Cleaning task checklist. A printable task checklist for a shift — the areas and tasks due, ticked as they are done, with room for what could not be done and why.

A task checklist that nobody completes is the most common artefact in this trade, and the reason is almost always that it was written from the specification rather than from the route. A cleaner works around a building in an order; a checklist organised by contract clause asks them to jump about, and it gets filled in at the end from memory.

The reason column is what turns a checklist from a compliance prop into information. 'Not done' tells a supervisor nothing; 'office occupied, meeting ran late' tells them whether it is a staffing problem, an access problem or a client problem — and the third one is a conversation worth having before the audit.

Defects and hazards are on the sheet because cleaning staff see more of a building than anyone else in it. A dripping tap, a loose floor tile, a propped fire door, a light out in a stairwell — all noticed nightly, almost never reported, because there has never been anywhere to write them.

The supervisor block is deliberately not on every line. Checking every tick is not possible and pretending otherwise produces signatures that mean nothing; checking a sample, and recording which, is both honest and more useful.