The Overtime That Won't Go Away
You manage a 240,000 sq ft Class B office with a 9-person janitorial crew on a fixed monthly contract. For three months, cleaning overtime has run 14–18% above the contracted baseline, and the contractor has submitted a change order requesting a permanent 12% increase. Building occupancy dropped from 82% to 61% over the same period, yet complaints about restrooms and lobby appearance have risen. The contractor's supervisor reports that crews are being pulled to the fourth floor nightly because a tenant there holds evening events and demands same-night cleanup of the conference suite and catering kitchen. The lease for that tenant specifies standard janitorial service only, with no event-support clause. Your CFO wants the overtime stopped this quarter.
1. Diagnose the root cause of the overtime and decide who should bear the cost. What do you do first?
Read the worked answer
The overtime is not a staffing or productivity problem - occupancy fell while overtime rose, which rules out volume-driven demand. The driver is a single tenant's event schedule creating work outside the contracted scope.
First step: verify the claim with data rather than accepting the supervisor's narrative. Pull badge-access logs for the fourth floor after 18:00, event bookings from the tenant, and crew timecards by floor. If the logs confirm recurring evening events, you have documented evidence of out-of-scope demand.
Cost allocation: the standard janitorial contract covers routine cleaning. Same-night event cleanup is an additional service. The cost belongs to the tenant generating it, not to the building's operating budget and not to the contractor as a concession. The contractor's request for a permanent 12% increase is the wrong instrument - it socializes one tenant's cost across the whole building and would persist after the events stop.
Action: notify the tenant in writing that event support is outside their lease, offer a priced per-event service option, and instruct the contractor to log and bill event cleanups separately. Escalate to leasing if the tenant resists, since the lease is silent on the obligation.
2. The tenant refuses to pay and threatens to escalate to ownership. The contractor says it will pull the crew from the fourth floor unless the change order is signed. How do you manage the standoff without service failure?
Read the worked answer
Separate the two pressures: the commercial dispute with the tenant and the operational risk from the contractor. Do not let them merge into a single crisis.
With the contractor: the existing contract obliges them to deliver standard service. Instruct them in writing to maintain contracted cleaning on all floors while the scope dispute is resolved, and confirm that any event cleanup performed will be documented and billed pending resolution. A unilateral withdrawal of service would be a contract breach; say so plainly but without threat. Offer a short-term interim arrangement - for example, a 60-day capped allowance for event cleanup at an agreed hourly rate - that keeps service intact without conceding a permanent uplift.
With the tenant: restate the lease position factually, offer the per-event pricing, and copy ownership's asset manager so the escalation lands where it belongs. Propose a meeting with the tenant's events coordinator to see whether events can be scheduled with 48 hours' notice, which allows cleanup to fold into the next morning's regular shift at no premium.
With the CFO: report that overtime is attributable and being contained, with a dated plan, rather than promising an immediate zero.