If your cleaning staff already keeps your building relatively clean, this credit—and the associated exemplary performance point—should be easy to achieve. If performed professionally and objectively, the audit can help you evaluate the quality of your cleaning services and highlight areas of the building that present particular cleaning challenges.

The truth is worth more than a “good” score

This credit might initially strike your project team as an odd one, since it gives you the option of training in-house staff members to perform the audit without third-party oversight. To make sure you get the most out of your audit, however, make sure it is conducted objectively. It’s more valuable to your project to learn the truth about the quality of service delivered by your janitorial provider—whether that service is good or bad.

There are a few challenges

It can be difficult to maintain objectivity and assign numerical scores to something as seemingly subjective as cleanliness. The credit and APPA protocol provide a fairly objective framework for evaluating cleanliness, however, so you’ll have plenty of support to work with.

Determining how many rooms and how much square footage needs to be audited can also be a challenge.

Consider these questions when approaching this credit

• Do you have the time to perform the audit in-house? Keep in mind that this requires training two in-house staff members, carving out time for both of them to conduct the audit, and compiling and calculating the results. (You must audit 10% of the floor area, and 10% of the number of rooms of each space type, or five examples of each space type—whichever is greater. APPA suggests a time commitment of ten minutes per room.)
• If you don’t have the time to designate two staff members to conduct the audit, do you have the room in your budget to hire an auditor? Remember, you need only one outside contractor to conduct the audit, not two. Competent providers of comprehensive green cleaning services make very good third-party auditors.
• Does your facility have a wide variety of space types? If so, the audit will be more complex, and you should expect to spend extra time and money to complete it.