The last clean before you hand the keys over. Construction dust off every horizontal and vertical surface, adhesive and silicone residue removed, paint specks off glass and hardware, window tracks and reveals detailed, and a completion walk so nothing lands on your defect list.
A builders final clean is the last clean before handover, run after every trade has left the floor. It covers residual construction dust, adhesive and silicone residue, paint specks, protective film removal, glass, tracks and reveals, and a completion walk with the project manager. Pro Clean Corp quotes one-off project work at $40 to $50 per hour across Sydney, with overnight and weekend crews available to hit a fixed handover date.
A final clean is a detail job, not a volume job. By the time we arrive the skips have gone and the floor looks finished from ten metres away. The work is in the metre: the dust sitting on top of the door frames and the sprinkler pipework, the silicone smear on the shower screen, the ring of adhesive where a protective corner guard was taped to the reveal, the pencil marks on the plasterboard behind where a rack will sit, and the fine grey film on every glass surface that only shows when the sun moves.
The standard scope covers all horizontal surfaces from the ceiling grid down, including light fittings, vents, sprinkler heads, door tops and skirtings; full glass detail internally and externally where access allows, including tracks, seals and frames; all joinery inside and out, including drawer runners and shelf edges; tapware, sinks, kitchenettes and appliances; every wet area descaled and polished; all hard floors machine-cleaned and all carpet vacuumed with a HEPA machine; and switches, GPOs, data plates, handles and door hardware individually wiped.
What separates a final clean from a good general clean is sequence. Ceilings and high level first, glass second-to-last, floors last, and no wet work above a surface already finished. Crews that clean floors first and then dust the ceiling grid are why sites get handed back twice.
Rough clean. Happens while trades are still working. Gross debris, offcuts, packaging, bulk dust, and a first pass over floors so the site is safe and inspectable. It is dirty, fast work and its purpose is to keep the program moving. Our builders cleaning service covers this stage and the progressive cleans that sit alongside it.
Final clean. The stage this page describes. Every trade off the floor, every surface brought to a finished standard, protective film off, residues removed, and the building presentable to a client or a tenant rather than to a site foreman.
Sparkle clean. A short return visit immediately before the client walk-through or move in, usually the same morning. It exists because construction dust does not settle in one night: the first heave of a HVAC system after commissioning drops a fresh layer, and foot traffic from furniture installers marks glass and floors again. A sparkle is thirty per cent of a final clean in duration and is what turns a technically clean site into one that photographs well. If you only budget for one visit, budget for the final and negotiate the sparkle as a fixed short return.
Construction dust is not household dust. It is silica, gypsum and timber particulate, it is abrasive, and it is fine enough to stay airborne for hours after disturbance. Dry sweeping or a domestic vacuum re-suspends it and you get it back on every surface an hour later. We work with HEPA-filtered vacuums and damp methods, top-down, and we vacuum the ceiling void edges and cable trays that most crews skip entirely — those are the reservoirs that keep re-dusting a floor for weeks after handover.
Adhesive residue from tape, protective film and labels is removed with a citrus or solvent-based remover matched to the substrate, then neutralised so nothing is left to attract dust. Cured silicone smears come off with a plastic blade and a solvent rather than a metal scraper, because a metal blade on a powder-coated aluminium frame creates a defect worse than the smear.
Paint specks on glass are scraped wet with a new blade held flat, and only on annealed glass — never dry, and never on coated, toughened or laminated panels where the coating side can be scored. Getting this wrong is the most expensive mistake on a final clean, because a scratched glazing panel is a replacement, not a repair. If the glazing schedule includes coated or heritage glass, tell us before the crew is on site.
Glass is the first thing a client looks at and the last thing most builders cleans get right. A final clean covers both faces where access allows, plus the parts that decide whether the glass stays clean: tracks, sills, weep holes, gaskets and the top edge of every frame. Tracks in particular hold a slurry of grout, render and dust that washes back onto the glass with the first rain if it is not vacuumed out before wet cleaning starts.
Internal glass partitions, frameless doors, mirrors and splashbacks are finished with a squeegee and detailed at the edges rather than sprayed and buffed, because buffing a large panel with a cloth leaves a haze that shows under downlights. Manifestation film and vinyl signage already applied by the fitout contractor is cleaned around, not over, and never with a solvent that will lift a printed edge.
Anything above ground level externally, or any facade that needs rope or EWP access, is priced and scheduled separately under our Sydney window cleaning team so the height work has its own SWMS and access plan rather than being improvised on the day.
A final clean that is not walked is a final clean that gets disputed. We finish every job with a room-by-room walk with the site manager or project manager, working from a written checklist that mirrors the scope: high level, glass, joinery, wet areas, hardware, floors, and back-of-house. Items raised on the walk are cleared on the spot where they are small and scheduled as a nominated return where they are not.
We do not offer a free re-clean, and we say so up front rather than in the fine print. On a live site the usual reason a surface is marked after handover cleaning is that a trade or an installer came back through afterwards, and pricing a job on the assumption of unlimited returns just inflates the original quote for every client who does not need them. Defect and touch-up visits are quoted as return visits at the same rate.
Where the floor finish itself is the risk item — new vinyl that needs a first seal, polished concrete that needs the right pad, or carpet the installer has already marked — we scope it with our commercial floor cleaning team rather than treating it as part of the general final clean.
Final cleans are priced as one-off project work. Pro Clean Corp publishes one-off cleaning at $40 to $50 per hour, and a final clean is quoted as a fixed price built from a crew-hours estimate against the actual site rather than a rate per square metre — two 500 square metre floors can differ by half a shift purely on how much glazing and exposed services they carry.
The variables that move the number most are: whether a rough clean was done, how long protective film has been in place, the amount of glass, whether ceilings are exposed or gridded, the floor finish, and access — a CBD tower with a booked dock and a single goods lift consumes hours that a ground-floor suburban site does not. Give us the program dates early. A final clean booked with a week of notice can be resourced with a larger crew and finished in one shift; the same job booked the afternoon before handover cannot.
Call 1300 494 983 with your handover date, or send the drawings through and we will come back with a fixed price and a crew plan. For sites still in construction, the after builders cleaning page covers the earlier stages.
Ceiling void and cable tray dust removed, not re-suspended.
Crews sized to hit a fixed handover date, dock bookings included.
Room-by-room checklist signed with your project manager.
A builders clean is the rough stage: gross debris, offcuts, packaging, protective film and the bulk of the construction dust are removed so trades can keep working and the site can be inspected. A final clean is the last visit before handover, once every trade is off the floor. It assumes the rough clean already happened and concentrates on detail — adhesive and silicone residue, paint specks on glass and hardware, fingerprints, tracks and reveals, and the second dust fall that always appears after the first clean.
A 500 square metre commercial fitout that has already had a rough builders clean generally needs a crew of three to five for one full shift, and often a short return the following morning for the dust that settles overnight. Sites with heavy glazing, exposed services or polished concrete take longer because glass and ceiling voids are the two slowest elements of any final clean. A site that never received a rough clean will take roughly twice as long, and we scope it as two stages rather than pretending one visit will do it.
We attend defect and touch-up cleaning as a scheduled return visit, quoted with the job. It is not a free re-clean and we do not offer one, because on a live construction program the reason a surface is dirty at handover is usually that a trade came back through after we left. What we do commit to is walking the site with your project manager at completion, agreeing the list on the spot, and returning at a nominated time to clear whatever was raised.
Book it for after practical completion of every wet trade and after the protective floor coverings come up, but before furniture, IT and signage installation. The most common scheduling mistake in Sydney fitouts is booking the final clean before the caulking and touch-up painting crews have finished, which guarantees a second visit. Give the clean a clear window with no other trades on the floor — the crew works far faster and the result actually survives to handover.
Yes. Most final cleans in Sydney CBD and North Sydney buildings happen overnight or across a weekend, because that is when the loading dock and lifts are available and no other trades are on the floor. Building management usually requires an approved after-hours access request, an induction and a certificate of currency before the crew is allowed in, so give us the building requirements early and we will lodge the paperwork rather than arriving to a locked dock.
Yes, and it needs to be scoped explicitly because it is slow work. Protective film that has been on glass through a Sydney summer will have baked on and leaves adhesive that must be softened with a solvent and scraped with a fresh blade at the correct angle. Film left on joinery, stainless steel and lift doors behaves the same way. Tell us at quoting stage what is still filmed and how long it has been there, because film age changes the labour more than film area does.
Give us the handover date and the drawings. We come back with a fixed price and a crew plan.