Is your building clean? If so, this credit, which requires you to score the cleanliness of your building based on a visual assessment, could be easy to achieve.

Not sure? If performed professionally and objectively, the audit required for this credit can help you evaluate the quality of your cleaning services and draw your attention to areas of the building that present particular cleaning challenges.

The credit can be time consuming for larger buildings, since the amount of floor area you’re required to audit is calculated based on the total size and the number of rooms in your building. Audit guidelines suggest a maximum time commitment of ten minutes per room, which can add up!

The truth is worth more than a “good” score

This credit gives you the choice of training in-house staff members to perform a cleaning audit without third-party oversight, or hiring an outside auditor.

To make sure you get the most out of your audit 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.

How much ground will you have to cover?

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. Remember that you must audit:

• At least 10% of the total floor area in the building
• At least 10% of the number of rooms in each space type
  • If 10% for a space type is fewer than five rooms, at least five rooms must be audited
  • If a space type has fewer than five rooms total, all rooms must be audited

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.

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.

Changes from LEED 2009

Under LEED v4 your facility must achieve an overall score of 2.5 or lower to earn this credit. This is stricter than v2009, which required a score of 3 or better. Additionally, the exemplary performance point is no longer available.

The v4 credit form (v01) no longer contains an embedded table where you can input your audit results. USGBC has not released a supplemental calculator that replaces the functionality that the form previously provided, so LEEDuser has created a tool to help with this. See the Documentation Toolkit.

Teams must now provide a report that summarizes the audit results. See the Documentation Toolkit for a report template.

Readiness Review Questions

• Do you have the time to perform the audit in-house? Keep in mind that this requires training two staff members, carving out time for both of them to conduct the audit, and compiling and calculating the results
• If you don’t have the time to designate two staff members to conduct the audit, do you have the resources 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.