A property manager once described the problem to us this way: the contractor did good work, showed up when called, and fixed what was broken — and by month four the relationship was finished. Not because anything was done badly, but because every third job turned into a conversation about whether it was covered, and both sides were reading the same two-page agreement differently.
That’s the normal failure mode. Maintenance relationships rarely break down over workmanship. They break down over scope — over the gap between what the property manager assumed was included and what the contractor priced. The document that closes that gap is the scope of work, and most of them are far too thin to do the job.
This guide covers what belongs in a commercial facility maintenance scope of work, how to compare proposals that use different pricing models, and the warning signs worth catching before you sign. It’s written for property managers and building owners evaluating any contractor, not just ours.
A weak scope of work creates three specific problems, and all three cost money.
Every ambiguity resolves in favor of billing. When the agreement doesn’t say whether re-anchoring a loose handrail is covered maintenance or billable repair, it gets billed. Not because contractors are acting in bad faith — because someone has to decide, and the contractor is the one holding the invoice pad. Multiply that across a year of small judgment calls and the difference is substantial.
You can’t compare proposals. Two bids at $3,200 and $4,600 a month tell you nothing if one includes quarterly inspections with written reports and the other includes a monthly walkthrough with a verbal summary. Without a scope you wrote yourself, you’re comparing numbers attached to different products.
Work falls between vendors. In buildings running several specialty contractors, every unclear boundary becomes a task nobody owns. We’ve written about what vendor sprawl actually costs a property manager in coordination time, and a vague scope is what makes it worse — the fewer things are written down, the more the manager becomes the default coordinator.
The scope of work is also what protects you in the direction people forget: it defines what you’re owed. Without written inspection frequencies and response times, “responsive service” is a marketing phrase, not an obligation.
Start with physical boundaries, not services. Name the buildings, the square footage, and the specific areas covered: common corridors, lobbies, restrooms, stairwells, mechanical rooms, exterior envelope, parking areas, loading docks.
The line that matters most is the one between building responsibility and tenant responsibility. Your leases already draw it — the scope of work should match it. When they don’t match, you get the situation where a tenant reports a problem, your contractor fixes it, you’re billed for it, and it turns out to have been the tenant’s obligation under their lease. Write out which side of the demising wall the contractor works on, and what the process is when a tenant requests work directly.
For multi-building portfolios, note whether the scope applies uniformly or varies by property. Buildings of different ages and classes rarely warrant identical programs.
This is the section that separates a maintenance program from an on-call repair arrangement. It should state what gets inspected, at what frequency, and what gets recorded.
Frequencies to specify:
If you don’t already have a task list to work from, our annual maintenance checklist for Philadelphia office buildings is structured to be used directly as an appendix to a scope of work — frequency by frequency, with the seasonal rounds timed to local climate.
For the annual assessment, it’s worth knowing that a formal industry framework exists. ASTM E2018, the standard guide for baseline property condition assessments, defines how a walk-through survey should be conducted and what a property condition report contains. Most routine maintenance programs don’t need a full E2018-conforming assessment — the standard is aimed at transactions and due diligence — but referencing its structure gives you a defensible model for what an annual condition report should include.
The heart of the agreement. Define three tiers:
Included in the recurring fee. Typically minor repairs performed during scheduled visits: adjusting door closers, replacing lamps, tightening hardware, re-caulking small joints, patching minor drywall damage. Set the boundary by time, materials cost, or both — for example, repairs requiring under 30 minutes and under a stated materials threshold.
Billable at agreed rates. Larger work surfaced by inspections. Specify hourly rates by trade, the materials markup percentage, minimum billing increments, and after-hours multipliers. A contractor unwilling to publish these in the agreement will apply them anyway, just without your prior agreement on the number.
Requires separate approval. Set a dollar threshold above which no work proceeds without written authorization, and name who can authorize it. Then set an exception for genuine emergencies — you don’t want your contractor waiting on an email while water is running.
Most of the repair work in this middle tier falls within commercial handyman scope: carpentry, doors and hardware, drywall, minor plumbing and electrical devices, painting and flooring repair. Knowing that helps you judge whether a proposal’s rates are reasonable for the trades actually involved.
The section most scopes of work skip entirely, and the one that prevents the most arguments.
Write out what the contractor does not do. At minimum, address: HVAC system service and repair, roofing, elevators, fire alarm and sprinkler systems, structural work, asbestos and lead abatement, landscaping, snow and ice removal, janitorial and cleaning, pest control, and security systems.
Some of these will be excluded because they require licensed specialty trades. Others simply belong to another vendor. Either way, naming them is what stops the “I assumed that was covered” conversation. And be specific about a subtle distinction: a contractor may be responsible for coordinating and verifying a specialty vendor’s work without being responsible for performing it. Those are different obligations and both should be written down.
Define at least three tiers, each with a stated response window:
Emergency — active water intrusion, security or life-safety compromise, anything preventing building operation. State the response time in hours, whether it applies nights and weekends, and the actual phone number that reaches a person rather than a voicemail box. Same-day emergency response is a normal expectation for a commercial building; if you want to see what should be in this tier, our emergency commercial repairs page lays out the categories.
Urgent — affects tenant operations or comfort but isn’t a safety issue. Typically next-business-day.
Routine — handled on the next scheduled visit, with an outer limit so “routine” doesn’t mean “eventually.”
Two things people forget to define: whether the response time means arrival on site or acknowledgment of the call (a large difference), and what happens when the standard isn’t met.
Specify the deliverable, not just the work. A monthly report should identify what was inspected, what defects were found, what was corrected, what remains open, and what’s recommended — with photographs.
Three provisions that are easy to omit and expensive to lack:
Format and timing. A written report by a stated date each month, in a format you can actually use for budgeting and CAM reconciliation.
Photo documentation. Before-and-after images for corrective work, and dated photos of deferred items. This is what supports insurance claims and budget requests later.
Data ownership on termination. State plainly that maintenance history, photos, and reports belong to the property owner and get handed over if the relationship ends. Property managers who skip this discover at the worst possible moment that three years of building history lives in a contractor’s system they no longer have access to.
Require a current certificate of insurance before work starts, with the property owner named as additional insured, and set your minimum general liability limit. Require workers’ compensation coverage. Set a renewal notification requirement so lapses surface before an incident rather than after one.
On licensing: verify the contractor holds what the jurisdiction requires. In Philadelphia, the Department of Licenses and Inspections issues contractor licenses, and specialized trades including electrical, plumbing, and fire suppression require separate trade licenses. Suburban municipalities in Montgomery and Bucks Counties have their own requirements. Verification takes ten minutes and belongs in your file.
Finally, address subcontractors directly: whether they’re permitted, whether you’re notified, whether their insurance is verified, and who carries responsibility for their work. A contractor who subcontracts most of the scope is a broker, and you should know that before signing rather than after.
Here’s a useful test when interviewing contractors. Ask whether they handle HVAC, roofing, elevators, and fire suppression.
A contractor who answers “yes, we handle everything” is telling you one of two things. Either they’re subcontracting that work and marking it up — which is fine if disclosed and expensive if not — or they don’t understand the licensing requirements that govern those trades. Neither answer should increase your confidence.
The better answer sounds like a boundary. In our case, Facility360° performs facility support, handyman-scope repairs, commercial painting, flooring, and emergency response. We do not perform HVAC, roofing, elevator, life-safety system, or kitchen equipment work — those require licensed specialty contractors, and our role is coordinating their scheduled service and consolidating their findings into your reporting, not doing the work ourselves.
That distinction matters practically, not just legally. A facility contractor who knows the edge of their scope will tell you when something needs a specialist. One who doesn’t will attempt it.
Fixed monthly fee. Predictable budgeting, simple approval, easy CAM allocation. The risk sits in the definition: if the covered scope is loose, the contractor prices in a cushion and you pay for uncertainty. Works best for buildings with stable, well-understood needs.
Time and materials. You pay for what’s done, which is efficient in a low-maintenance building. The risk is that budgeting becomes guesswork and there’s no built-in incentive for preventive work — a contractor billing hourly has no financial reason to prevent the call. Works best for newer properties with light needs and a manager comfortable with variable spend.
Hybrid. A fixed fee covering the inspection program and minor repairs, with larger work billed at agreed rates. This is the most common structure for multi-tenant buildings, and it aligns incentives correctly: the recurring fee rewards catching problems early, while significant work stays transparently priced.
Whichever model, insist that scheduled inspections sit inside the fixed component. Inspections billed hourly get skipped in tight months, which is precisely when they matter most. The economics of that trade-off are covered in our analysis of what deferred maintenance actually costs.
The service agreement is the contract — term, payment, liability, termination, dispute resolution. The scope of work describes what actually gets done: areas, tasks, frequencies, response times, exclusions. The scope is usually an exhibit to the agreement. When people say a contract was unclear, they nearly always mean the scope of work was.
Usually not. Facility maintenance covers repair and upkeep of the building and its components; janitorial covers daily cleaning, trash, and restroom supplies. They're different labor models with different schedules. Some vendors offer both, but they should be scoped and priced separately — and if a proposal blurs them, ask which hours are allocated to which.
Twelve months with a 30-day termination notice is a reasonable starting structure. It's long enough to see a full seasonal cycle and judge performance, short enough to exit if the fit is wrong. Multi-year commitments make more sense at renewal, when you have performance data.
Yes, with per-property schedules. Keep the shared terms — response times, insurance, reporting, exclusions — in the master document, and put building-specific covered areas and inspection frequencies in individual appendices. A single undifferentiated scope across properties of different ages and classes will over-serve some and under-serve others.
Building a scope of work for your property? Facility360° provides structured facility support programs for offices and business centers across Greater Philadelphia. Get a Free Property Assessment or call (267) 992-1777 — we’ll walk your building and provide a written scope you can use to compare any contractor, including ours.
Certified facility management professional with over 15 years of experience in commercial property maintenance and building operations, specializing in preventive maintenance strategies that help businesses reduce operating costs and extend the lifespan of critical building systems.
Serving Greater Philadelphia, PA
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