program running in your building

Starting the Extreme Clean Program does not mean tearing up an existing contract and starting from zero. It means CLS comes in, runs the Intensive Initial Cleaning at no additional cost, verifies the results with ATP and UV testing, and then keeps the building on the Everyday Cleaner Standard going forward. Most of the disruption happens once, at the start, on a schedule that works around your building's hours rather than the other way around, so staff show up the next morning to a building that is already caught up rather than one mid-transition, with crews still moving furniture and machines through the halls during business hours while staff are trying to work around them.

We offer a free, no obligation building cleaning audit and consultation before any of that starts. That gives a property manager or facility manager a chance to see where the building actually stands today, not where the last cleaning report said it stood. It also gives CLS a chance to scope the Intensive Initial Cleaning accurately, so there are no surprises once the work begins, and no guessing about how long the first pass through the building is going to take or what it will turn up once the crew starts pulling up mats and checking the corners nobody has looked at in years, which is often where a building's real condition shows up first.

CLS has been running this kind of program since 1985, using our own staff, not subcontractors. Technicians average over 10 years of facility maintenance experience, and many have been with the company for over a decade. That kind of tenure is part of why the Everyday Cleaner Standard holds up over years, not just for the first few weeks after a new contract starts, and it is part of why building owners who have tried a cheaper company tend to come back to CLS once they see the difference. Call (630) 816-0300 to set up your free audit and start the Extreme Clean Program in your building, on a schedule built around your hours, not ours.