ISO 45001 for cleaning and facility services

A cleaning team works in a building that belongs to someone else. Often it works at night, often alone, and often with products the client never bought. The client stays responsible for who enters the premises and under what conditions. That is why supplier questionnaires and tender documents contain a line on occupational health and safety.

Clients that run their own safety system have to account for the contractors on their site. They pass this requirement down the chain. A certificate attached to your quote answers the question before the purchasing department has to ask it a second time.

There is also an internal reason. Cleaning and facility work means wet floors, chemicals, ladders and heavy equipment. An accident puts a person out of work and leaves a gap in a tight shift plan. A management system that finds hazards before they cause harm protects both.

• ISO 45001 at a glance
• ISO for small and medium businesses

ISO 45001 does not prescribe a list of hazards. It requires you to identify the hazards of your own activities and assess them. For cleaning and facility services, the following are the usual starting points.

Chemical products

Descaler, disinfectant and degreaser can irritate skin and airways. Mixing products by mistake or decanting into unlabelled bottles is a typical source of incidents.

Wet floors and slips

Staff slip on freshly mopped surfaces, and so do building users. Warning signs, drying times and the choice of footwear belong in the assessment.

Work at height

Window and façade cleaning, changing light fittings and cleaning atria involve ladders, platforms or lifting equipment.

Manual handling and repetitive work

Carrying buckets, moving furniture and hours of wiping or vacuuming strain back, shoulders and wrists.

Lone and night work

A cleaner alone in an office tower at 5 a.m. needs a way to raise the alarm after a fall or a medical emergency.

Unfamiliar client sites

Each building has its own stairs, machines, restricted zones and fire exits. A new site means new hazards.

Machines and equipment

Scrubber dryers, floor polishers and high-pressure cleaners cause cuts, crush injuries and electrical faults if they are poorly maintained.

Biological contamination

Sanitary areas, waste collection and healthcare premises expose staff to infection and sharp objects in waste.

The table shows the core requirements of ISO 45001 and what they look like in a company with several crews and client sites. Leadership under clause 5 sets the tone: the owner or managing director signs the policy and takes responsibility for it.

• How the process works

ISO 45001 asks you to remove or reduce hazards in a fixed order of preference. Protective equipment comes last, not first. For a cleaning company the order looks like this.

1. 01

   Eliminate the hazard

   Schedule window cleaning from the ground with a water-fed pole so that nobody has to climb at all.

2. 02

   Substitute

   Choose a milder product with the same result. A less hazardous cleaner for daily use means fewer skin and airway complaints.

3. 03

   Engineering controls

   Use closed dosing systems, machines with dead-man switches and ergonomic handles on trolleys and mops.

4. 04

   Administrative controls

   Write work instructions in the languages your team speaks. Add a briefing for each new site and a check-in routine for lone workers.

5. 05

   Personal protective equipment

   Gloves matched to the product, non-slip footwear and eye protection where splashes are possible. Staff get training in using them.

The certificate is based on an online self-assessment for ISO 45001:2018. It contains 34 yes/no questions. 14 of them are mandatory requirements of the standard and must all be answered yes. Of the other 20 questions, at least 14 must be answered yes. Many cleaning companies already have the answers in their site files and instruction sheets.

SICE reviews every assessment before the certificate is issued. G6 Agency AG issues it under licence from SICE, and the certificate arrives within 4 hours after you pass and pay. There is no on-site audit. The PDF carries a certificate number and a QR code, so your client can check it on the public verification page.

The price is CHF 699 (€699) in the first year, then CHF 469 (€469) per year including the yearly online re-audit. The certificate is valid for 3 years. It runs as an automatic yearly subscription that you can cancel at any time in your customer account, effective at the end of the current year. Swiss customers pay 8.1% VAT, included in these prices. You need no account to buy. If you add a second standard, such as ISO 9001, you get 20% off, and 30% from the third standard.

If you want to compare this with the classic route with an on-site audit by a certification body, the guide on certification routes sets them side by side.

• ISO 45001 standard page
• Pricing
• Start the free self-assessment
• Compare certification routes