For contract cleaning companies
Cleaning safety file
Chemicals, facade access and working in buildings while other people are using them.
Generate your safety file — R500What the law requires
There is no separate safety file law for contract cleaning companies. The Occupational Health and Safety Act 85 of 1993 and the Construction Regulations 2014 are national and trade-neutral — they apply to cleaning work exactly as they apply to every other trade on a South African site, with no minimum project size exemption.
What changes with the trade is the content. The regulations require the file to reflect the work actually being carried out, so the risk assessments, method statements, appointments and registers in a cleaning file are driven by the hazards contract cleaning companies actually create.
Why a cleaning file is different
Contract cleaning rarely looks like construction, which is exactly why the files are so often weak — and clients increasingly ask for one before letting a cleaning contractor on site. The real content is chemical handling and, for anyone doing windows or facades, work at height.
What to get right in a cleaning safety file
These are the hazards that should be reflected properly in the risk assessments and method statements — the parts of the file that are easiest to leave generic and hardest to defend when they are.
Chemical exposure as routine work
Most cleaning agents are hazardous chemical agents under the Hazardous Chemical Agents Regulations 2021. Every hazardous product in use needs a current safety data sheet in the file, staff need to have been informed of the risks, and the storage and decanting arrangements need to be written down rather than improvised.
Facade and window access
Anything above ground level — rope access, cradles, suspended platforms — turns a cleaning contract into work at height with a fall protection plan, a competent person and equipment inspection records behind it.
Working around the public and after hours
Cleaning happens in occupied buildings and often at night with very few people around. Wet floor and access controls protect people who never agreed to be on a work site, and a lone-worker arrangement covers your own staff when something goes wrong at 2am.
Also governed by: Hazardous Chemical Agents Regulations 2021
Most cleaning agents are hazardous chemical agents. For those, safety data sheets, exposure assessment and worker information are regulated duties, not good practice.
Documents a cleaning scope typically triggers
On top of the core compliance pack every construction file carries, contract cleaning companies should expect to need these. The exact set depends on your scope.
- —Hazardous chemical management procedure, policy and substances checklist
- —Hazardous chemicals received register
- —Suspended platform and boatswain chair supervisor appointments (CR 17, CR 18) for facade work
- —Working-alone toolbox talk and communication procedure for after-hours work
- —PPE issue register and inspection checklist
- —Safety data sheets from each chemical supplier
*Items marked * are records you obtain from third parties and file alongside the documents MySafetyFile generates.
Does a cleaning company really need a safety file?
If you are working on a construction site, or a client requires one before granting access, then yes — and clients increasingly do, because your people are exposed to their hazards and theirs to yours. The content differs from a builder's file: less scaffold and excavation, considerably more on chemicals and, where it applies, facade access.
More background: what a construction safety file is and what a compliant template must contain.
Get your cleaning safety file in 8 minutes
MySafetyFile generates a complete, site-specific construction safety file — drawn from a library of 351 documents across 9 categories — in about 8 minutes for R500. Register free, enter your project and scope, and download a file that is ready to print or submit. There is no monthly fee, and one account handles unlimited projects.
Every document is aligned with the OHS Act and Construction Regulations 2014, developed by a SAIOSH-registered practitioner, and carries a unique identification code that ties it to the account and project it was generated for.