Buyers along the GA-400 corridor read documents. We notice it constantly. A facilities lead on Old Milton Parkway will ask what “strip and wax” covers line by line, which is exactly the right question, because that phrase on its own covers nothing. The floor stripping process Alpharetta offices should be approving is a sequence of named stages, each with a product behind it and a condition that has to be met before the next one starts. Written down, it takes half a page. Left undefined, it turns into whatever the crew has time for at 2am.

Every stage in the sequence has a name

Survey and test. Move and protect. Post signage and set containment. Apply and dwell. Agitate. Pick up. Neutralize and rinse. Dry. Coat. Dry between coats. Cure before traffic returns.

Eleven steps, and a scope that names them is instantly easier to hold a vendor to than one that says “restore floors as needed.”

The numbers in the floor stripping process Alpharetta buyers ask about are product-specific

How long the stripper dwells, how many coats go down, how long between coats, and how long before carts and heels return all come from the manufacturer of the products being used. There is no universal figure, and anyone who quotes one confidently is guessing.

So the fix is not memorising numbers. It is insisting the scope names the product and states its figures, so the crew is following a document rather than a mood.

Office parks make the schedule the hardest variable

Windward, Northwinds and North Point tenants do not all keep the same hours, and a building at Avalon has evening restaurant traffic long after the offices empty. The cure window is the part that collides with real life.

Break the floor into zones that can each be finished and cured before that zone is needed. Corridors one night, break rooms another. It takes longer on paper and causes far fewer complaints.

And a straight word on how this is normally sold. Bid it by the square foot and the low number wins, then the crew gets thinned to protect the margin, and the dwell time is the first thing to get cut. We would rather walk the building, write the stages, and send the same crew back each cycle. ISSA cleaning industry guidance makes the same basic point about process discipline.

Most commercial cleaning gets sold on price per square foot, then quietly handed to whoever was cheapest and free that night. That’s why quality slides after month two — the scope was never real to begin with. We build yours from an actual walkthrough of your actual building, on your actual hours. Then we send the same crew who learned it. Boring? Completely. It’s also the only thing that makes month five look like month one.

DBS Cleaning Services Group

The scope should also say which floors are excluded

A good document names the materials it is not touching. Luxury vinyl plank that the manufacturer says must not be stripped. Sealed concrete. Terrazzo on a polishing program. Quarry tile in a kitchen, which gets degreased, not waxed.

Newer Alpharetta buildings are full of LVT that looks like VCT from standing height. Putting stripper on it because it was on the drawing is an expensive way to learn the difference.

Frequently asked questions