A contractor that cleans a hospital cannot automatically clean a school kitchen. It may have the practical skills, but it does not know the rules, and the rules in these three fields differ so much that experience from one can actually do harm in another.
This is regularly underestimated when clients bundle their properties into a single lot. A town hall, a primary school with a canteen and a care home in the same tender: legally possible, professionally demanding. Because whoever wins has to master three systems at once.
One misunderstanding is worth clearing up straight away. The three worlds do not sit tidily side by side but on top of one another, and frequently in the same building. A primary school with a canteen is a communal facility and a food business at the same time. A care home has residents' rooms, a kitchen, administrative areas and plant rooms, and different rules apply to each. The question is therefore never which world a building belongs to, but which requirements come together in which area.
This article sets out how they differ and what that means for the tender and for the cleaning concept.
First world: healthcare and care homes
The density of regulation is highest here, and for good reason.
The legal basis is Section 23 of the Infection Protection Act (Infektionsschutzgesetz) for medical facilities, that is, hospitals, prevention and rehabilitation facilities, dialysis centres, and medical and dental practices. For care and disability support facilities a separate provision has applied for some years, Section 35 IfSG, which likewise requires hygiene plans and likewise refers to the KRINKO recommendations. Anyone tendering for a care home should rely on Section 35 and not on Section 23.
Both are given substance by the recommendations of the Commission for Hospital Hygiene and Infection Prevention at the Robert Koch Institute, KRINKO for short. Its recommendation on hygiene requirements for the cleaning and disinfection of surfaces was reissued in 2026 in the Bundesgesundheitsblatt. Since that version is still recent, it is worth checking the current position with the RKI before any tender.
The decisive difference from every other type of building: what governs is not what the room is called but a risk assessment of the individual surface. Into that go the risk area, proximity to patients, contact frequency, the likelihood of contamination and the activities carried out there. A frequently touched surface close to a patient in a hospital room and a window sill in the same room are therefore subject to different requirements, even though there is a metre between them.
In practice this means the following for the cleaning: three procedures have to be kept apart, and this is where most mistakes happen. Surface cleaning removes soil and with it a proportion of the micro-organisms, without killing them. Surface disinfection aims at inactivation; the cleaning effect is secondary. Disinfectant cleaning combines the two in a single operation, because the product used contains a cleaning additive alongside the disinfecting agent.
What is decisive is the point at which this becomes two steps. A single operation works only as long as there is no heavy soiling. Where contamination is visible, with blood or secretions for instance, the soiling is first removed mechanically and the surface then disinfected, with the contact time observed. Do it the other way round and you are disinfecting the dirt.
Then there are terminal disinfections following particular pathogens, with their own requirements as to spectrum of activity, concentration and contact time. For routine use, the listings of the German Association for Applied Hygiene are the widely used professional point of reference. Where disinfection is ordered by the authorities, the Robert Koch Institute's list under Section 18 IfSG governs. Product authorisation, manufacturers' specifications and material compatibility apply in both cases.
Occupational safety comes into it as well. The Technical Rule for Biological Agents in Healthcare, TRBA 250, sets its own requirements for protective measures for cleaning staff.
What is frequently missing from tenders: the determination of who draws up the cleaning and disinfection plan and who keeps it current. Responsibility for internal procedures lies with the management of the facility and cannot be shifted onto the contractor. The cleaning and disinfection plan derived from it affects the contractor directly, though, and it should be involved in working out the practical detail. Where it is not settled who maintains it, nobody maintains it.
Second world: schools and day nurseries
A different logic applies here, and in practice it is often confused with the first.
The legal basis is Section 36 in conjunction with Section 33 of the Infection Protection Act. Communal facilities under Section 33 are, among others, day nurseries, after-school clubs, schools and other educational establishments, homes and holiday camps. Shared accommodation, homeless shelters and prisons also fall under Section 36, though there in categories of their own rather than as communal facilities. Mix the terms up and you will be citing the wrong provision in your tender.
The statute makes no requirements as to content. The federal states provide framework and model hygiene plans to be adapted to the individual facility.
The decisive difference: as a rule it is cleaning that comes first, not disinfection. Targeted disinfection is indicated on particular occasions, above all with faecal-oral infections such as gastroenteric illness, norovirus or hepatitis A. Day to day, it is cleaning.
One point that keeps being got wrong: spray disinfection. Without mechanical action it is less effective, and it burdens staff through the aerosol they inhale. Wipe disinfection is what is intended. Where cleaners in schools are routinely going about with spray bottles, that is no sign of particular diligence. Justified exceptions for places that are hard to reach or cannot be wiped may exist; they then belong in the hygiene plan and in the risk assessment.
What is frequently missing from tenders: provision for the outbreak case. Where a norovirus outbreak occurs in a nursery, the cleaning regime changes at short notice and considerably. Whether and how that additional effort is paid for should be in the contract. Otherwise it gets negotiated while the outbreak is running.
The hygiene plan has to be current and to fit the particular facility. How often it is to be reviewed and at what interval inspections take place does not follow from federal law but from state law, the applicable framework hygiene plan and the facility's own rules. Many model plans provide for at least an annual review with written documentation. That too affects the contractor, even though it is formally the facility's business.
Third world: kitchens and catering areas
An entirely separate system applies here, and it surprises many clients.
The legal basis is European food hygiene law, at its core Regulation (EC) No 852/2004 on the hygiene of foodstuffs. Anyone preparing or serving food is a food business operator, and that includes a school with a canteen or a nursery serving lunch. From it follow duties that have nothing to do with the Infection Protection Act: a self-monitoring system based on HACCP principles, requirements for premises and equipment, training obligations for staff.
The decisive difference: cleaning is here part of a documented control system. As a rule it belongs to good hygiene practice and to the prerequisite programmes on which the HACCP concept is built, and only in particular constellations to the monitored critical points themselves. Not every floor clean in a canteen is a critical control point of its own.
Which cleaning measures are documented and how far the records go depends on the hazard analysis, the size of the operation and the process. It has to be appropriate, not maximal. What is documented will, however, be examined by the food safety authority, and what was agreed there then applies.
What is frequently missing from tenders: the demarcation. Who cleans the production surfaces and the equipment, the kitchen staff or the cleaning contractor? In practice the dividing line is often unsettled, and then in the end neither cleans it properly. Frequently sensible: kitchen equipment and production surfaces with the kitchen staff, floors and ancillary rooms with the contractor, with a clear description of the interface.
Then there is the qualification question, and it has two separate roots that frequently get muddled. Both attach to the specific activity and do not apply across the board to every cleaner in the building.
The instruction under Section 43 of the Infection Protection Act applies to people handling the foodstuffs named in Section 42, or coming into contact with equipment in such a way that transmission of pathogens is to be feared. It is given by the public health office before the activity is first taken up and is thereafter repeated by the employer every two years. To be distinguished from it is the hygiene training under Annex II Chapter XII of Regulation (EC) No 852/2004, which the food business operator has to ensure for its staff.
Whether a member of staff cleaning only floors and ancillary rooms is caught by this depends on how their duties are cut and needs checking in the individual case. Regardless of that, every person deployed needs task-related familiarisation with the operation's separation and cleaning procedures. Who is responsible for what, where the staff are supplied by a contractor, should be settled before the award.
What this means for the tender and the concept
Four practical conclusions follow from the comparison.
First: decide on lots deliberately. Putting buildings with fundamentally different hygiene requirements into one lot restricts the field to companies that can demonstrably cover every area of competence. Whether separate lots are the better solution depends on the market in your region, on the contract volume, on the interfaces between the buildings and on your own capacity to manage them. The decision should appear in the procurement file with reasons, whichever way it goes.
Second: choose suitability criteria that fit and are proportionate. Anyone tendering for a hospital should ask for demonstrated experience in healthcare. Anyone including a canteen, for experience in the food sector. That is no formality, because learning an unfamiliar set of rules takes time and happens during live operations. Do not, however, insist solely on an exactly identical reference. Comparable buildings, qualified key personnel and a robust methodology can serve the same purpose and keep the competition open.
Third: make the hygiene plan part of the documents. The facility's hygiene plan should accompany the tender documents, at least in the parts relevant to cleaning. Otherwise tenderers are costing in the dark, and the contract goes to whoever allowed least for it.
Fourth: provide for the outbreak case. Outbreaks, officially ordered disinfection, closures: all of it happens. Where the contract says what applies then and how it is paid for, capacity in an emergency goes into the matter rather than into the negotiation.
The most common mistake
It consists in mixing the three worlds. A cleaning concept written for a hospital gets transferred to a school, with the result that disinfection is carried out across the board where cleaning would have sufficed. That costs money, burdens the staff and has no professional justification.
The reverse happens just as often: a standard concept from the administrative sector is applied to a care home, because both are called "interior cleaning". Then risk assessment, determination of methods and record-keeping are missing entirely.
Neither is usually noticed straight away. It gets noticed when a supervisory authority inspects, or when something has happened.