Office Cleaning Melbourne CBD VIC - Get Local Quotes

What Changes When the Office Is in the CBD

Offices in the Melbourne CBD range from glass towers in Southbank and Docklands to brick chambers buildings, meaning older blocks of small professional suites, on Flinders Lane and Little Collins Street. A building manager, the person or company that runs a building day to day for its owner, sets the rules every outside cleaner has to follow. Those rules cover when contractors may enter, which lift they use, where rubbish goes and what training they need before the first shift. The tenant, meaning the business that leases the office, chooses and pays its own cleaner for the space inside its lease boundary. The same rules apply to window, carpet and other cleaning services in Victoria booked for the floor, so match them to each cleaner's scope, the written list of tasks the cleaner agrees to do.

For statewide advice on cleaning contracts in any workplace, see office cleaning in Victoria, while shops, clinics and warehouses are covered under commercial cleaning. Price bands for the wider metro area appear in the Melbourne cleaning cost guide, and its office bands per visit and per square metre match the ones used here. The bands below assume a fitted-out office, one with the tenant's desks, walls and finishes in place, with carpet, a kitchenette and at least one washroom inside the tenancy. Bare shell floors, medical suites and retail shopfronts need their own scope and fall outside these estimates.

CBD Office Cleaning Prices by Tenancy Size

Routine cleaning of a small tenancy under 200 square metres costs an estimated $55 to $115 per visit in 2026, covering desks, floors, the kitchenette and the washroom. Larger floors are priced by area, at about $2.80 to $5.50 per square metre of net lettable area each month, which is the floor space a tenant actually leases. On a 600 square metre floor that range works out to roughly $1,680 to $3,300 a month, before washroom supplies and periodic work. Ad hoc jobs, such as a one-off clean before a client event, are billed by the hour at $55 to $92 for one cleaner or $90 to $135 for a two-person team. Those hourly figures are higher than contract rates because they carry travel into the city, parking and a minimum booking of two to three hours. Detailed CBD tables, including parking and after-hours costs for homes and offices, are set out in the Melbourne CBD cleaning cost guide.

Two quotes for the same floor can differ more in the labour hours they include than in the hourly rate. Divide the monthly price by the number of visits, then by the hours each visit takes, to find the real hourly figure behind the quote. If that figure looks lower than a cleaner's award pay plus super, insurance and supervision, the quote may not allow enough hours to clean the floor. Periodic work belongs on separate lines, including carpet extraction, which rinses soil out of the pile with hot water, and high dusting of vents and fittings above head height.

Per Visit, Per Square Metre and the Award Rates Behind Both

Contract cleaners in the CBD can price a small suite per visit because the work is short and the building access takes a fixed amount of time. Once a floor passes a few hundred square metres, a monthly price per square metre becomes easier to compare across contractors. Both methods depend on the hourly cost of a cleaner under the Cleaning Services Award 2020, the national award that sets minimum pay for cleaning employees. That award sets loadings, which are extra percentages on top of the base rate, for work outside ordinary daytime hours, and an evening office clean falls outside those hours. Current pay rates and a calculator for each award level are published on the Fair Work Ombudsman website.

Under clause 20.2 of the award, a full-time cleaner on a Monday to Friday shift that starts before 6 am or finishes after 6 pm earns 115 per cent of the minimum rate. Weeknight shifts that finish after midnight lift that to 130 per cent, and casual staff receive higher figures because their 25 per cent loading is built in. Saturday work is paid at 150 per cent and Sunday work at 200 per cent for full-time staff, with public holidays at 250 per cent. Superannuation, workers compensation insurance, leave and the portable long service levy for contract cleaners are all paid on top of those rates. Weekend cleaning therefore costs more to staff than a weeknight clean of the same floor. Ask any contractor quoting Sunday visits to show how the weekend rate has been built into the price.

The award also sets a minimum shift for part-time and casual cleaners, based on the size of the area being cleaned. Clause 13.5(c) allows a one hour minimum only at a small stand-alone site of up to 300 square metres where that cleaner works alone, and two hours for areas up to 2,000 square metres. Larger areas carry three and four hour minimums, and the cleaner must be paid for the full minimum even when the work finishes early. Because of this rule, a contractor may decline a 30 minute visit to a small suite or quote it at the price of a full hour.

Base Building Cleaning Versus Your Tenancy Clean

Multi-tenant CBD office towers run two kinds of cleaning side by side. Base building cleaning is the contract the owner or building manager places for the parts every tenant shares, such as the ground floor lobby, lifts, fire stairs and car park. Tenancy cleaning is the work inside the area your business leases, from desks and carpet to the kitchenette and any washroom inside your walls. On floors shared by several tenants, the toilets and lift lobby outside each suite are common areas, and the lease says who cleans them. Whole-floor tenants may take over the toilets and lift lobby on their floor, which shifts that cleaning to them. Reading the lease before calling a cleaner stops you paying twice for a space the building already looks after.

Where the lease allows it, the owner recovers the cost of base building cleaning through outgoings, which are building running costs passed on to tenants. Each tenant's share is set by the lease, and one common method is the tenant's floor area as a proportion of the building's total lettable area. A gross lease folds outgoings into the rent, while a net lease bills them separately and then settles up against the actual costs once a year. Some office leases fall under the Retail Leases Act 2003, depending on how the premises are used, and those must follow that Act's rules on outgoings, while other office leases depend on their own wording. Request the base building cleaning schedule from the building manager so your own contractor's scope starts exactly where the building's ends.

Building Inductions, Access Cards and Out-of-Hours Entry

Before a new cleaner can start in a CBD tower, the building manager will want proof of the contractor's insurance and a completed site induction. A site induction is a short briefing, sometimes run online, that covers emergency exits, fire wardens, the loading dock and the building's rules for contractors. Some buildings also ask for a safe work method statement, a written description of how a task will be done safely, for jobs such as high dusting or floor stripping. Allow time for this paperwork when changing contractors, because a cleaner without an approved induction can be turned away at the dock. The building's induction is separate from the training the cleaning company must give its own staff.

After hours, CBD buildings limit entry with access cards that open set doors and lift floors at set times. The building manager issues contractor cards, and the tenant requests them for its cleaner or arranges them through the cleaning company. Each card should be linked to one named person, never shared, and cancelled on the day a cleaner leaves the contract. Lifts in some towers switch to a restricted mode at night, so a card may be needed to reach your floor even from the goods lift. Your own tenancy alarm adds a code and a routine for setting and unsetting it that the cleaner must follow on every visit. Locks and card readers inside the suite can be changed by a commercial locksmith, and alarm panels and security cameras are covered under commercial alarm and CCTV costs.

Equipment, consumables and full bins are moved through the loading dock and goods lift in towers that have them, not through the front lobby. Dock hours are set by the building, and a delivery of paper towels or a carpet machine may need a booked time slot. Apartment buildings follow different contractor routines, which are set out for home cleaning in the guide to hiring a cleaner in the Melbourne CBD. Company flats kept for visiting staff are a separate job again, and guest turnovers can be arranged through short stay cleaning in the Melbourne CBD. Care of stone benches, induction cooktops and other apartment fixtures in those flats is covered under apartment cleaning in the Melbourne CBD.

In larger towers, night security staff may patrol floors and keep a log of who entered and when. That log, together with card records, helps if an item goes missing or a door is found unlocked in the morning. Agree on a short report after each visit, such as a message noting any spill, broken fitting or window left open. Firms that hold client files may lock document rooms and ask that cleaners never move papers left on desks. Write those limits into the scope so a relief cleaner covering a sick day follows them too.

Labour Hire Licences After the October 2026 Changes

Victoria's Labour Hire Licensing Act 2018 treats a business that supplies workers to clean commercial premises, including offices, as a labour hire provider that must hold a licence. Labour hire here means one business supplying workers to do work for another business, which the law calls the host. The register on the Labour Hire Authority website shows whether a provider holds a current licence, and its Follow My Providers service sends an alert if that status changes. Hosts that use an unlicensed provider face penalties that the authority puts at more than $660,000 for a company and $160,000 for an individual. A revised definition took effect on 1 October 2026, and it depends on whether an arrangement involves the supply of labour. The authority says this makes clear that supplying labour anywhere in a supply chain needs a licence, so recheck any contractor engaged before that date.

The 2026 changes also brought bare intermediaries, meaning businesses that pass on workers employed by someone else, inside the scheme. For CBD offices that matters, because a cleaning contract can run from a building manager to a head contractor and then to one or more subcontractors. Commercial cleaning is one of the industries where the authority applies standard licence conditions, including limits on cash payments to workers and on the use of independent contractors and subcontractors. The authority's own examples say a company whose sole director does all the cleaning, supplying no other workers, does not need a licence. Cleaners who work only in private homes also fall outside the scheme, so the question does not arise for home cleaning. Employing a cleaner directly instead brings award, super and WorkCover duties, set out for households in the guide to hiring a cleaner in Melbourne.

Night Cleaners, Evacuations and Who Controls the Workplace

Evening cleaners in a CBD tower may be the only people on a floor when an alarm sounds. Emergency planning for commercial buildings is guided by AS 3745, the Australian Standard for planning for emergencies in facilities, which covers emergency plans, wardens and evacuation diagrams. The building's plan should cover people working after hours, and the induction should show cleaners the nearest exits, the assembly area and how to tell night security they are on site. Cleaners should never prop open fire doors or leave trolleys in fire stairs while they work. The current edition of the standard can be checked on the Standards Australia website.

Under Victoria's Occupational Health and Safety Act 2004, the cleaning company must keep its own staff's workplace safe so far as is reasonably practicable, which means taking the safety steps it reasonably can. Section 26 places a separate duty on any person who manages or controls a workplace, which covers the building owner or manager for shared areas and your business for its own suite. Section 21 also extends an employer's duties to contractors and their staff for matters that employer controls. In practice that means fixing a lifting floor tile in the kitchen, keeping cables off walkways and telling the cleaner about hazards such as a broken chair. Faulty power points or lights in the suite should go to an electrician in Melbourne before the cleaner works around them. WorkSafe's compliance code on workplace facilities and the working environment, published in December 2023, covers how workplaces should be kept clean and maintained, and it is available from WorkSafe Victoria.

Victoria's Occupational Health and Safety (Psychological Health) Regulations started on 1 December 2025 and require employers to identify and control psychosocial hazards, meaning risks to mental health, such as aggression, violence and bullying. For a night cleaner, that risk can come from an occupant working late who treats the cleaner badly, or from a person who should not be in the building. Give the cleaner a phone number for building security and a named contact in your business for any problem on the floor. Staff who work late should know the cleaning hours, so the cleaner can work around occupied desks without conflict.

A Task Schedule Built for a CBD Floor

Every cleaning schedule should list each task with its frequency, so both sides know exactly what each visit includes. Daily tasks on a CBD floor cover kitchen benches, sinks and the dishwasher, washroom fixtures, bins, touch points such as door handles, and vacuuming of walkways. Weekly tasks add full vacuuming under desks, dusting of partitions and wiping of meeting room tables and chairs. Periodic tasks, done monthly or a few times a year, include high dusting, internal glass, upholstery and carpet extraction. Writing the schedule room by room, with the floor plan attached, keeps a relief cleaner on the same routine as the regular one.

Client-facing floors with a reception desk, boardroom and glass meeting rooms may need daytime touch-ups that a night crew cannot provide. Glass walls and doors on meeting rooms collect fingerprints quickly, and a separate line for internal glass stops that task being skipped. Unger makes squeegees and glass cleaning poles, while Oates and Sabco make mops, brooms and buckets for daily work. Under a clear desk policy, which asks staff to leave desks empty at night, the cleaner can wipe each desk fully instead of dusting around papers. Hot desks shared by different staff each day need the desk surface, keyboard tray and monitor arm wiped on every visit. Upholstered chairs and lounge furniture in breakout areas are cleaned on a separate cycle through upholstery cleaning.

Tea Points, Boiling Water Taps and the Weekly Fridge Clear-Out

Office kitchens, sometimes called tea points in CBD office layouts, combine food, water and heavy use in a small space. The routine clean covers benches, the sink, the front of appliances, the inside of the microwave and the floor, plus loading or unloading the dishwasher if the scope says so. Zip makes boiling and chilled filtered water taps, and Billi makes boiling and chilled water systems that sit under the bench. The cleaner wipes the tap and drip tray, while filter changes and servicing belong to the supplier's technician or a plumber in Melbourne. Coffee machines follow the same split, with daily wiping by the cleaner and internal cleaning by the machine's own program or a service plan.

Shared fridges need a clear rule, because a cleaner cannot guess which food is still wanted. One workable approach is a weekly clear-out on a set day, with staff told that anything unlabelled will be thrown out at a stated time. Write that rule into the schedule, and say whether the cleaner also wipes shelves and seals or only removes the food. Washing the whole fridge with the shelves taken out takes longer, so it may suit a monthly periodic line.

Some offices expect cleaners to wash cups left in the sink, while others want staff to rinse and load their own. Either choice works if it is written down, but leaving it unsaid can cause disagreements between staff and a cleaner who is not paid for that time. Food scraps should go to an organics stream where the building has one, as the waste section below describes. Food left in desk drawers draws pests, and commercial pest control can be scheduled by the building or the tenant. Dishwasher tablets, detergent and hand soap are consumables, so decide whether the cleaner supplies them or your office buys them. Ecolab and Diversey make commercial dishwashing detergents and kitchen cleaning chemicals.

Toilets Inside the Suite and Toilets the Building Shares

If your tenancy has its own toilets, your cleaner cleans and restocks them, and you choose the soap, paper and drying products. Tork makes paper towel and toilet tissue dispensers, and Kimberly-Clark Professional makes washroom paper, soap and dispensers. Dyson makes Airblade hand dryers, which replace paper towels but need a power point near the basin. Dispensers can be owned by the consumables supplier and accept only that supplier's refills, so check who owns them before changing supplier. Sanitary bins need a hygiene services contract, which may be held by the building, the cleaner or a separate business, so confirm which applies. Washroom supplies cost an estimated $38 to $105 per washroom each month, depending on headcount and dispenser type.

On a floor shared with other tenants, the common toilets are restocked by the base building cleaner and paid for through outgoings if the lease says so. Complaints about those toilets go to the building manager, not to your own cleaner. Some whole-floor tenants take over the floor's toilets so they can set their own cleaning frequency and supplies. That choice moves the cost from outgoings to your cleaning contract, so compare both figures before asking the building to hand them over.

Getting Office Waste From the Floor to the Loading Dock

In a CBD tower with a loading dock, office bins do not go out to the kerb. The tenancy cleaner empties bins on the floor and takes each stream to a set collection point, such as a bin room on the floor or the main waste area beside the dock. The building's waste contractor then collects from the dock, and the cost may be included in outgoings or be billed separately. Each building sets its own streams, so get the building manager's waste guide before writing the scope. Mixing streams at the dock can lead to contamination charges, meaning fees for recycling spoiled by the wrong waste, and the building may pass these on. Fit-out leftovers, old furniture and paper from an archive clear-out go to rubbish removal instead of the building's bins.

Smaller buildings in the laneways may have no loading dock at all. The City of Melbourne website lists shared garbage compactors and recycling hubs in parts of the central city, which some nearby businesses use in place of keeping bins in the lane. Which streams each hub takes, who may use it and any charges are set by the council and can change. Check the City of Melbourne website for current hub locations, rules and charges before asking a cleaner to use one. Where a building uses a private collector, the collection time sets when the cleaner must have bins ready.

Drink containers can go to CDS Vic, the container deposit scheme that began on 1 November 2023 and gives a 10 cent refund for each eligible drink can, carton or bottle. Some offices collect containers separately and give the refunds to a charity, which only works if the cleaner keeps that bin apart. Electronic waste such as old keyboards, cables and batteries cannot go to landfill in Victoria, and EPA Victoria advises handling all e-waste as if it holds a battery. Confidential paper belongs in locked security bins collected by a document destruction service, and Fellowes makes shredders for smaller amounts.

Carpet Tiles, Hard Floors and Machines That Fit the Goods Lift

Office fit-outs may combine carpet tiles in work areas with vinyl, timber or polished concrete in kitchens and reception. Regular vacuuming keeps grit out of the carpet pile, and AS/NZS 3733, the standard for cleaning maintenance of residential and commercial carpeting, sets out maintenance and restorative methods. Pacvac makes backpack vacuums that let a cleaner move quickly between desks, and Numatic makes the Henry range of canister vacuums. Hard floors in larger tenancies may need a scrubber dryer, a machine that washes and dries the floor in one pass, and Nilfisk, Kärcher and Tennant all make them. Carpet extraction for an office costs an estimated $3.50 to $8 per square metre and is booked as periodic work through commercial carpet cleaning. Strip and seal work on vinyl, at an estimated $6 to $15 per square metre, is best done over a weekend so the new seal can set hard.

Every machine must fit the goods lift and the dock, and some older buildings have no goods lift at all. Storage inside the tenancy saves the cleaner carrying vacuums, mops and chemicals in and out each night. If you can offer a lockable cupboard with a power point and a sink nearby, say so in the tender, since it cuts set-up time. Vileda Professional makes colour-coded microfibre cloths and mop systems, and Rubbermaid Commercial Products makes cleaning trolleys that hold several waste streams. Damaged or stained carpet tiles can be swapped through commercial flooring contractors, and balconies or entry paving outside a ground floor suite suit commercial pressure cleaning.

Older Chambers, Walk-Up Offices and Small Suites

Not every CBD office is in a modern glass tower. Older chambers buildings around Collins Street, Queen Street and Flinders Lane hold small suites for professional practices, studios and startups, sometimes with one small lift and narrow stairs. These buildings may lack a loading dock, a bin room on each floor or a cleaner's cupboard, so the cleaner carries gear in from the street. Original timber floors, pressed metal ceilings and old timber window frames need gentler products than a modern fit-out. Heritage features in a leased suite belong to the owner, so check with the building manager before a machine or strong product touches them.

Small suites still face the award's minimum shift rules described earlier, so a 40 square metre office may pay for at least an hour of a cleaner's time. Two or three longer visits a week can suit a small team better than a short daily visit. Where a sole director does the cleaning personally through their own company, no workers are supplied, so the authority's example places that business outside the licensing scheme. Check that operator's Australian Business Number (ABN), the 11 digit number that identifies a business, on the Australian Business Register. Phone screening, trial cleans and other vetting steps are set out in the guide to finding a cleaner in the Melbourne CBD. Agree each visit's start time in writing, because some older buildings lock their street doors early in the evening.

Day Porters, Evening Crews and Weekend Visits

A day porter is a cleaner based in the building during business hours who restocks washrooms, tidies kitchens and deals with spills as they happen. Larger tenancies and client floors may use a porter alongside a night crew, while a small office may only need the night clean. Evening work leaves desks empty for cleaning, but every hour falls inside the award's weeknight loading described earlier. Early morning cleans starting before 6 am attract the same loading and suit offices whose staff work late. Weekend visits cost more to staff than weeknight ones, so keep them for periodic jobs such as carpet extraction or floor sealing that need an empty office. Day cleaning avoids the shift loading but brings vacuum noise and a cleaner moving around staff, which quieter equipment can reduce.

Victoria's public holidays include Melbourne Cup Day, a holiday across metropolitan Melbourne, and the Friday before the AFL Grand Final, both weekdays when an evening clean may be booked. Work on a public holiday is paid at 250 per cent for full-time cleaners under the award, so agree in advance whether the visit moves, skips or goes ahead at a higher price. Christmas closures need the same planning, with either a deep clean booked for the quiet week or the visits paused. Each year's public holiday dates are listed on the Victorian Government website. The contract should state whether fees drop for weeks when the office is closed.

Sorting Out Problems With a Cleaning Contractor

Problems with an office cleaner are easiest to settle when every missed task and complaint is logged with a date and a photo. Raise them with the contractor's supervisor first, since the cleaner on the floor may never have seen the contract. If a visit is missed, the contract should say whether the fee is reduced or the visit is made up within a set time. Damage to the fit-out or equipment is a claim on the contractor's public liability insurance, which is why the certificate of currency matters. Report a lost access card to the building manager the same night so it can be cancelled.

Under the Australian Consumer Law, a business buying services that cost up to $100,000 is treated as a consumer, so cleaning must be supplied with due care and skill. The consumer guarantees, and the unfair contract terms rules for standard form small business contracts, are described on the ACCC website. Automatic renewal clauses and long notice periods in a standard cleaning contract can be tested against those unfair terms rules. Small businesses in Victoria can ask the Victorian Small Business Commission for low-cost mediation of a contract dispute. Claims that cannot be settled can go to the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal, known as VCAT, which hears consumer and trader disputes. Contractors that underpay their staff can also be reported to the Fair Work Ombudsman.

What to Look Out For When an Office Cleaner Bids for Your Floor

Monthly prices with no hours per visit leave out the figure that shows how much cleaning time the floor will get. Every proposal should name the licence holder, match the ABN on the invoice and list any subcontractor that will supply cleaners. Weekend or after-midnight work priced at the same rate as an early evening clean suggests the award loadings have not been counted. Check that consumables, sanitary bins and periodic jobs are either priced or clearly excluded, since these are the lines that add cost later. Contractors who have not asked about the building's induction, dock hours or waste rules may not have worked in a managed CBD building before.

Offers to pay cleaners in cash are a serious warning, given the licence conditions on cash payments in commercial cleaning. Watch for proposals that promise a team of cleaners while the register shows no labour hire licence for that business. Quotes that rely on one person cleaning a large floor in a very short window may not be physically possible. Setting the hours per visit against the floor area gives a quick test of whether a proposal is realistic.

Preparing a Tender Pack for CBD Office Cleaners

A tender pack is the set of documents each contractor prices from, and giving every bidder the same pack makes the quotes comparable. Include the floor plan with net lettable area, the number of staff and desks, the count of washrooms, kitchens and meeting rooms, and the floor finishes. Add the building manager's contractor rules, induction process, dock hours and waste guide, so every bidder prices the same access time. Set out the frequency for each area in a schedule, and list the periodic jobs you want priced separately. State whether you supply consumables or want the contractor to supply them. Offer a site walk, because a contractor needs to see the dock, the goods lift and the bin room before pricing a CBD floor.

Ask each bidder for a monthly price, hours per visit, the number of cleaners, the supervisor's visit pattern and the labour hire licence number. Request a certificate of currency for public liability and evidence of workers compensation cover with every proposal. Three quotes give a fair spread for a small tenancy, while a large floor may justify five. References from other managed office buildings in the CBD, Southbank or Docklands show whether a contractor knows tower routines. Internal glass beyond the meeting rooms can be priced alongside the clean through window cleaning if your lease puts it on you. Ceiling vents and return air grilles, which draw air back to the air conditioning, gather dust over time, and duct cleaning and sanitisation is booked as a separate periodic job.

A make good clause, which requires a tenant to return premises in a set condition when a lease ends, may require a builders clean of dust and debris after office fit-out strip-out works. If your business is moving within the CBD, book that vacate clean for the old suite after the removalists finish and before the landlord inspects the make good work. That commercial process differs from a residential vacate, which follows Victorian renting law as described in end of lease cleaning in the Melbourne CBD. Keep the signed schedule, licence check and insurance certificates together, and set a calendar reminder to recheck the licence every year.