If you manage a commercial property portfolio in London, you already know the overhead that comes with coordinating multiple specialist contractors. Window cleaning in Q1. Maintenance programme in Q2. Glazing repairs reactive throughout the year. Three contractors, three RAMS documents, three mobilisations — and three sets of invoices for your accounts team to reconcile.

It doesn’t have to work this way.

The case for combining

The operational logic for combining high-level cleaning and maintenance under a single contract is straightforward. When a contractor is already on-site and at height — whether abseiling a façade, cleaning windows, or inspecting cladding — they are in the best possible position to identify and address maintenance issues in the same programme window. The access is already mobilised. The RAMS are already approved. The operatives are already familiar with the building.

At CAM, we have been delivering this combined capability for over 30 years. On a typical combined programme, our teams complete the full façade clean and then address identified maintenance defects — failed mastic, loose fixings, damaged render, minor glazing failures — without the building manager needing to raise a second instruction or wait for a second contractor to mobilise.

What this means in practice

The savings are not theoretical. When you eliminate the need for a second access programme, you eliminate the cost of that mobilisation — typically thousands of pounds for a mid-sized London building. You also eliminate the programme delay between identifying a defect and resolving it, which matters enormously for compliance-sensitive clients and occupiers.
From a procurement perspective, a combined contract also simplifies your supplier management overhead. One approved supplier. One insurance schedule. One performance review conversation. For FM teams managing large portfolios across multiple buildings, that simplification has a real cost value

The right questions to ask your contractor

If you are evaluating working-at-height contractors, ask whether their cleaning team and their maintenance team are from the same organisation — or whether they sub-contract one of those disciplines. Ask whether a single RAMS document can cover both scopes. Ask what happens when their cleaning team identifies a defect on site.
At CAM, the answer to all three questions is clear: one team, one document, one instruction covers everything. That is the standard we have held for thirty years, and it is why we remain the trusted partner of London’s leading FM firms.
To discuss combining your cleaning and maintenance contracts, contact the CAM team →