Window cleaning is one of those building services that only becomes visible when it stops. Nobody walks into a reception and remarks on how clean the glazing is. They notice streaking, they notice the tide marks on a retail frontage, and they very much notice a cradle stuck at the eighth floor.
It is also, quietly, one of the higher-risk activities routinely carried out on commercial premises. Almost everything about it involves working at height, which places it under a specific regulatory framework and makes the choice of contractor a genuine liability question rather than a purchasing formality.
For anyone responsible for a building — facilities manager, managing agent, block committee, school business manager — here is what actually separates a good contract from a cheap one.
Access Dictates Everything
The first question is not who cleans the windows, but how they reach them. Every commercial building has an access profile, and it determines the method, the cost, the frequency and the risk.
Water-fed pole systems — the reach-and-wash approach — use telescopic poles fed with purified water, allowing operatives to clean from ground level. Because the water is deionised, it dries without leaving deposits, so no squeegee or detergent is needed. It is the safest option available because nobody leaves the ground, and it is the default for buildings up to roughly four or five storeys. Its limits are height, and obstructions: courtyards, canopies, plant and overhanging structures can put glass out of reach.
Rope access, or abseiling, is the specialist answer for tall or awkward buildings without permanent access equipment. Correctly done, it is a highly controlled discipline with its own certification structure, and it is often faster and considerably less disruptive than the alternatives because it requires no road closures or plant on site.
Mobile elevating work platforms suit buildings with hard standing and clear access, and are commonly used for atria, glazed frontages and industrial units. They need space, ground capable of taking the load, and consideration of pedestrian routes.
Cradles and building maintenance units are permanent installations on many high-rise buildings. If your building has one, its statutory inspection and maintenance regime is your responsibility, and any contractor using it needs to be trained on that specific system.
Most real buildings need a combination. A good contractor will survey the site and propose a method per elevation rather than quoting a single rate per pane.
The Compliance Questions
The Work at Height Regulations 2005 place a duty on those arranging the work, not only on those carrying it out. Selecting a contractor who cannot demonstrate competence does not transfer the risk away — it concentrates it.
Ask for, and actually read, the following:
Method statements and risk assessments specific to your site, not generic templates with your address inserted. A real RAMS document names the elevations, the access method for each, the exclusion zones, and the rescue plan.
Certification appropriate to the method. Rope access work should be carried out by IRATA-certified technicians. MEWP operators need IPAF cards. Mobile tower use requires PASMA training. Supervisors should hold recognised health and safety qualifications such as IOSH. These are not decorative acronyms; they are the evidence trail if something goes wrong.
Public liability insurance at a level appropriate to the building, with the certificate current. Check the figure rather than the presence of the document.
A rescue plan. For rope access and cradle work, there must be a documented, practised procedure for recovering a suspended operative. This is the question that most reliably separates serious contractors from the rest.
Frequency, And How To set it Sensibly
The common mistake is setting a single frequency for an entire building. Exposure varies enormously across elevations: a frontage on a busy road accumulates traffic film far faster than a rear elevation over a garden, and glazing under a roofline collects a different kind of soiling again.
A sensible programme cleans high-traffic public-facing glazing more often than everything else. For most offices, an interval somewhere between monthly and quarterly for the main elevations works, with retail and hospitality frontages needing considerably more. Schools and healthcare buildings typically work to termly or quarterly cycles scheduled around occupancy.
Two other factors are worth writing into the specification. First, whether internal glazing is included — it usually is not, and the omission is regularly discovered after signing. Second, what happens to related items: cladding panels, signage, solar panels, ventilation grilles and canopies are frequently cleaned at the same visit for a marginal additional cost, because the access is already paid for. Bundling them is one of the few genuine savings available.
Judging Value Rather than Price
Window cleaning quotes vary more than most building services, and the variation is rarely about the cleaning itself. It is about access method, crew size, insurance, and whether the contractor has priced the difficult elevations honestly or intends to have a conversation about them later.
A quote that does not specify access method per elevation is not a quote. A firm proposing ladder access for anything substantial in 2026 is proposing a method the regulations treat as a last resort. And a price notably below the field usually means someone has assumed the reach-and-wash pole will get to glazing it cannot reach.
Longevity in the trade is a reasonable proxy for reliability here, because window cleaning contracts are won and lost on turning up. Firms handling commercial window cleaning in London and the South East have to contend with parking restrictions, pedestrian footfall, permit requirements and building access windows, none of which appear on a quotation but all of which determine whether the schedule holds.
What a Good Contract Looks Like in Practice
Written schedules with named elevations and frequencies. A single point of contact. Advance notice of visits, so occupants can be told and blinds opened. Consistent operatives who learn the building. Documented completion, ideally with photographs for the elevations nobody can see from the ground. A clear procedure for reporting and rectifying missed or poor work, with a timescale attached.
And a free survey before any of it is priced. Any contractor unwilling to walk the building first is quoting on assumptions — and on a job where the assumptions concern how people will safely reach the eighth floor, that is not a corner worth cutting.
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