While the same office had clean and spotless floors and desks, it might have been giving its workers headaches or eye irritation, while the meeting room was left stifling. For businesses using commercial cleaning services, this highlights an important distinction between visible cleanliness and indoor air quality. The difference between the two concepts is being revisited in Malaysia. The Department of Occupational Safety and Health (DOSH) has met with representatives of several government agencies, industry players, occupational safety experts and academicians on 6 July 2026 to discuss the proposed amendment of the Indoor Air Quality Code of Practice for Industry (IOP) in Malaysia. The amendments are geared towards making the code effective in terms of protection of persons at work, DOSH explained. The key lesson from the facilities management discussion is important for facility managers.
Cleanliness of an office and an indoor environment are not synonymous.
The smell of chemicals tells you very little
It is common for people to associate strong odor with a recently cleaned building.
It is not a healthy way to evaluate how clean the building is. The current standard for Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) in Malaysia takes into account different pollutants such as chemical contaminants, particulates, bacteria and fungi, humidity and ventilation as independent factors that can affect indoor air quality. In addition, it explicitly says that Safety Data Sheets have to be issued when chemicals are being used during the cleaning process. The aim is to avoid leaving a room with a strong smell of cleaning products.
The goal is to remove the contamination without exposing yourself to the additional danger of cleaning products. This is another aspect of environmentally safe cleaning at Jashan. Proper product choice remains important, as it depends on the surface, soil, and cleaning task rather than following a universal approach.
Cleaning does have an indoor-air role
With good housekeeping, materials that can get trapped within the workplace can be reduced.
Housekeeping is explicitly mentioned in the existing DOSH IAQ code as an activity that will help prevent problems with indoor air, as it will reduce dust in the surroundings and remove dirt that can become a source of contamination. For instance, consider the entrance area of the office premises where there is a carpet.
Dirt from shoes and other outdoor materials comes inside the building every day. This dirt can be resuspended due to normal activity when it settles into carpets and soft furnishings.
The same applies to dusty ledges, poorly maintained areas around the entrance and neglected corners. Commercial cleaning services play a bigger role than just aesthetics. Vacuuming, detailed dust removal, carpet maintenance and surface cleaning reduce the amount of material that can become airborne again.
However, cleaning is limited!
A cleaner cannot repair bad ventilation
This boundary is significant. Factors such as ventilation, humidity, mold, chemical pollution, and biological contamination are the elements affecting the quality of air indoors, DOSH notes. Mold that is visible on a surface can be cleaned. It will not repair the leaky faucet that causes water to leak. A cleaner can remove dust around the air-conditioning grille. This will not solve the problem when there is an insufficient supply of fresh air from the HVAC system. A room with persistent dampness can be cleaned by a team. If the source of moisture is still present, the issue may occur again. In order to solve the problem for facility managers, it is vital to have a reporting process between the cleaning staff and maintenance workers of the building. If there is persistent mold found in the same area, the useful response is not to clean that area more often. There must be an explanation as to why the mold keeps appearing.
High-traffic areas should not run on an arbitrary calendar
One such feature of the IAQ code currently in place in Malaysia concerns the cleaning schedule. We need to clean where we work, and we should be doing it more frequently in the areas that get more use or see more people. As suggested by DOSH, this makes more sense than assuming that all areas of a building require the same treatment. A reception area with a couple of hundred visitors cannot be equated with a conference room that gets used once every two weeks. The cleaning requirements of the office pantry during lunch hours are going to differ from those of the archive room. Washrooms do tend to experience some peaks of use.
The first step in formulating an effective commercial cleaning process is to determine what the building is going to be used for. At Jashan, we provide commercial cleaning services, but not every area requires the same cleaning frequency.
Carpets and soft surfaces deserve separate attention
A hard floor makes dirt clearly visible. Carpet can make it disappear. Dust and debris may linger in carpets even when they no longer look visibly dirty. This is why routine vacuuming and occasional carpet cleaning play distinct roles. This rule applies to other specialized functions as well. Specialized services offered by Jashan include carpet cleaning, mold removal, floor treatment, window cleaning and disinfection, as these may require a different approach from general janitorial services.
What is essential is that the facilities manager should not try to use one routine of standard cleaning service just for dealing with all the cleanliness problems.
Sometimes the approach needs to be changed.
Give your cleaning contractor a better brief
A commercial cleaning specification will normally set out the required frequencies:
Vacuum daily; increase washroom cleaning frequency to three times a day; mop the lobby twice. These directions are useful, but they lack a number of questions whose answers will affect the result. Businesses appointing commercial cleaning services should also establish:
- which products will be used in occupied areas;
- where Safety Data Sheets are available;
- which spaces receive the greatest traffic;
- which carpeted or soft-surface areas need periodic deeper cleaning;
- how recurring dampness or mould will be reported;
- what cleaners should do when they notice a possible maintenance problem;
- which cleaning activities are better scheduled when fewer occupants are present.
That turns the cleaning contract into part of facilities management rather than a list of chores performed after everybody leaves.
Clean air requires more than cleaners
Commercial cleaners cannot be expected to control the indoor air quality of a building. Apart from regular cleaning, there is a need for ventilation and air-conditioning systems design, moisture control and occupational health management.
Cleaning still plays an important role because cleaners regularly access areas of the building that most managers fail to inspect daily. This gives cleaners an important opportunity to identify potential problems. At Jashan, we believe that proper commercial cleaning also gives cleaners an opportunity to identify dirt or other issues that clients may not notice and alert them to the condition of those areas. It is therefore appropriate that Malaysia is now reviewing its indoor-air guide. Cleanliness is essential in every place of work.
However, if all that is left of the job is a polished floor and a pungent smell of chemicals, facilities managers would probably expect more than that. This is why choosing the right commercial cleaning services requires looking beyond how clean an office appears and considering the wider indoor environment.
