Case Study: Fixing the Common Areas at a Holker Street Business Park, Newington

Diagnosis: a boundary problem, not a cleaning problem

The audit took half a day and found almost nothing wrong with the actual work being performed. What was wrong was who owned what:

• Common areas were cleaned under an outgoings-funded contract; each tenancy held its own separate arrangement, and four had no contract at all
• The shared kitchen and end-of-trip facility appeared in nobody's written scope — both parties assumed the other had it
• Basement ramps and car park levels were swept quarterly, which on a corridor with this much heavy vehicle movement meant grit was permanently walking into every lobby
• The bin compound was hosed on request rather than on a schedule, and requests only happened after a complaint
• No reporting existed at all, so the building manager was the complaints system

The rebuild

• One named supervisor took the whole estate, with a written scope that explicitly marked the line between common property and tenancy scope — including the shared kitchen and end-of-trip facility, which went into common
• Five of the eleven tenancies moved their internal cleaning onto the same agreement at portfolio pricing, leaving one point of contact for most of the building
• Grit was attacked at the boundary: weekly ramp and car park sweeping, entry matting rotated and washed, and quarterly machine work on lobby hard floors instead of endless mopping
• The bin compound went onto a fixed weekly washdown and deodorising cycle, with dumped items photographed and logged
• A monthly photo audit against the written scope, plus a defect log for failed lighting, damaged pavers and blocked drainage, issued to the building manager

The result

Logged tenant complaints about common areas fell from roughly four a month to a single complaint across the following quarter. The two tenancies that had raised cleaning at lease renewal both signed. The common area line in outgoings rose about eight percent — honestly, because the previous scope was under-serviced — while the five consolidating tenancies each paid less than they had under their own contracts. The building manager's own words were that they had stopped being the cleaning department. The agreement runs month-to-month, like every contract we write.

Questions about this case study

Managing an estate with the same symptoms?

The full service spec is on our business park cleaning Newington page, with pricing context on the cost guide and rates page. Tenancy-level programs are covered by office cleaning and warehouse cleaning. For a different industry turnaround, read the Olympic Park event venue case study or browse the case studies index. Multi-site owners: we also cover Sydney Olympic Park. Pro Clean Corp is servicing Newington 2127 and surrounds from our head office at 77 Garfield Street, Wentworthville NSW 2145.