Commercial Recurring Contract Service Standard
Purpose
A signed recurring contract is a promise that every visit looks the same regardless of which crew shows up, and a facility manager who defends that line item internally needs proof, not just clean glass. Without a standing visit procedure, quality drifts crew to crew, new damage or scope changes go unreported until a customer notices them first, and the record a manager needs to compare this visit to the last one simply doesn't exist. This standard is the on-site execution of a single recurring stop: what gets checked on arrival, what gets worked and in what order, and what gets written down before the truck pulls away.
Scope
Covers the on-site execution of one stop on an already-signed commercial recurring contract: arrival and access verification, scope-sheet execution, quality check, documentation, and departure.
It does not cover acquiring, pricing, or structuring the contract itself, which the commercial recurring service contracts reference and the weekly route maintenance contract structure reference own, including insurance and certificate-of-insurance requirements. It does not cover route density, stop sequencing across a day, or scheduling math, which the weekly route maintenance contract structure reference and the solo route density math reference own. A stop that arrives without a current scope sheet on file is out of scope for this SOP until the office produces one; do not work from memory of a past visit.
Roles and responsibilities
| Role | Owns | Hands off |
|---|---|---|
| Dispatcher / office | Scheduling, access codes, scope sheet distribution, reconciling flagged findings | A current scope sheet and access method to the crew before arrival |
| Crew lead | The quality call on site, deviation escalation | A signed or unsigned completion record to the office |
| Crew tech | Execution per scope sheet, photo documentation | Completed line items and any skip reason on the job sheet |
The procedure
Verify access and confirm the scope sheet before unloading equipment. Check in via the route app's GPS check-in per the contract's QA requirement, confirm the scope sheet on hand matches today's property (name, elevation count, interior or exterior scope), and verify the access method still works before staging tools. Acceptance: check-in timestamp logged, scope sheet matches the property, access confirmed within the first 5 minutes on site. Wrong looks like a crew unloading before confirming a gate code still works, then burning 20 minutes on the phone with the office while the next three stops slip. Stop rule: an access method that fails, a bad code, no key, nobody at the desk, escalates to the office immediately by phone before attempting a workaround; the stop reschedules and the route continues. Hazard: note any dog, active loading dock traffic, or a drive-through lane on arrival before staging equipment in a vehicle path.
Walk the site against the reference photo set before starting work. Compare current conditions to the photos from the first visit: new signage, cracked or broken glass, a fogged unit that wasn't there last time, an area that used to be accessible and now isn't. Acceptance: any deviation from the reference set is noted on the job sheet before the squeegee touches glass. Wrong looks like starting work and noticing cracked glass halfway through, with no way to prove it wasn't caused today. Stop rule: any new damage found on arrival is photographed and the facility contact is notified on site, in writing, before work starts on that elevation; work proceeds on the rest of the scope while that finding is pending. Hazard: none new; this step is a documentation gate ahead of the physical work.
Execute the scope sheet in the same sequence every visit. Work the assigned elevations, the interior or exterior split, and the tracks-and-sills inclusion exactly as written rather than from memory of how the property is usually handled. Acceptance: every line item is completed or explicitly marked skipped with a one-line reason. Wrong looks like a crew skipping interior sills because "we always do exterior only here" when the scope sheet says otherwise; that is the drift a facility manager notices and can't explain up their own chain. Stop rule: a locked room, a blocked item, or denied ladder access gets marked skipped with a reason, never silently dropped; three consecutive skips of the same line item at the same property escalates to the crew lead to correct the scope sheet itself. Hazard: where the scope calls for ladder or water-fed-pole work above ground level, verify the equipment on the truck matches what the scope sheet specifies before starting that elevation.
Run the low-angle inspection pass before packing up. Stand at the position the customer or facility contact will stand in and check every completed elevation under oblique light, correcting any streak or missed spot on the spot rather than waiting for a callback. Acceptance: zero visible streaks or missed spots at the customer's-eye viewing angle on every completed elevation. Wrong looks like packing up on schedule with a visible streak on the entry door because it wasn't caught straight-on; entry glass is the highest-visibility surface on the property and the first thing a facility manager checks. Stop rule: any defect found at this pass gets corrected before departure, not logged for next time; if a defect can't be corrected on site, a same-day callback is scheduled before the crew leaves the property. Hazard: none new.
Photograph completion and log the visit before leaving the property. Capture the before-and-after photo pair the contract specifies, complete the digital or paper completion checklist, and get the facility contact's signature where the contract requires one. Acceptance: the photo pair is attached to today's stop record, and the checklist is signed or the check-in is closed. Wrong looks like a crew planning to upload photos later from the next stop; a photo taken hours later at a different location is worthless as a same-visit record if a dispute comes up. Stop rule: no signature available on site doesn't block departure, but the stop is marked unsigned and the office follows up within 24 hours; a stop with no photo pair at all is not marked complete regardless of whether the work was done. Hazard: none.
Reconcile every flagged finding with the office before the route ends. Call in or log any new damage, access change, or scope deviation found on this stop so the office can notify the facility manager and update the reference photo set before the next visit. Acceptance: every finding flagged in step 2 or step 3 has a matching office log entry by end of route. Wrong looks like a cracked pane photographed at 8 a.m. that the office hears about a week later when the customer calls; the finding existed, the loop just never closed. Stop rule: a finding not logged with the office by end of route is a failed handoff regardless of how well it was documented on the job sheet; the crew lead confirms the office log matches the day's job sheets before signing off, and any mismatch holds the crew's timesheet until it is corrected. Hazard: none.
The record this produces
The check-in timestamp, the scope-sheet completion status per line item including skip reasons, any flagged deviation with its photo, the before-and-after photo pair, the signed or unsigned completion checklist, and the office log entry reconciling every finding. This record is what the QA report sent to the facility manager pulls from directly, and it is what builds the reference photo set used at step 2 of the next visit; a stop with no record is a stop the shop cannot defend at renewal.
Worked pass: a six-bay strip-center pharmacy, one correction and one near-miss handoff
A six-bay storefront, scope sheet listing exterior glass on all six bays, both sides of the entry door, interior storefront glass within 10 ft of the entry, and tracks and sills. Crew of two, second consecutive visit at this property.
Step 1: check-in logs at 7:04 a.m., scope sheet matches, the door code from the office works on the first try. Step 2: walking the site against last visit's reference photos, the crew finds a hairline crack in bay 3's display pane that wasn't there before. It's photographed and the facility contact, on site restocking, is told and shown the photo in writing before bay 3 is touched.
Step 3: five of six scope-sheet line items complete cleanly. Tracks and sills at bay 5 are skipped again, a floor display now blocks access; this is the second consecutive visit with that same skip, one short of the three-visit escalation threshold, so it's logged with a reason but not yet escalated to correct the scope sheet.
Step 4 is where the procedure catches its own miss: the low-angle pass at the entry door reveals a streak on the left panel that a straight-on check would have missed. That fails the step's acceptance condition on the first look. The stop rule fires as designed, the crew corrects it on the spot with a re-squeegee before packing the strip washer, and the second check passes clean.
Step 5: the photo pair is captured, but the facility contact has stepped back inside by close-out, so the stop is marked unsigned rather than held for a signature. Step 6: the bay 3 crack and the bay 5 skip are both logged with the office before the crew's next stop; the office confirms the log against the day's job sheet at the end of route and finds both entries present, closing the loop the same day rather than a week later.
References
- See related: the commercial recurring service contracts reference, which owns contract acquisition, pricing, and insurance requirements this SOP assumes are already in place.
- See related: the weekly route maintenance contract structure reference, which owns scope definition at the contract level and route density math.
- See related: the solo route density math reference, for stop-to-stop scheduling across a full route.
- ANSI / IWCA I-14.1, Window Cleaning Safety Standard, Section 8, administrative controls including route planning and crew responsibilities.