Our vetting standards

Why we publish our standards

Most facilities buyers never see a vendor's vetting criteria — they see a proposal, a price, and a promise. We publish ours because the standard a subcontractor is held to matters more than the pitch they gave you, and a standard that isn't written down can't actually be enforced. Every requirement below is a pass/fail gate we apply before a local company joins our network and an ongoing condition for staying in it, not a marketing description of how we'd like things to work.

Insurance & certificate of insurance requirements

Every subcontractor carries a minimum $1M per-occurrence / $2M aggregate commercial general liability policy, with United Facility Partners named as an additional insured — not just the end client. Workers' compensation coverage has to meet or exceed the statutory minimum in the subcontractor's operating state; a leased-employee arrangement that obscures who actually carries that coverage is a disqualifier on its own.

A current certificate of insurance (COI) is required before onboarding starts, and it's re-verified directly with the carrier at every policy renewal — not taken on the subcontractor's word that coverage is still active. Sites that carry higher exposure — bank branches, medical facilities, buildings over a defined square footage — require an additional umbrella or excess liability policy on top of the base coverage before that subcontractor can be assigned there.

Capacity & references

A subcontractor has to produce two commercial references from accounts of comparable square footage and cleaning frequency to the site they'd be assigned — a single reference from a much smaller job doesn't demonstrate they can hold up at scale. Reference calls confirm responsiveness to reported issues and whether staffing or pricing changed unexpectedly during the relationship, since those two questions surface problems a general satisfaction question doesn't.

Capacity gets checked separately from references: a subcontractor has to confirm a documented backup staffing plan — trained crew members who can cover a shift within 24 hours of a callout — before being assigned to a site, and that capacity check is run independently for every market they'd service. Strong bench depth in one city doesn't carry over to another.

Background checks & badging for regulated sites

Crews assigned to banks, medical facilities, and any badged or secured-access site go through individual background checks — typically a seven-year criminal history check — before their first shift, and documentation of that screening stays on file for the duration of the assignment. This is a per-person requirement, not a company-level attestation, so a crew rotation on a regulated site triggers a new check for whoever is added.

Sites requiring badge access get each assigned crew member individually badged, and that badge is re-verified on the building's own renewal cycle rather than left active indefinitely. A personnel change on a badged site holds up that new person's first shift until badging and background screening are both complete — access is never granted provisionally.

Scope sheets & SLA baseline

Every site operates under a written scope sheet before the first cleaning — what gets cleaned, at what frequency, and to what finish standard — so "the job" is a document both the subcontractor and the client can point to, not a verbal understanding. Scope sheets get reviewed at least annually, or immediately if the site's use changes (a tenant buildout, a shift in operating hours).

On top of scope, every site carries a baseline service level agreement: a defined response window for a reported issue (typically four business hours) and a defined remedy for a missed visit, such as a no-charge reclean within 24 hours. A subcontractor who can't meet that baseline doesn't get assigned the site to begin with.

QA cadence: inspections & quarterly business reviews

Inspection frequency is set per site in the SLA during onboarding — a bank branch or medical facility gets a higher-touch cadence than a standard office suite, and that cadence is written into the scope sheet, not left to chance. Every visit, on whatever cadence applies, is scored directly against the scope sheet and documented with a timestamped photo report that our team reviews, rather than a summary written after the fact.

On top of that documented cadence, we walk each site with you at the quarterly business review, so you're not relying on our records alone. Those results roll up across your full footprint, so a pattern at one site — or across several sites serviced by the same subcontractor — surfaces before it becomes a pattern of complaints.

Failed inspections don't sit in a file — they trigger a corrective action plan with a specific re-inspection date, and that plan is shared with the client, not just tracked internally. See how the model works end to end for how QA connects to onboarding and billing.

Removal criteria

Two consecutive failed inspections at the same site trigger replacement of that subcontractor at that location — not a third chance, and not a conversation about extenuating circumstances. Lapsed insurance or an unverifiable COI at any point results in immediate suspension from the network until coverage is reinstated and reverified directly with the carrier.

Undisclosed sub-subcontracting — a subcontractor bringing in personnel we haven't vetted without notifying us first — is a network violation on its own, independent of service quality, because it bypasses the background-check and insurance standard at a layer we can't see. A failed background check on a badged or regulated site results in immediate removal from that assignment, full stop.

Where this standard applies

These standards apply the same way regardless of industry, but the compliance stakes differ by site type. See how they map to medical & dental practices, banks & credit unions, and retail chains specifically.

Run a cleaning company? See how to join our network.