A manufacturing plant in Greater Montréal needs two cleaning programs running side by side: one for the office, lunchroom and washroom side, which looks a lot like any office contract, and one for the production floor, docks and mezzanines, where the goal is safety and uptime more than appearance. The checklist below splits the building into zones and gives each one a daily, weekly, monthly and yearly scope you can hand to a contractor or use to audit the one you have.
It's written for plants in the 75 to 500 employee range (metal fabrication, assembly, plastics, packaging, printing) with a head office or admin wing attached. Food plants have their own sanitation regime under CFIA and MAPAQ rules and need a separate program.
Start with a walk-through and a zone map
Before anything gets scheduled, walk the building with your maintenance lead and mark every area on a floor plan as one of these:
- Admin and offices (desks, meeting rooms, reception)
- Employee areas (lunchroom, locker rooms, washrooms, showers)
- Production floor (aisles, around machines, workstations, under conveyors)
- Shipping and receiving (docks, dock plates, staging lanes)
- Elevated and hard-to-reach (mezzanines, racking tops, beams, light fixtures, ductwork)
- Restricted (electrical rooms, chemical storage, areas with machines that must be locked out before anyone cleans near them)
The restricted list matters most. Cleaning staff should never work inside a machine guard or on equipment that is not de-energized. In Quebec the lockout requirements sit in the Regulation respecting occupational health and safety (RSST), and your plant's own lockout procedure decides who is allowed to do what. A good contract spells out that machine-internal cleaning stays with your trained operators unless a specific procedure says otherwise.
Daily checklist
Offices and employee areas
- Empty all waste and recycling, replace liners
- Clean and disinfect washrooms: toilets, urinals, sinks, counters, partitions, touch points
- Restock soap, paper towel, toilet paper and hygiene supplies
- Clean lunchroom tables, counters, sinks, microwave exteriors and fridge handles
- Sweep and wet-mop hard floors, vacuum carpeted offices
- Wipe door handles, light switches, time clocks and shared keyboards
Production floor
- Sweep or scrub main aisles and pedestrian walkways (a ride-on scrubber on large floors)
- Empty production waste bins and move them to the compactor or dumpster area
- Pick up debris around workstations without reaching into machines
- Clean spills right away with the right absorbent, then report them so the source gets fixed
- Keep floor markings, exits and fire extinguisher access clear
Entrances (October to April)
- Sweep and mop salt and slush at every personnel door, several times a shift if needed
- Swap or vacuum entrance mats, and check that wet-floor signage is out
Weekly checklist
- Scrub washroom floors and drains, descale fixtures
- Clean locker room benches, showers and the outside of lockers
- Dust office surfaces, window sills, partitions and blinds
- Clean the inside of lunchroom microwaves and wipe down the fridge exterior and vending machine fronts
- Scrub floors under and around fixed workstations where the scrubber can't reach
- Sweep and degrease the dock area, dock plates and around trailer doors
- Clean the area around the compactor or bin enclosure so it doesn't attract pests
- Wipe forklift charging station surroundings (not the batteries or chargers themselves)
Monthly checklist
- Detail-clean office carpets with spot extraction on traffic lanes
- Wash interior glass, office partitions and the inside of entrance glass
- Clean break room appliances inside and out, including the fridge clean-out (with notice to staff)
- Degrease floors in machining and assembly areas where oil and coolant build up
- Clean low-level ledges, guard rails and the outside of electrical panels (closed, never opened)
- Check and clean floor drains and trench drains so they flow before the spring melt
Quarterly and yearly
- High dusting of beams, racking tops, overhead pipes, light fixtures and ductwork. Dust on high surfaces falls back onto product and equipment, and in plants that handle fine powders it can become a fire hazard, so how often depends on what your process produces. Many plants book it quarterly, some twice a year.
- Floor stripping and refinishing in offices, lunchrooms and corridors with VCT or similar tile, usually once a year and ideally before winter salt season.
- Carpet hot-water extraction across all office carpet, once or twice a year.
- Exterior windows on the office wing, spring and fall.
- Deep degreasing of the production floor, often scheduled during a planned shutdown (construction holiday in late July and the Christmas break are common windows in Quebec).
Quebec rules worth knowing
A few regulations shape what a plant cleaning scope looks like here:
- WHMIS 2015 (SIMDUT 2015). Every cleaning chemical brought on site needs a safety data sheet and a proper label. Ask your contractor for the SDS binder and keep it with your own.
- Lockout under the RSST. Covered above. Put it in writing which equipment is off limits to cleaning staff.
- Wastewater. The Communauté métropolitaine de Montréal's wastewater bylaw (Règlement 2008-47) limits what can go down drains, including oils and greases. Degreasing water from production floors may need to be collected rather than rinsed into a floor drain, depending on your setup and your municipality.
- CNESST registration. Any contractor working in your plant should be registered with the CNESST and able to show it. Simple Service is registered, carries $5 million in general liability insurance with a $10 million umbrella, and our employees are bonded.
What to put in the contract
A checklist only helps if it ends up in the agreement. Make sure the contract states:
- The zones in scope and the zones that are excluded
- Frequency for each task (daily, weekly, monthly, yearly)
- Who supplies consumables (soap, paper, liners) and at what markup
- Shift times, and whether cleaning happens during production or between shifts
- How periodic work like high dusting and floor stripping is priced and booked
- How quality is checked: inspections, photo reports, a named contact
For rough budgets on the office and washroom side, our pricing calculator gives a starting range. Production floor work is almost always quoted after a site visit because square footage alone says little about what's on the floor.
Frequently asked questions
How often should a manufacturing plant be cleaned?
Washrooms, lunchrooms, waste and main aisles should be handled every day the plant runs, and on every shift in plants that run two or three shifts. Floors around workstations and docks are usually weekly, and high dusting and deep degreasing are quarterly to yearly depending on how much dust and oil your process produces.
Can cleaning staff clean the machines?
Exterior surfaces that are safe to touch, yes. Anything inside a guard, or any machine that has to be stopped and locked out first, should stay with your trained operators or maintenance team unless your lockout procedure specifically covers the cleaning crew. Write this into the contract so nobody guesses on the night shift.
Is it better to clean during production or after hours?
Offices and washrooms are easier after hours or between shifts. On the production floor, a short daily pass during a shift change keeps aisles clear, while heavy work like degreasing and high dusting is safer during a weekend or planned shutdown when equipment is stopped.
Get a checklist built for your plant
Every plant is laid out differently, and the right schedule depends on your process, your shifts and your floors. Tell us about your facility and we'll walk the building and build a zone-by-zone scope with you. You can also read more about our industrial cleaning work across Montréal, Laval, Longueuil and the North and South Shores.