A club is two buildings, twelve months apart
Ask a general manager what the club needs cleaned and the honest answer changes completely depending on the month you ask. In July the clubhouse is running dining service, a full locker room, a pool, a pro shop and an events calendar. In January the same building is a quiet office with occasional bookings. Almost every cleaning proposal a club receives ignores this and quotes a single annual figure at a single frequency, which is the wrong shape in both directions at once.
The alternative is straightforward and most clubs recognise it immediately: two rates, one for the season and one for the shoulder, with the off-season scope naming the specific deep-clean tasks rather than describing a reduced version of the same rounds.
| Area | In season | Off season |
|---|---|---|
| Member locker rooms & wet areas | Daily, logged; twice on tournament days | Weekly, plus deep clean and regrout |
| Dining room, lounge & bar | Daily, plus after every service | Reduced; carpet and upholstery extraction |
| Clubhouse front of house | Daily | Weekly; floor stripping and refinishing |
| Event & banquet space | Per event, same-night reset | As booked — winter events still happen |
| Halfway house & comfort stations | Daily, checked mid-round | Closed and winterised |
| Kitchen back of house | Daily, deep clean monthly | Full deep clean and hood programme |
| Pool deck & change rooms | Daily in use | Closed; seasonal reset |
The off-season column is where a club gets the value. Floor refinishing needs hours of undisturbed access and full cure time. Carpet extraction needs a room nobody walks through while it dries. High-level dust needs ladders in a space that is not full of members. Trying to buy any of that in July means either paying a premium for overnight work or accepting a compromised result.
The locker room decides what members think
Clubs invest in lobbies. Members judge locker rooms. It is the one space used alone, twice a visit, often in bare feet — and it is the only part of the property where the cleaning standard is health rather than appearance.
A wet-area routine that holds up looks like this:
- Shower stalls and floors daily, with a DIN-registered product used at label dilution and left for the full contact time on a surface that has been cleaned first. Applying disinfectant to a soiled surface is the most common wet-area mistake there is.
- Drains on a set cycle, not when they smell. Drain biofilm is the usual source of an odour nobody can locate.
- Grout and slip resistance checked rather than assumed. A tiled shower floor loses slip resistance as grout wears and film builds; it is a safety item, not a cosmetic one.
- Sauna and steam surfaces on their own routine, worked around the room's operating hours and heat cycle.
- Clean and soiled towels genuinely separated, with the floor under the carts actually cleaned rather than mopped around.
- Washrooms on a documented schedule — any Ontario employer with a washroom is expected to keep cleaning records under the OHSA amendments introduced by Bill 190.
Events are a second calendar cutting across the first
In season a club is running two operations simultaneously: normal member service, and an events business with its own deadlines. A wedding on Saturday evening, a member-guest tournament at seven on Sunday morning and a corporate outing on Monday are three separate turnarounds, and the constraint is never the cleaning itself — it is the gap.
The arrangement that works is a same-night reset after a reception, so nobody walks through the aftermath at breakfast; an early pass before a shotgun start; and a standing rule that the crew is out of the clubhouse before the first group reaches the turn. All of that should be in the specification, built from the events calendar, rather than negotiated each weekend by whoever is on duty.
Four jobs that belong to other trades
A club is unusual in how many adjacent licensed trades operate on the same site. A cleaning contract should say plainly which of them it is not:
- The course. Greenkeeping — agronomy, machinery, licensed pesticide applicators. No overlap.
- Pool and whirlpool water. Chemistry, testing, dosing and the operating record are the operator's duty under Ontario's public pool and public spa regulations and are inspected by the local public health unit. Cleaning covers the deck, surrounds, furniture and change rooms.
- NFPA 96 hood and duct interiors. Specialist work with fire-marshal documentation attached, properly delivered through a certified partner. Hood exteriors and baffle filters are ordinary kitchen cleaning.
- Golf carts and members' equipment. The cart barn is a building; what is in it is not the cleaner's.
Clubs that get this wrong usually do so by accident — a line in a proposal reading "pool area maintenance" that nobody defines until something goes wrong. Define it in the specification.
Seasonal staff and the training problem
Most of the people who will work at a club next April do not work there today. That is normal in the sector and it is also the single biggest threat to a cleaning standard, because standards live in people's heads unless somebody writes them down. A club that keeps completed cleaning sheets from last season starts the new one with a training document that costs nothing and is more reliable than anyone's memory of how it was done.
The same applies to the contractor. A crew that changes every week never learns a building with this many distinct spaces; a consistent crew, briefed once properly, is worth more than a lower hourly rate.
What a good proposal looks like
A club can usually tell within a page whether a contractor has understood the building. The tells are specific:
- Two rates, in season and off, with dates attached.
- An off-season scope that names tasks — strip and refinish, extract, regrout, hood programme — rather than describing "reduced service".
- A locker-room section that mentions contact time and DIN-registered products.
- An events clause that references the club's calendar rather than a fixed nightly window.
- A written statement that pool water and the course are out of scope.
- Confirmation that the same screened crew works the site, and a signed log after each visit.
A proposal missing all six is priced for an office building. It will be cheaper, and it will be renegotiated in July.
Frequently asked questions
Why should a club cleaning contract have two rates?
Because a club is two different buildings across the year and pricing it as one guarantees a bad deal in both directions. From April to October the clubhouse needs daily coverage, locker rooms need a documented wet-area routine, and events need same-night turnarounds. From November the building empties and what it needs instead is the deep work — floor stripping and refinishing, carpet and upholstery extraction, high-level dust, kitchen deep clean, locker-room regrout. A flat twelve-month figure means overpaying in January for service nobody uses and being under-served in August when it matters most.
What should be done in the off season?
Everything that requires the building empty. Floor stripping and refinishing is the big one — it needs hours of undisturbed access and full cure time, which is impossible with members walking through. Then carpet and upholstery extraction in the dining room and lounge, high-level dust above the bar and in the atrium, the kitchen deep clean, locker-room grout and drain work, and window cleaning inside and out. Scheduling those into the shoulder months costs less, disrupts nobody, and is the main reason a two-rate contract usually beats a flat one on total annual spend.
Why do locker rooms matter more than the lobby?
Because the locker room is the one space a member uses alone, twice a visit, in bare feet — and it is the only part of a club where the standard is health rather than presentation. A shower floor, a drain, a sauna bench and a towel bin are wet-area hygiene. Members form their opinion of how well a club is run there, and they form it silently. A lobby that looks good and a locker room that does not is a club with a membership-retention problem it has not diagnosed.
Who is responsible for the pool water?
The operator, not the cleaning contractor. Chemistry, testing, dosing and the operating records for a public pool or public spa are the operator's duty under Ontario's public pool and public spa regulations, administered by the local public health unit, and they require a trained operator. A cleaning contract should cover the deck, surrounds, furniture and change rooms and stop there. Any company willing to fold water testing into a janitorial quote is offering something it should not.
How should events be scheduled into the cleaning contract?
As a second calendar running through the first. A Saturday wedding, a Sunday member-guest tournament and a Monday corporate outing are three different turnarounds with three different deadlines, and none of them fits a nightly slot. The workable arrangement is a same-night reset after a reception so the room is not walked through at breakfast, an early pass before a shotgun start, and a crew briefed to be out of the clubhouse before the first group reaches the turn.
Does the clubhouse kitchen need anything special?
It is a food premises and is inspected by your local public health unit like any restaurant, so it needs the same documented routine. Back-of-house floors, walls, storage and the dish area are ordinary commercial kitchen work. Hood exteriors and baffle filters are usually the cleaning contractor's; NFPA 96 hood and duct interior cleaning is specialist work that should be delivered by a certified partner who issues the fire-marshal documentation, not claimed in-house by a janitorial company.
Should a cleaning contractor touch the course?
No. Greenkeeping is a separate trade with its own agronomy, machinery and licensed pesticide applicators, and there is no overlap worth pursuing. A cleaning contract should stop at the buildings and the hard-surface exterior — entrances, patios, terraces, clubhouse cart paths and walkways, including seasonal pressure washing.
What should a club ask a contractor before signing?
Whether the proposal has two rates. Whether the off-season scope names the specific deep-clean tasks and when they will happen. Whether the locker-room routine is documented and uses DIN-registered products. Whether the crew is the same people each week and screened. What happens on an event weekend that runs late. And whether they will put in writing that the pool water and the course are not theirs. A quote that answers all six is unusual and is worth more than the cheapest number.
Note: This guide is for informational purposes only and is not legal, regulatory or professional advice. Pool and spa operation, food premises and workplace safety obligations at a club rest with the operator and are administered by your local public health unit and the Ministry of Labour. Verify any obligation against the primary source or your own advisors before relying on it.