Choosing a service
Day porter or night cleaning, and when a building needs both
Most buildings are sold a nightly crew because that is what most vendors sell. Whether that is right depends on when your building is dirty, not on when it is convenient to clean.
What a night crew is for
Work that needs an empty building: vacuuming and mopping through occupied areas, desks and meeting rooms, restrooms taken apart properly, floors machined, trash and recycling moved out.
It is the most efficient way to clean, because nothing is in the way. Everything it does is invisible to the people who use the building, which is the point and also the problem: nobody sees it happen, so it is only noticed when it stops.
What a day porter is for
Everything that goes wrong between night crews. Restrooms checked and restocked at the times they actually get used, entrance glass and lobby floors kept clear, spills handled before they become a slip, breakrooms reset after lunch, and a person on site when something needs doing now.
A porter is not a second cleaner. It is presence during the hours your building is judged by the people walking through it.
How to tell which your building needs
Count the people through the front door, not the square footage. A 12,000 sq ft suite with forty staff and no visitors needs a different service than a 12,000 sq ft clinic with two hundred patients a day.
Then look at what your complaints are about. If they arrive in the morning, the night scope is wrong or it is not being inspected. If they arrive at two in the afternoon, no night crew can fix it, and you need coverage during the day.
Where both is the honest answer
Multi-tenant property, medical and dental, schools, public-facing civic buildings, hospitality, and anything with high restroom traffic. In those buildings a porter during opening hours and a crew after close do different jobs, and cutting either one shows within a fortnight.
In a single-tenant office with predictable hours, a nightly crew with a clear scope is usually enough on its own.
What it does to the hours
A porter is priced by the hours you want covered, so it is easier to size than a nightly scope: half a day, a full day, or the peak hours only. The night crew is sized from the building, which is what the crew and time calculator estimates.
Next
Work out the hours for your building
Square footage, building type and restroom fixtures in. Cleaner hours a visit and the crew that fits your window out, before anyone quotes you.
Questions
Questions this raises
Is a day porter the same as a janitor?
No. A janitorial crew cleans the building to a written scope, usually after hours. A day porter covers the building while it is open: restrooms, entrances, spills, breakrooms and anything that comes up. Many buildings need both, and they are scoped separately.
Can a day porter replace the night crew?
Rarely. The deep work needs an empty building, and a porter working around occupied desks and patients cannot do it properly. Where a building has very low overnight access, a porter can carry more of the load, but the scope has to be rewritten rather than assumed.
How many hours does a day porter need?
It follows the traffic, not the floor area. Buildings usually start with the hours either side of peak use, then adjust after the first month once there is something real to measure.