CCI methodology · v1.0 (2026)
The Cleanability Cost Index and its sector baselines
The Cleanability Cost Index (CCI) expresses the avoidable operating cost caused by how a building is designed, as a percentage of the cost the same building would carry under efficient environmental conditions. This page publishes the calculation, the six premium components and the sector reference ranges that every portfolio cost rollup is compared against.
Reference ranges are labelled Published, Research or Illustrative. An Illustrative range is professional judgement pending a validated dataset and must not be quoted as an industry figure. A cost model is only as strong as the evidence behind its inputs — the stated confidence level travels with every result.
What the CCI is
CCI is a ratio, not a price. It separates two things that estate budgets normally merge: the baseline operational cost — what cleaning this building should cost if its geometry, surfaces and access were not working against the task — and the cleanability premium, the additional annual cost attributable to designed-in friction.
A CCI of 14% means that for every £1 of efficient operating cost, the building requires a further 14p because of how it is built. That premium is recurring: it is paid every year the design remains in place.
How the CCI is calculated
premium = Σ (six premium components, £/year, excluded components counted as zero)
modelled cost = baseline operational cost + premium
CCI % = premium ÷ baseline operational cost × 100
premium per m² = premium ÷ gross internal area
lifecycle exposure(n years) = premium × ((1 + escalation)^n − 1) ÷ escalation
payback = intervention cost ÷ modelled annual saving
Exposure is reported at 5, 10, 20 and 30 years with an explicit escalation rate. It is a cumulative escalated cash figure, deliberately not discounted, so it can be compared directly with a capital intervention cost. Where an organisation requires net present value, apply its own discount rate to the annual premium.
Any component with no defensible evidence should be excluded rather than guessed. Excluded components are reported as excluded, and they lower the stated confidence rather than silently lowering the premium.
The six premium components
Every pound of premium must be attributed to exactly one of these components, so no cost is double counted.
Labour Drag
Additional labour time caused by difficult environmental conditions.
- · Awkward geometry
- · Excessive detail
- · Difficult surfaces
- · Manual-only cleaning
- · Slower task completion
Movement Drag
Additional travel and non-productive movement caused by poor layout.
- · Distant janitorial stores
- · Poor waste routes
- · Poor vertical circulation
- · Long replenishment routes
Rework / Frequency Premium
Cost caused by repeated cleaning or unnecessarily high cleaning frequency.
- · Surfaces that show marks
- · Rapid recontamination
- · Persistent staining
- · Inaccessible edges
Access Premium
Additional cost caused by difficult or specialist access.
- · MEWP requirement
- · Rope access
- · High-level work
- · Specialist contractors
- · Dismantling for routine cleaning
Resource Premium
Additional operational resource consumption attributable to poor cleanability.
- · Additional chemical
- · Additional water
- · Consumables
- · Machine usage
- · Energy
- · Equipment wear
Lifecycle Premium
Long-term cost consequences of cleanability-related wear and intervention.
- · Premature material replacement
- · Accelerated wear
- · Restorative cleaning
- · Avoidable refurbishment
Sector cleanability premium baselines
These are the published reference ranges used to judge whether a modelled premium is normal, high or exceptional for its sector. Cost and productivity bands come from the sources named; the CI and CCI bands describe compliant, reasonably well-designed stock in that sector. The implied premium per m² is derived from the cost and CCI bands and is shown for orientation only.
| Sector | Cost £/m²/yr | Productivity m²/hr | CI range | CCI range | Implied premium £/m² | Evidence |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Office / commercialOpen-plan, low hygiene sensitivity, predictable access windows. | 11–22 | 250–400 | 62–80 | 4–12% | £0.44–£2.64 | PublishedBDO PropCost service charge benchmarking — offices (cleaning cost line, RICS categories)2025 report, accounting periods 2022–2024How the range is derived: Cleaning expenditure per m² from the office dataset, taken across the reported quartile spread and uplifted for the reported year-on-year service-charge increase. |
| Healthcare / clinicalRisk-categorised frequencies; re-cleaning and audit failure carry clinical consequence. | 28–55 | 110–200 | 70–88 | 6–16% | £1.68–£8.80 | PublishedNational Standards of Healthcare Cleanliness — functional risk categories and cleaning frequencies2021 standard, current editionHow the range is derived: Cost band derived from the mandated frequency and audit regime for functional risk categories 1–6, priced at current UK cleaning-operative rates. |
| EducationCompressed access windows and very high term-time footfall. | 12–20 | 220–380 | 58–76 | 6–18% | £0.72–£3.60 | PublishedAPSE Performance Networks — building cleaning performance indicators (investment per m², m² per scheduled hour)Year 27, 2024–25 indicators (trend series from 2012–13)How the range is derived: APSE reports cost per m² cleaned rising from £12.36 (2012–13) to £15.22 (2018–19); the band brackets the current reported spread and its productivity indicator (m² per annual scheduled hour) converts to the productivity range. |
| RetailEntrance soiling and trading-hours cleaning dominate cost; mall and common-part standards are presentation-led. | 14–30 | 200–350 | 55–74 | 8–20% | £1.12–£6.00 | PublishedBDO PropCost service charge benchmarking — shopping centres and retail parks (cleaning cost line)2025 report, accounting periods 2022–2024How the range is derived: Cleaning line from the shopping-centre and retail-park benchmark cost tables. Retail-park schemes sit at the lower end and enclosed centres at the upper end; the band spans both, reflecting the reported 11–14% year-on-year rises. |
| Transport hubNo closed window, extreme footfall, heavy matting and washroom demand. | 22–48 | 150–280 | 52–72 | 12–28% | £2.64–£13.44 | ResearchContinuous-occupancy cleaning productivity studies, cross-checked against BCIS operational cost data for transport buildingsBCIS life cycle / OpX operational cost seriesHow the range is derived: Productivity taken from studies of cleaning in continuously occupied environments, where no closed window exists; the cost band is the resulting labour requirement priced at UK operative rates. |
| Industrial / logisticsLarge simple areas, but access at height and plant congestion drive premiums. | 4–12 | 400–900 | 50–72 | 5–15% | £0.20–£1.80 | PublishedBDO PropCost service charge benchmarking — industrial parks (cleaning cost line)2025 report, accounting periods 2022–2024How the range is derived: Cleaning line from the industrial-park benchmark tables, which is dominated by external and common-part cleaning over large simple areas; the band covers the reported size and EPC cuts of that dataset. |
| Hospitality / leisurePresentation standards and turnaround times set the frequency, not soiling alone. | 18–38 | 140–260 | 55–75 | 8–22% | £1.44–£8.36 | PublishedBCIS life cycle cost data — cleaning and housekeeping for hotel, sports and leisure building typesBCIS life cycle cost data, annual updateHow the range is derived: BCIS reports cleaning at 52–129% of building maintenance cost, varying by building use; the band applies that relationship to hotel and leisure occupancy classes, where turnaround frequency rather than soiling sets the labour hours. |
| Laboratory / researchRestricted access, permit systems and specialist method drive labour cost. | 30–60 | 100–190 | 66–86 | 7–18% | £2.10–£10.80 | ResearchContainment and controlled-environment cleaning studies, cross-checked against BCIS operational cost data for laboratory buildingsBCIS life cycle / OpX operational cost seriesHow the range is derived: Productivity from controlled-environment cleaning method studies (permit access, gowning, specialist agents); cost band is the resulting labour and consumable requirement at UK rates. |
- Published:
- Range taken from published industry cost benchmarking for this sector.
- Research:
- Range derived from institutional or peer-reviewed research on cleaning productivity.
- Illustrative:
- Professional-judgement placeholder — not yet validated against a published dataset.
A building is matched to a sector from its recorded building type. Where no match exists, no position is asserted and the rollup reports the premium without a sector comparison.
How a building is judged against its sector
A modelled value is placed against the relevant range with a single, published rule — no smoothing and no weighting.
Better than the sector range
Modelled value sits under the bottom of the sector range — better than typical stock, so check the model is complete rather than optimistic.
Within the sector range
Modelled value sits inside the sector range — the premium is normal for this kind of building.
Above the sector range
Modelled value sits above the top of the range but within 1.5× of it — a real, addressable premium.
Far above the sector range
Modelled value exceeds 1.5× the top of the range — treat as an outlier and investigate the driving component before acting on the number.
Excess is reported as the percentage above the top of the range, never above its midpoint, so the statement is always the most conservative one the evidence supports.
Anonymised estate benchmarking
Alongside published ranges, a rollup can be compared with the average of other estates in the same sector. Sharing is off by default and switched on per cost model by its owner.
- A sector comparison is released only once at least 5 shared cost models exist in that sector.
- Only sector, Cleanability Index, CCI percentage and premium per m² are pooled — never a site name, organisation, address or owner.
- Cohort figures are reported as an average with the 25th and 75th percentile, so a single unusual estate cannot be inferred.
- Turning sharing off removes a model from every future cohort calculation.
How portfolio rollups use the baselines
The Portfolio Cost Rollup adds every cost model to estate level and then, for each sector represented, compares the estate's own figures with the ranges published above and with the anonymised cohort. For each sector it reports:
- modelled cost per m² and premium per m² against the sector cost band;
- portfolio-wide CCI against the sector CCI band, with the position rule applied;
- each individual building in that sector and where it sits, so an outlier is visible rather than averaged away;
- the confidence of the weakest input in the rollup — a rollup is never presented as stronger than its weakest model.
Confidence and evidence
Confidence is derived from the evidence behind the inputs, not asserted. It is stated on every model, every rollup and every report.
- Low confidence
- Primarily assumptions and generic benchmark data. Treat outputs as indicative only.
- Moderate confidence
- A combination of measured and estimated data. Outputs are modelled, not actual expenditure.
- High confidence
- Mostly verified operational data with a small number of stated assumptions.
- Verified
- Based on validated operational records and confirmed cost inputs.
Limitations and what CCI is not
- CCI is not a valuation, a tender price or an audited cost. It is a model of avoidable cost under stated assumptions.
- Reference ranges describe typical stock, not compliance thresholds. Sitting within a range is not evidence of good design.
- Illustrative sector bands are professional judgement and will be replaced as validated datasets become available.
- Comparisons assume the modelled scope matches the sector definition — a partially cleaned building will understate its premium.
- Exposure figures are escalated cash, not net present value, and exclude inflation beyond the stated escalation rate.
See the full CleanabilityIQ methodology for the eight Cleanability Index domains, and worked examples for how these figures read in practice.