Table of Contents
The short answer
On an industrial plot the cleaning itself is ordinary work. The planning is not. Three things decide whether a visit succeeds: how fast the dust comes back, when the rooms are empty, and whether the team can get through the gate. Settle those and a site office in Musaffah is no harder to keep clean than an office in a tower.
IHR Dream Cleaning cleans the offices, pantries, washrooms and staff areas of workshops and warehouses. We do not clean industrial machinery or hazardous areas. The work is booked as office cleaning, by the hour, from the same published list as every other visit: AED 55 for 1 hour, AED 65 for 2 hours, AED 30 an hour for 3–4 hours and AED 25 for each hour after that, per cleaner, VAT included, and AED 5 more per cleaner-hour if we bring the materials. We work every day, 8 AM – 8 PM, and the work has to be finished by closing time, so a visit has to fit your shift pattern and our day. We do not run night shifts.
Staff accommodation needs a plain statement. Our team's notes for Musaffah and Al Mafraq list staff accommodation and shared kitchens among the work asked for there. There is no separate accommodation service on our price list, no contract and no price per bed or per head. Rooms, shared kitchens and washrooms are cleaned by cleaners booked by the hour, and for a block the scope is confirmed with you before any booking is made.
What a cleaning team does on an industrial site, and what it leaves alone
'Warehouse cleaning' means different things to different people. To some it is the office at the front of the unit. To others it is the storage hall, the racking and the loading bay. An hourly cleaning visit covers the first and not the second, and it is better to know that before you ask for a price.
| Part of the site | On an hourly visit | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Site office, reception, showroom | Yes | Desks, touch points, floors, glass within step-ladder reach |
| Pantry and staff rest room | Yes | Counters, sink, appliance fronts, tables, floor, bins |
| Washrooms | Yes | They take the most time on every visit |
| Staff accommodation | By the hour, scope confirmed first | No price per bed or per head |
| Machinery and hazardous areas | No | They stay with the site's own staff |
| Workshop floor, storage hall, racking, loading bay | Ask first | Describe it and send photos |
| Yards, entrances, outdoor paving | Separate job | Pressure washing, quoted on its own |
| Anything above step-ladder height | No | Tall ladders and scaffolding are not part of a cleaning visit |
Musaffah and Al Mafraq, from our team's notes
Musaffah is Abu Dhabi's main industrial and commercial district: workshops, warehouses, offices, showrooms and staff accommodation, with residential buildings in Shabiya and nearby. Al Mafraq is mostly industrial and institutional, with workshops, warehouses, staff accommodation and a few residential pockets, and it sits closer to open desert, which adds sand to the industrial dust. The requests from both are much the same: site and warehouse offices, staff accommodation and shared kitchens, and deep or post-construction cleans after fit-outs.
Musaffah is on our published list of areas with no travel fee. Al Mafraq is not on that list, and it is not one of the four outer areas that carry a travel fee either, so confirm coverage for your site when you first get in touch. Every district has its own page under areas we serve.
Industrial dust: why it is a different problem
Every office in Abu Dhabi gets dust. On an industrial plot there is more of it, it arrives all day, and it is a different material. City dust is mostly fine sand and fibres. Around workshops and warehouses it is mixed with whatever the district produces: grit lifted from yards by every lorry, soot from exhausts, rubber from tyres and, depending on your neighbours, fine powder from cutting, grinding, sanding or bagged materials. Three properties of that dust change how it has to be cleaned.
- It is often slightly oily. Soot and workshop grime carry a film of oil, so a cloth dampened with plain water smears them into a grey streak. They need a detergent that cuts grease, a cloth that is rinsed often and a second wipe with clean water.
- It is abrasive. Grit carried in on boots scratches vinyl and dulls polished tile along the walking routes. Dragged under a dry cloth it marks screens, glass and glossy desks.
- It keeps arriving. A roller door open for deliveries, a door to the workshop that is used all day and an AC unit that draws its air from a dusty space feed the office through the working day. A clean on Monday evening does not mean a clean office on Wednesday.
What that does to the routine
The order of work is the same as in any office, and the reasons matter more here. Dry removal comes first: floors and surfaces are vacuumed before anything wet touches them, so that the grit is lifted off and not ground in. Wiping comes second, with a detergent solution and cloths changed as they load. Floors are mopped last, and the water is changed as soon as it turns grey, because a mop rinsed in dirty water only spreads the film.
Our own guidance for site offices is that floors, desks and keyboards need attention on every visit, along with the pantry and the washrooms that the workshop staff share. In a tower the assigned desks can wait for the weekly clean. Here they cannot. Keyboards, screens and control panels are wiped with a cloth that is barely damp and never sprayed, and we do not unplug or move equipment without permission.
How it changes the frequency
The left column below is the ordinary pattern, set out in full in the office cleaning schedule. The right column is what the dust does to it. Both are starting points, not rules. Run the pattern for two weeks, then look at the sills and the keyboards on the morning before a visit. If you can write in the dust, the visits are too far apart.
| Task | Office in a tower | Office on an industrial plot |
|---|---|---|
| Entrance floor and walkways | Daily | Daily, twice if the door opens onto the yard |
| Whole floor, wall to wall | Weekly | Two or three times a week |
| Desks, keyboards, phones | Weekly; shared desks daily | Every visit |
| Window sills and ledges | Weekly | Every visit |
| AC grilles | Monthly | Every week or two |
| Washrooms | Daily | Daily, with a midday check by site staff |
Keeping it out costs less than cleaning it up
Much of the work of keeping a site office clean is done by the site, not the cleaner.
- Mats at the door between the yard or workshop and the office, a coarse one outside and an absorbent one inside, shaken out or vacuumed daily. A mat that is full stops working.
- A closer on that door. An office door propped open to the workshop cancels most of what a cleaner does.
- AC filters on a short cycle. Offices and accommodation blocks run their AC hard all year, and the filters clog quickly with dust. That is a technician's work: AC servicing is AED 129 per unit.
- A boot rule. Where staff knock their work boots clean, or change out of them, before they enter the office or the accommodation block, the floors last days longer.
Washrooms and shared kitchens under heavy use
Desks do not set the pace on an industrial site. Washrooms and kitchens do, because everyone uses them several times a day with hands that have been working. In staff accommodation the same rooms serve a whole floor in turn, morning and evening. They are where a plan that is too thin shows first.
Washrooms used by a workshop
Hands arrive greasy, so the grime in a workshop washroom is oil and metal dust as well as soap: grey rings in the basins, black marks on taps, door plates, soap dispensers and light switches. Those touch points need a degreasing cleaner and not only a wipe. The floor collects grit from boots and stays wet around the basins, and wet grit is what turns a tiled floor grey and slippery. Abu Dhabi's hard water then leaves limescale on everything that dries.
The routine that works is a full clean by the team on its visit and a short check by a named member of the site's own staff in between: bins, paper, soap and a squeegee over the wet floor. Consumables and washroom supplies are not part of the hourly cleaning rate, so the site stocks its own soap, tissue, paper towels and bin liners, and the team says when something is running low.
One caution about products. Descalers are acids, and an acid must never be mixed with bleach or used straight after it: together they give off chlorine gas. Acid also marks natural stone, so point out any marble before the first visit. The method for scale and grout is in bathroom deep cleaning.
Shared kitchens
A kitchen that ten or twenty people cook in, one after another, builds grease faster than any family kitchen. Hot oil vapour settles on the wall behind the hob, on the hood and its filter, on the cupboard fronts and on top of the fridge, and dust sticks to the film. Left for a month it hardens into a brown varnish that takes a deep clean to shift. Wiped down each day by the people who cook and degreased each week by a cleaner, it never gets that far. A weekly clean runs in this order.
- Clear the surfaces. Food, pans and personal items go into each person's cupboard or onto one table. A cleaner should not have to decide whose rice is whose.
- Degrease from the top down: hood and filter housing, wall tiles, cupboard fronts, then the hob. Degreaser needs a few minutes to work, so it goes on the worst areas first and is wiped off last.
- Sinks, taps and drainers, the strainer in the waste included. Grease and rice in the waste pipe are how most blocked kitchen drains begin.
- Appliance fronts and handles, tables and chairs.
- Bins emptied, washed and relined. Food waste should leave the building, not only the kitchen.
- The floor last: swept or vacuumed, then mopped with a floor cleaner that cuts grease, the strip under the cooker included.
House rules that make the cleaning last
A cleaner can restore a shared kitchen once a week. Only the people who use it can keep it that way on the other six days. These are the rules worth putting on the wall. How each surface is degreased is covered in how to degrease a kitchen.
- Used cooking oil goes into a container and out with the waste, never down the sink.
- Food is kept in closed containers and nothing is left out overnight. Food left out brings cockroaches, and one shared kitchen can supply a whole block.
- The fridge has a clearing day that everyone knows, so that it can be emptied and washed without guessing whose food is whose.
- The hood filter has an owner. If nobody is responsible for it, nobody cleans it.
Bedrooms and corridors in staff accommodation
A room in staff accommodation is someone's private space, and the rule for a cleaner is simple: clean what is clear and leave belongings alone. Agree beforehand what a visit covers. A sensible list is the floor, under the beds where it can be reached, door handles and switches, window sills, the AC grille and the bins, with corridors, stairs and the entrance done on every visit because they carry all the traffic. Residents clear the floor and put valuables away before the team arrives.
If you want beds made or linen changed, raise it when you describe the job and do not assume it. Mattresses can be cleaned as a separate job priced by the item: a single mattress is AED 79, with a minimum order of AED 100 for priced items on one visit, and the method is confirmed from photos. The details are on the mattress cleaning page.
Planning around shifts, inside our opening hours
A site has its hours and so do we. We work every day of the week, 8 AM – 8 PM, and a visit has to end by 8 PM. Inside those limits the question is when each part of the site is empty.
| Part of the site | Usually empty | What to check |
|---|---|---|
| Office on a day shift | Evening, after the office staff leave | What time the gate stops admitting contractors |
| Office that works late or in two shifts | The site's day off, or its quietest hour | Fridays, weekends and public holidays cost the same |
| Washrooms and pantry | Between breaks, mid-morning or mid-afternoon | Close one washroom at a time |
| Rooms of day-shift staff | Daytime, while residents are at work | Who holds the keys |
| Rooms of night-shift staff | At night, outside our hours | Clean on their rest day, or leave them off the list |
What our hours rule out
Two things follow from the closing rule and are better said plainly. There is no overnight cleaning: a site that needs its offices cleaned between a late shift and an early one needs a contractor that runs night shifts. And an early start is limited by our opening time. If your day shift begins before 8 AM, the office is already in use when our day starts, and the early-morning slot that suits a city office does not exist. The evening, the lunch break and the site's day off are the windows left.
The latest start depends on the length of the visit, counted in hours per cleaner. A three-hour visit can start as late as 5 PM, and a five-hour visit has to start by 3 PM.
Fitting the work into a short window
If the offices are empty for only three hours and the list needs twelve cleaner-hours, the answer is more cleaners, not a longer visit. Up to 4 cleaners can be booked on one visit, for up to 8 hours each. A team of 4 for three hours each is AED 360 with your own products. The same twelve cleaner-hours as two cleaners for six hours each are AED 340, which is less because a longer visit costs less per hour, but it needs a six-hour window. Choose by the window you really have.
Accommodation: room by room
Our note for Al Mafraq describes the method for accommodation: tell us when the rooms are empty, for example during the day shift, and the visit is planned in that window, room by room. It works when someone on your side prepares a simple list: block, floor, room number, the shift of the occupants and who opens each door. Rotating shifts change that list every week or two, so send the new roster when it changes. A visit can be moved free of charge up to 6 hours before it starts.
Site access: gate passes, inductions and safety gear
Every industrial site sets its own rules for visiting contractors, and we will not guess at yours. Our notes for both areas say the same thing: sites have gate security and fixed hours, so tell us the site name, the contact on the day and any safety rules or equipment the team must have, such as closed shoes or a site induction. Access is arranged before the first visit, not at the gate.
Put these questions to your facility manager, your safety officer or the landlord's management office, and send us the answers with the booking.
- Gate pass. Does each cleaner need one? What details does security want, how many working days ahead, and at what time does the gate stop admitting contractors?
- Vehicle. Can the team's vehicle enter, and where does it park? If it cannot, how far is the walk from the gate with equipment?
- Induction. Is there a safety induction for contractors? How long does it take, and can it be done before the day of the first visit?
- Safety gear. What must be worn on the way to the office or inside it: closed shoes, a high-visibility vest, a helmet, anything else? In which areas?
- Escort and routes. Does a member of staff have to walk the team in? Which pedestrian routes keep clear of forklifts and loading?
- Documents. Does the site want the contractor's trade licence or other company papers on file?
- Photographs. Are photos allowed on site? They help us plan the work, so ask before you take any.
- Off limits. Which rooms, stores and yards must the team not enter?
What we can give you in return
If your site asks for the company's details, the legal name is IHR Dream General Maintenance and Cleaning L.L.C. and the Abu Dhabi trade licence number is CN-4175959. If it asks for anything more, such as a particular form or a specific piece of safety equipment, tell us exactly what and by when. It can then be settled before the date is fixed, and not discovered at the gate.
If the team is turned away
If the team travels to the site and cannot get in, the visit is charged at AED 60. On an industrial plot the cause is rarely an empty building. It is a pass that was not issued, a contact who has gone off shift or a guard who was not told. Give two names and two phone numbers, and tell the gate the day before. If a pass is still pending, move the booking: that costs nothing up to 6 hours before the start and AED 30 after that. The terms are on the cancellation policy page.
An induction or a slow gate on the first day eats into the working window. Either arrange the induction beforehand or give the first visit a longer window than the cleaning alone needs.
After a fit-out, and when a building is handed back
Three one-off jobs come up on industrial plots alongside the regular visits. They carry a bigger minimum than an office visit, because one cleaner for two hours cannot do them.
| Job | When | Smallest booking |
|---|---|---|
| Post-construction clean | After a fit-out, before staff move in | 2 cleaners for 3 hours each, with our materials only: AED 210 |
| Deep clean | A kitchen or washroom block where grease and scale have built up | 2 cleaners for 3 hours each: AED 180, or AED 210 with our materials |
| Move-out clean | An office or accommodation returned at the end of a lease | The same minimum as a deep clean |
Post-construction cleaning
Fit-out dust is plaster, cement and sawdust, finer than anything the yard produces, and it stays in ceiling grids, vents and cupboards until it is vacuumed out. That is why this clean is booked with our materials and equipment only. The contractor clears rubble, offcuts and packaging first; the team removes dust and light debris, not construction waste. Send photos so that the team and the hours can be confirmed, and time the clean for after the last trade has left. A second, lighter visit about a week later catches the fine dust that settles out of the air. The service is described on the post-construction cleaning page.
Deep cleans of kitchens and washrooms
A deep clean on a site means degreasing a kitchen that has gone brown, descaling a washroom block and washing the floors properly. Book it when regular visits no longer bring the room back, or before they begin in a building that has not had them. Specialist floor care is scoped separately from the hourly rate, so say so if the floors are the main problem. What the visit includes is on the deep cleaning page.
Handing back accommodation or an office
Companies returning staff accommodation at the end of a lease book a move-out clean of the empty property: kitchens inside and out, bathrooms descaled, cupboards and wardrobes wiped inside, doors, switches and skirting, and the floors last. Have it done after the furniture and belongings are out and, if you can, a day before the landlord's inspection. Share the landlord's checklist if there is one.
What it costs
There is one price list, and an industrial site pays what a flat in the city pays. The price is per cleaner and includes VAT. There is no contract fee, no minimum term, no call-out fee and no extra charge for Fridays, weekends or public holidays. The whole table is on the price list.
Our published guide for a small office of up to around ten desks is one cleaner for two to three hours a visit. A site office usually sits at the top of that range or above it, because the floors and desks are done on every visit. The plan rows below are per visit.
| Booking | Team | Your products | Our materials |
|---|---|---|---|
| Site office, single visit | 1 cleaner, 3 hours | AED 90 | AED 105 |
| Site office, weekly plan | 1 cleaner, 3 hours | AED 76 | AED 89 |
| Site office, three visits a week | 1 cleaner, 2 hours | AED 52 | AED 60 |
| Shared kitchens and washrooms, weekly plan | 2 cleaners, 4 hours each | AED 204 | AED 238 |
| Largest single booking | 4 cleaners, 8 hours each | AED 880 | AED 1,040 |
Plans and materials
Regular visits cost less: 10% off every two weeks, 15% off weekly and 20% off for two or more visits a week (5% monthly). The discount comes off every visit. There is no contract, and nothing is paid in advance for future visits.
Materials are a real choice on a site. With them the team brings its own kit: cleaning liquids and sprays, vacuum cleaner, mop and bucket, broom, microfibre cloths and rags, step ladder. Without, the site supplies everything, the vacuum cleaner and the mop included, and the booked hours run even if something is missing. The two options are compared in cleaning with or without materials.
When the site is bigger than one booking
One booking holds at most 4 cleaners for 8 hours each, which is 32 cleaner-hours. An accommodation block or a large office floor can need more than that, or need it every week. We have not published a rate for work on that scale and will not put one here. For larger jobs the inspection is free and carries no obligation: the site is seen, the scope is agreed and the price is confirmed before any work starts.
Payment is online by card. A job priced after an inspection is paid from My bookings on this website once the price is confirmed, and a quoted job of AED 1,000 or more takes a 30% advance by that link, with the balance after the work. A tax invoice is available on request for any booking.
What to send when you ask for a quote for a larger site
A quote is only as accurate as the description behind it. Sent in one message, the list below lets the scope be confirmed without three rounds of questions. Take the photos with the site's permission, and photograph the worst rooms, not the best. Send it all through the contact page or to info@ihrdreamcleaning.com.
- The site: its name, the plot or building number, a map pin and the gate to use.
- The kind of premises: site office, showroom, warehouse office, accommodation block or a mix.
- What is to be cleaned, with numbers: workstations, meeting rooms, pantries, washrooms with the count of toilets and basins, shared kitchens with the count of hobs and sinks, bedrooms and the beds in each, corridors and stairs.
- The floors: tile, vinyl, carpet or bare concrete, and the rough area.
- How many people use the washrooms and the kitchens. Headcount sets the wear.
- The shift pattern, and the hours when each part of the site is empty.
- The state it is in now: when it was last cleaned properly, with photos of the kitchens, washrooms and floors.
- How often you want it cleaned, and whether a deep clean is wanted first.
- Materials, ours or yours, and where the team can fill buckets, empty dirty water and plug in.
- Access: the answers to the gate, induction and safety-gear questions above, with the contact on the day and a deputy.
- Anything that is off limits.
The first visit, and checking the work
A first clean takes longer than the visits that follow, because it removes what has built up, and it is often booked with two cleaners. On arrival the team leader meets your named contact, walks the areas on the list and confirms the checklist before work begins. Point out the rooms that are off limits on that walk; do not describe them from memory. At the end the team leader confirms what was done and flags what needs your attention, such as a leaking tap or a slow floor drain.
Then check, on the day or first thing the next morning. These are the places a hurried cleaner skips, so they show whether the list was followed.
- The base of the washroom taps and the inside of the basins: no grey ring and no white crust.
- Door plates, handles and light switches at hand height.
- The wall behind the hob and the underside of the hood.
- Under the desks and along the skirting, where grit collects.
- The window sills on the yard side.
If something was missed, and the review after two weeks
If something on the agreed list was missed, tell us within 24 hours of the visit and it is put right at no charge. The same checklist is used on every visit, and we keep a note of each site's access and preferences, so that a different cleaner can step in without being briefed from the beginning.
After two weeks, review the pattern. If the list is finished with time to spare, shorten the visit or add the monthly jobs. If the washrooms do not hold until the next visit, add a visit before you add hours.
Common questions
Do you clean the warehouse itself, or only the office?
An hourly visit covers the office, the pantry, the washrooms and the staff areas. The storage hall, the racking and the loading bay are a different job in scale and in equipment: describe what you need and send photos, and the scope is confirmed before anything is booked. Yards and entrances are pressure washing work, quoted by surface area, staining and access.
Will the same cleaners come each time? The gate needs their names.
Regular customers keep the same cleaners wherever the schedule allows. It cannot be promised for every visit, because people take leave and fall ill. So ask your gate now how a substitute is added to a pass and how much notice security needs, and tell us. A plan that depends on one named person getting through the gate fails on the first day that person is away.
Can you clean the staff canteen?
The dining area of a canteen is a staff area like any other: tables, chairs, floors, hand-wash basins and bins. The cooking line of a commercial kitchen is different work, so describe it and send photos for the scope to be confirmed first. A grease trap is a separate service again, quoted on its own; see grease trap cleaning.
Can pest control be done alongside the cleaning?
Yes, as a separate visit by a technician. Our notes for Al Mafraq list pest control for accommodation blocks next to the cleaning, and the two help each other: a treatment lasts longer in a kitchen that is kept free of grease and crumbs. Treatments are scheduled for when the areas can be cleared, and a service report is left for your records. The price is quoted by the size of the premises and the pest, after a description or an inspection, as the pest control page explains.
We only need one clean before an audit or a client visit. Is that possible?
Yes. A single visit is booked the same way as a regular one, and a same-day visit needs about 2 hours of notice when a team is free. On a gated site the notice that matters is the gate's, not ours. If a pass takes two working days to issue, a clean for tomorrow is not realistic, however early you book it. Say what the occasion is, because an audit and a client visit put the weight on different rooms.
Booking a visit for a site
For a single office, book as you would for any office. The office cleaning page describes what a visit covers and how the hours are suggested. Choose the cleaners and the hours, say whether we bring the materials, and put the site name, the plot number, the gate, the contact and the safety rules in the notes. The price is shown before you confirm, and payment is by card online. You can book the visit online, on the website or in the IHR Dream app.
For an accommodation block, or anything bigger than one booking, send the description first, so that the scope can be confirmed before a date is set.
