A friend of Brenda Alday’s, a general contractor, once asked her how hard it is to clean a building after construction. “I said, well, how hard could it be?” Alday says.
She opened Top Notch Cleaning Services in 2023 on that thought. She loved to clean, and a job site seemed like more of the same. “It is harder than it seems,” she says.
Most cleaners start in people’s homes and work their way up to construction jobs. Alday went the other direction. She started with post-construction work and built out from there, and today janitorial accounts and construction cleanups make up most of the business, with a handful of residential clients besides. Starting on job sites meant she had to learn the materials before she could clean them.
“It’s not like cleaning your house,” she says. “You have all different types of flooring and different countertops and different woodwork, and you gotta know what chemicals.” She worried about ruining a finish she didn’t understand. “I didn’t want to damage something, so I really educated myself.”
That self-education became the company’s training. Every new hire goes through the same material, and she puts a lot of time into it. “All my employees can tell you what kind of flooring that is, what kind of chemical goes on that floor,” she says. The teaching doesn’t stop at surfaces. One employee wants to move into management, and Alday is looking into classes for her.
Construction cleaning comes in stages, as the company describes it. A rough clean clears the bulk of the dust and debris after the heavy work is done and before the finishes go in. A final clean goes top to bottom before the building is handed over. A touch-up pass comes last, usually just before the walk-through, to catch the dust and fingerprints left by inspections and punch-list work. Crews can also keep an active site clear while the trades are still building. The customers are contractors, builders, developers and property owners across Las Vegas, Henderson and the rest of Clark County. The company describes its team as OSHA-certified, and it is woman-owned and operated.
“I’m a hands-on owner,” Alday says. On construction work, she goes to the site herself to walk the crew through it. “I like to go out, especially if it’s a construction job, and show them, okay, this is what we’re doing at this site.” Every job site is different. A janitorial account settles into a routine, and once a crew has been on one for a while, she can usually let them run it. She still does spot checks and notices what has changed since her last visit. If a crew is short, there is backup, and when there isn’t, Alday picks up the mop herself.
The satisfaction comes at the end of a construction job, in rooms nobody has used yet. “I love going in and cleaning, and I always wonder who’s moving in and how exciting they must be.”