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Facility services SLAs and KPIs for cleaning contracts
A cleaning SLA spells out how the work is measured: how fast calls are answered, how inspections are scored, how long rework can take and what happens when the work falls short. Here is how public contracts write each clause, with a menu of KPIs and a blank scorecard to download.
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What is a facility services SLA?
A facility services SLA (service level agreement) is the part of a cleaning contract that says how the work will be measured and what happens when it falls short. Public contracts pair a schedule of tasks and frequencies with clauses on service calls, inspections, re-cleaning, reports, remedies and termination. The KPIs are the numbers both sides track against those clauses each month.
The examples on this page come from public documents read in November 2026: GSA’s 2025 National Custodial Specification (with its quality assurance surveillance plan), a 2024 janitorial RFP from the Superior Court of California, County of San Francisco, a 2024 UC Davis Health RFP for clinic cleaning, and custodial agreements from the County of Orange and the County of Riverside. Each figure belongs to the document that states it. None is an industry standard, and none describes Continental’s own terms. Download the SLA and KPI scorecard to record your own targets and results.
The clauses a cleaning SLA usually carries
Across those documents, the same building blocks keep appearing. Use them as a checklist of topics to settle before signing:
- Scope as results plus a schedule: the GSA specification describes the outcomes it wants and attaches a cleaning schedule for each building, from daily to semi-annual and annual work. Riverside attaches a daily-to-annual task matrix, and Orange County asks the contractor for a daily-through-annual calendar soon after the start date.
- Fixed cleaning hours, changed only with the contracting officer’s approval under the GSA specification.
- Service calls: how requests come in and how fast each kind gets answered.
- Quality control by the contractor and inspection by the buyer.
- Re-cleaning of rejected work within a set period.
- Reports and meetings on a fixed cadence.
- Remedies for poor work and termination terms.
- Staffing commitments such as a staffing plan, replacing removed workers and covering absences.
The task list, hours, supplies and access terms belong in the agreement too; our guide to what belongs in a janitorial service agreement covers those parts.
Response and resolution times: what public contracts set
No single clock governs cleaning calls. Each buyer writes its own, usually split between emergencies and routine requests, and the public documents set very different clocks:
| Document | What it sets for service calls |
|---|---|
| GSA’s 2025 National Custodial Specification | Requests taken around the clock by phone or email. Emergencies get a response in 5 minutes during normal working hours and in 1 hour after hours. Calls the contracting officer’s representative treats as urgent, such as water spilled in a traffic area or a restroom out of toilet supplies, are handled right away. Routine calls are handled while the crew is in the space or at the next scheduled cleaning. |
| San Francisco Superior Court RFP 38-23-007 (2024) | Trouble calls from designated court facilities answered immediately, inside 30 minutes. |
| County of Orange agreement RCA-017-22010002 | A local office with a 24-hour emergency phone; calls returned within 1 hour and an emergency response on site inside 2 hours. |
| County of Riverside agreement FMARC-00244 (2023) | Custodial issues answered no later than 2 hours after notice, with the county administrator told if one is still open after 2 hours; issues raised with Facilities Management staff handled inside 24 hours. |
| UC Davis Health RFP #032224 (2024) | Asks for a system to handle day-to-day concerns between clinic staff and the janitorial team, with no time stated. |
The GSA specification also says what a call log records: when the call came in, who called, the location, when it was completed, the corrective action, and the reason for any deferral. Those fields are what turn a response clause into something you can measure. Staffing response can be timed too: Riverside’s agreement asks for a disapproved worker to be replaced no later than 24 hours after a written request and sick calls covered inside 2 hours.
How inspection and scoring work in these contracts
In the public documents, quality is checked twice: the contractor inspects its own work under a written quality control plan, and the buyer inspects on top of that. The buyer’s methods range from full inspection to random sampling, tenant surveys and service-call records.
The contractor’s plan. The GSA specification expects the contractor to find and fix its own deficiencies without leaning on government inspectors. A first quality control plan comes with the proposal and a final one 15 calendar days before start, and work can’t begin until it is accepted. The plan names who does quality control, gives each building an inspection checklist with date, location, findings, action and a dated sign-off, and explains how deficiencies are tracked and kept from coming back, how service calls are handled, and how tenant survey results are used. The 2024 UC Davis clinic RFP describes monthly site inspections by janitorial management with staff, and the San Francisco court RFP uses regular walkthroughs with its project manager plus sign-off sheets the crews complete.
The buyer’s checks. The GSA surveillance plan lists inspecting every instance of infrequent or life-safety tasks, periodic or random inspection, tenant interviews, service-request records, tenant surveys, and remote review of photos or video. GSA uses its Contract Cleaning Inspection form (1181a) at least monthly, inspects within two hours after work is scheduled to finish (after-hours cleaning in the first two hours of the next business day), and checks the contractor’s own records. It can inspect more often when deficiencies rise. Riverside keeps all work open to county inspection at any time.
Scoring scales. APPA describes five custodial appearance levels in its custodial guidelines, now in a 4th edition. Each level is described across floors and bases, carpets, vertical and horizontal surfaces, light fixtures, washrooms and trash:
| APPA level | What it looks like |
|---|---|
| Level 1, Orderly Spotlessness | Floors bright with no buildup in corners; surfaces freshly cleaned with no dust, marks or prints; washrooms odor-free. |
| Level 2, Ordinary Tidiness | Floors clean, though up to two days of dust or dirt can show; marks and smudges visible on close inspection. |
| Level 3, Casual Inattention | Floors swept or vacuumed but stained on a close look, with buildup in corners; carpet dull in walking lanes; obvious dust and fingerprints. |
| Level 4, Moderate Dinginess | Floors dull and stained with obvious buildup; conspicuous dust; up to 5% of lamps out; trash containers smell sour. |
| Level 5, Unkempt Neglect | Floors and carpets dirty, scuffed or matted; widespread stains and trash; more than 5% of lamps out; trash overflowing. |
ISSA takes a measurement approach instead. Its public article on measuring cleaning performance lists criteria to judge cleaning against the scope (completeness, effectiveness, speed, safety, sustainability, budget, ambient environment and customer satisfaction) and methods from visual inspection, which it calls simple but subjective, to fluorescent markers, ATP readings, time studies, work sampling and customer feedback. It suggests sampling several spots, setting a baseline and continuing to measure, and gives no scoring scale. ISSA’s Clean Standards for K-12 schools and for commercial and institutional buildings follow a “clean, measure, monitor” approach. For how a supervisor actually walks and scores a building, see inside a cleaning quality inspection.
Rework and correction periods
Every document gives the contractor a chance to fix rejected work before money changes, but the periods differ. Some leave the period to the buyer’s representative; one sets a fixed number of business days.
- GSA: the contracting officer’s representative sets a reasonable period to redo rejected work. Rejected work gets a follow-up inspection on top of the next scheduled one, and anything still not fixed goes to the contracting officer.
- San Francisco Superior Court: a written rejection explains how the service failed, the contractor has 10 business days to correct it, and rejected services aren’t paid unless corrected in that period.
- Riverside: nonconforming work is redone at no added cost. Where it can’t be fixed, the county can require steps to prevent a repeat, lower the price to match the reduced value, or both.
- Orange County: damage the contractor’s work causes is repaired or replaced at the contractor’s cost.
Reporting and meeting cadence
The reporting clauses set a rhythm, daily for service calls and monthly or quarterly for reviews. Pick a cadence you can keep, and tie each meeting to the scorecard.
- GSA: an emailed service-call status report each business day to the contracting officer’s representative and the customer service desk, with call records kept for the contract.
- GSA: monthly meetings with tenants and quality control staff, and monthly joint inspections, when requested.
- UC Davis Health: a quarterly meeting with janitorial management to review the past quarter, against KPIs set in the statement of work.
- San Francisco Superior Court: reports with time-stamped photos for its zero-waste duties.
Remedies and termination
When work stays below the contract, the public documents use deductions, price reductions and held payments, each tied to documented findings and a cure period. None of them describes service credits, and the GSA plan states a goal of resolving findings before any deduction.
| Remedy | How the document describes it |
|---|---|
| Deductions (GSA) | Taken only for inspected or observed, documented nonconforming services. The contractor can dispute in writing, and the contracting officer decides the invoice amount. Poorly done work can be deducted as if it was not done, and deductions can rise for repeat failures, sensitive locations or health and safety impact. |
| Withheld payment (GSA) | Payments held until late or unacceptable required deliverables are submitted. |
| Past-performance record (GSA) | Contractor performance history goes into CPARS, the federal past-performance system. |
| Price reduction (Riverside) | The price cut to reflect the lower value of work that can’t be corrected. |
| Non-payment (San Francisco Superior Court) | Rejected services not paid unless corrected within the cure period; disputes go to a meeting between a principal of the contractor and the Court Executive Officer or a designee. |
| Stopped payment and offset (Orange County) | Payment stopped and amounts offset during an uncured breach; the agreement’s cure period is 10 calendar days after written notice. |
Termination terms follow the same pattern. The San Francisco court RFP and Riverside’s agreement allow ending the contract for convenience on 30 days’ notice. For cause, San Francisco allows termination when a failure isn’t cured within 10 days of notice, Riverside on 5 days’ notice for an uncured failure that endangers performance, and Orange County immediately for breach. Orange County charges a defaulting contractor the extra cost of buying the service elsewhere, and Riverside can charge costs after a termination for default.
A menu of cleaning KPIs to choose from
Pick a handful of KPIs that match the clauses you actually wrote, and set the targets yourself. The sources show a menu, not a fixed set, and UC Davis Health leaves the specific KPIs to its statement of work.
| KPI | Where it comes from |
|---|---|
| Inspection results against a checklist or form | GSA 1181a form; building-specific checklists |
| Time to answer and time to complete service calls | GSA call log fields |
| How quickly corrective actions on deficiencies are finished | GSA surveillance plan |
| Tenant or customer satisfaction survey results | GSA; APPA; ISSA |
| Count and trend of complaints and compliments | APPA quality assurance |
| Appearance level delivered, 1 to 5 | APPA custodial guidelines |
| Square feet per custodian; labor and supply cost per square foot | APPA audit baseline measures |
| ATP readings against limits the facility sets | ISSA K-12 Clean Standard |
| Budget variance, productivity and ambient-environment measures | ISSA measurement article |
APPA also publishes cleanable square feet per custodian by room type and level; treat those as reference figures for your own planning rather than targets to write into a contract. If you are building a bid package, the janitorial RFP template builder writes a performance section with blank targets, and our page on how Continental handles janitorial RFPs walks through a response. To line proposals up against each other, see comparing janitorial bids.
Using the SLA and KPI scorecard
The scorecard gives each inspection and each reporting period one page. Fill in the targets your contract sets, then record the result, whether it was met, and notes. Download the SLA and KPI scorecard as a Word or PDF file; every field is blank, so it fits any contract.
- Header: building, area or room type, date and time of inspection, inspector.
- Items checked: floors, carpets, vertical and horizontal surfaces, fixtures, restrooms and trash, each marked acceptable or not, with an optional APPA level.
- Corrective actions: what is required, the deadline, the date corrected and the re-inspection result.
- Service calls for the period: received, completed, time to answer, and any deferred with the reason.
- Survey score, complaints and compliments, and any verification readings the facility uses.
- Review meeting date and attendees, with a sign-off.
Get help
Drafting the performance section of a cleaning contract, or want a second pair of eyes on one you have? Send it through our contact page and we’ll talk it through with you.
A few useful answers
Common questions
What is the difference between an SLA and a KPI in a cleaning contract?
The SLA is the set of contract clauses: response to calls, inspection, re-cleaning, reporting, remedies and termination. KPIs are the measures tracked against those clauses, such as inspection results, call completion times and survey scores, each with a target the buyer sets.
How fast must a cleaning contractor answer service calls?
Each public contract sets its own clock. The GSA 2025 specification asks for a response to emergencies in 5 minutes during normal hours and 1 hour after hours, the San Francisco Superior Court RFP 30 minutes for trouble calls, Orange County’s agreement 1 hour to return a call and 2 hours to be on site, and Riverside’s agreement 2 hours.
What are APPA’s custodial appearance levels?
Five levels described by APPA: Orderly Spotlessness, Ordinary Tidiness, Casual Inattention, Moderate Dinginess and Unkempt Neglect. Each one is described for floors, carpets, surfaces, light fixtures, washrooms and trash, so an inspector can name the level a space shows.
How long does a cleaning contractor get to fix rejected work?
The San Francisco Superior Court RFP gives 10 business days after a written rejection. GSA’s specification leaves the period to the contracting officer’s representative and adds a follow-up inspection. Orange County’s agreement uses a 10 calendar day cure period for breaches.
Does the scorecard come with targets filled in?
No. Every target, result and note field is blank. The right numbers come from your own contract and building, so you write them in and the scorecard tracks the rest.