Gym cleaning checklist: what a New Zealand gym cleans, when, and how it shows it

01

The duty behind a gym cleaning checklist

No New Zealand law sets out a gym cleaning standard. A gym's cleaning duties sit inside the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015 (HSWA), which places them on the PCBU (person conducting a business or undertaking). In a gym that is usually more than one business: the operator of the club or council leisure centre, the contract cleaning company, and often the landlord. Two duties do most of the work.

• The primary duty of care (section 36). WorkSafe's Introduction to the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015 special guide summarises it: a PCBU must ensure, "so far as is reasonably practicable, the health and safety of workers, and that other people are not put at risk by its work", including "providing and maintaining a work environment that is without risks to health and safety". In a gym, the other people are members, casual visitors and children in the swim school.
• The duty of the PCBU who manages or controls a workplace (section 37). That PCBU must ensure "the workplace, the means of entering and exiting the workplace, and anything else arising from the workplace are without health and safety risks to any person." A changing-room floor and a poolside are inside that sentence.

The Health and Safety at Work (General Risk and Workplace Management) Regulations 2016 add the detail. WorkSafe's guidelines on General risk and workplace management – part 1 explain regulation 10: "Surfaces are designed, installed, and maintained to allow work to be carried out without risks to health and safety." For staff toilets and washing facilities, "PCBUs must ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, that workplace facilities are sufficient in number and maintained to be in good working order, and are clean, safe, and accessible."

Three more sources matter in a gym:

• Cleaning chemicals. WorkSafe's page on safety data sheets says "It is mandatory to have a current safety data sheet for each of the hazardous substances in your workplace regardless of the quantity you hold", readily accessible to the people who handle them. The hazardous substances inventory guide covers the list itself.
• Legionella. Health New Zealand's legionellosis guidance lists sources including "spa pools" and "warm-water systems", and exposure through "aerosolised or sprayed water" from, among others, "heated swimming pools, spa pools" and "showers". See the legionella control guide.
• Pools and spa pools. The reference is NZS 5826:2010 Pool water quality, published by Standards New Zealand. Recreation Aotearoa's page on aquatic specific standards says "Compliance with NZS 5826 is a Poolsafe requirement"; Poolsafe is the sector's quality scheme for public pools. It covers water quality and treatment, not the cleaning of the changing rooms or the gym floor.

Exercise New Zealand, the industry body, describes its role on its About Us page: "We provide best practice guides, regulate a code of conduct and operate the registration system for exercise professionals – REPs." None of this requires a checklist in a particular format. What the law requires is a gym kept safe and clean, with controls that work and stay working. The checklist is the day-to-day part of that, alongside the site's risk assessment, the safety data sheets and, where there is a pool, its normal operating procedures.

02

What a gym cleaning checklist covers

A 24-hour gym, a CrossFit box in a light-industrial unit and a council aquatic and fitness centre look very different, but most gyms and fitness facilities clean the same spaces. Divide the list by area, because each has its own risks and pattern of use:

• Cardio floor: treadmills, bikes, cross-trainers and rowers, especially handles, consoles and touchscreens.
• Resistance machines and free weights: seats, back pads, handles, pins, dumbbells, barbells, plates, racks and benches.
• Functional areas and studios: mats, kettlebells, plyo boxes, rigs, sprung floors, steps, spin bikes and mirrors.
• Changing rooms: floors, benches, lockers, showers, toilets, basins and vanity benches, and any family or accessible changing room.
• Wet areas: poolside, spa surrounds, sauna and steam room, and the barefoot routes to them.
• Reception and social areas: the front desk, swipe-card gates, the café or smoothie bar and the crèche.
• Touch points: door handles, locker keypads, drinking fountains, light switches and lift buttons.
• Staff areas and waste: the smoko room, staff toilets, the cleaners' cupboard, floor bins, sanitary bins and the bin enclosure.

Leave out work that belongs to someone else. Pool water testing and dosing is the plant operator's job; equipment servicing belongs to the supplier or maintenance contractor. The checklist should say where a cleaner reports a fault, such as a frayed cable on a lat pulldown, rather than asking the cleaner to fix it. In a shared building, agree in writing which areas are the gym's and which the landlord's: the lift lobby and the car park are where cleaning falls between two contracts.

03

The gym cleaning checklist, by frequency

Frequencies follow foot traffic, not the clock. A gym is busiest before work, at lunchtime and after work, and the checks that matter most come straight after each peak. A 24-hour gym unstaffed overnight needs its heavy clean in the quietest hours. The pattern below suits a typical commercial gym or leisure centre.

Several times a day, and after each peak

• Wipe cardio handles, consoles and touchscreens with a product the equipment maker allows.
• Disinfect benches, seat pads, grips and pins; wipe mats and rack loose plates and bars, which also clears trip hazards.
• Restock wipe stations and paper, and check spray bottles are labelled and correctly diluted.
• Walk the changing rooms: floors, hair, toilets, soap and paper; squeegee standing water towards the drains.
• Wipe door handles, locker keypads and fountains; empty floor bins before they overflow.

Daily

• Full clean of changing rooms, showers, toilets and basins, including benches and locker fronts.
• Vacuum and mop the gym floor and studios, moving portable equipment to reach under it.
• Clean every piece of equipment in full, and note split upholstery, worn grips or loose parts for maintenance.
• Clean poolside, spa surrounds, sauna benches and steam room surfaces as the operating procedures set out.
• Clean mirrors, glass doors, reception, the café and crèche; empty all bins and sanitary bins as needed.

Weekly deep cleaning

• Deep clean showers: grout, drains, shower heads and screens.
• Clean under and behind heavy equipment, rigs and racks.
• Wash studio mats and clean spin bikes in full.
• Flush little-used showers if the water management plan gives that task to the cleaners, and record it.

Monthly and periodic

• Machine scrub changing-room and wet-area floors to lift the residue that makes non-slip flooring lose its grip.
• Clean lockers inside, and clean or replace worn upholstery covers.
• Dust high ledges, vents and extract grilles, and arrange filter changes with maintenance.
• Check that signs, dispensers and wipe stations are in place and working.

New Year memberships fill the floor in January, and a wet winter brings water in on every shoe: put the extra rounds for those weeks on the list.

04

Who does what: members, floor staff and the cleaning team

A gym stays clean only when more people than the cleaners play their part.

• Members wipe down equipment after use. That only happens if wipe stations are within a few steps of every machine and signs ask plainly. A member wipe-down adds to the schedule; it never replaces it.
• Personal trainers and floor staff walk the floor, rack weights, deal with spills and are usually first to see a fault. Put their part on the checklist too, or it disappears on a busy night.
• The cleaning team, in-house or from a commercial cleaning services company, does the scheduled cleans through the day and the full clean in the quietest hours.
• The duty manager checks the work on a walk-round, deals with complaints and decides what goes to maintenance.
• Maintenance and specialist contractors handle equipment servicing, pool plant, ventilation and the water management plan.

Each business involved is a PCBU with duties over the same floor. WorkSafe's overlapping duties quick guide says "Businesses must so far as is reasonably practicable consult, cooperate and coordinate activities with all other businesses they share overlapping duties with." An agreement about who does what is allowed, but "They must still monitor the other business to ensure they follow through on what was agreed." For a gym, that means checking the contract cleaner's work, not just paying the invoice.

Products and method. Use disinfectants that have a safety data sheet on site and that the equipment makers allow: some upholstery and touchscreens crack or cloud with strong or alcohol-based products. Clean off sweat and dirt first, because dirt stops a disinfectant working well, and leave it for the contact time on the label. Keep colour-coded cloths separate for toilets, for the changing rooms and gym floor, and for the café or crèche.

Bodily fluids. Blood, vomit and other bodily fluids need a spill kit, disposable gloves and a written procedure, with the area closed off until it is clean. Train floor staff as well as cleaners, because they are usually nearest.

Checking. A duty manager's walk-round, a regular audit against the cleaning specification and member feedback confirm the checklist is followed. Note where and when complaints come in, and move the checks to match.

05

Changing rooms, showers, spas and the pool surrounds

Changing rooms and wet areas carry the greatest hygiene risk in a gym, and members often judge a gym's cleanliness by them. They are warm, wet and walked barefoot, and the floors are slippery. WorkSafe's page on slips, trips and falls names "slipping on a wet floor (which is wet because something is spilt on it, or because of weather conditions or cleaning processes)", and says "Make sure you signpost any slippery areas."

• Standing water. Squeegee changing-room floors and poolside towards the drains often at busy times, and keep drains clear of hair. Put wet floor signs out while a floor is wet and take them away when it is dry.
• Floors. Clean and disinfect barefoot areas every day, and machine scrub them periodically so non-slip surfaces keep their grip. Recreation Aotearoa lists guidelines for aquatic flooring surfaces among its aquatic facility guidelines.
• Showers. Remove hair and soap scum, and descale shower heads. Little-used showers are a legionella concern; if the water management plan asks for them to be flushed, record who did it and when.
• Mould and odour. Black mould on grout and ceilings usually means the extract ventilation is not coping. Clean it, and report the ventilation rather than cleaning the same patch every week.
• Saunas and steam rooms. Clean with products approved for those surfaces and temperatures, once the room has cooled.
• Poolside and spa surrounds. Clean surrounds, benches and grab rails on the schedule the operating procedures set. Nothing used on toilets goes on poolside, and cleaning chemicals are never mixed with, or stored beside, pool plant chemicals.

Where there is a pool, the cleaning checklist sits beside the pool operator's records, not in place of them. Recreation Aotearoa's aquatic standards page lists hygiene messages a pool should promote, such as encouraging customers to shower "before entering the pool", and calls for any faecal accidents to be reported immediately. A cleaner who finds one in a changing room or spa should know who to tell, and the checklist should say so.

WorkSafe's General risk and workplace management – part 2 explains regulation 8: controls must be reviewed when "the control measure does not control the risk it was implemented to control". If the same changing room keeps producing slips or smells, look again at the drains, the ventilation, the floor and the product, not only the interval between cleans. The slips, trips and falls guide covers the wider controls.

06

Where the gym cleaning record fails, and what SiteClara does about it

Most gyms have a cleaning chart on the back of the changing-room door and a folder at reception. By evening the chart has gaps from the lunchtime rush, the overnight clean is a single tick, and when a member complains about the showers the duty manager cannot say when they were last checked or by whom. For a contractor cleaning several clubs, the first sign that one is slipping is usually a complaint rather than a report.

SiteClara records those checks where they happen. A printed QR poster, with an optional NFC tag behind it, goes at each area on the checklist – each changing room, the cardio floor, each studio, poolside. Cleaners and floor staff scan the code or tap the tag with their own phone, with no app to install, see the checks due there, and mark each one done or explain what stopped them. The named person and the time are recorded as it happens, with a photo when the check asks for one. A fault found on the round, such as a broken shower, goes onto the team's list of open jobs until someone closes it.

The supervisor or duty manager sees what is due, done and missed, records why a check was missed and can escalate a job to the building manager. A gym and its cleaning contractor can work from the same site, each seeing its own work. The supervisor approves each day's report, which goes to nominated managers or the client the next morning, showing what was reported, completed and still open, and how the scheduled checks went. Where a water management plan or the pool's procedures require their own records, SiteClara can be the working record the team fills in during the day, but those records remain the ones that count.

07

Questions people ask

How do you clean a gym?

Clean first, then disinfect. Health New Zealand's Appendix 1: Infection, prevention and control guidance says "Surfaces should be cleaned prior to any disinfecting, as the cleanliness of a surface can impact how well the disinfectant works", and to "Follow the manufacturer's instructions on making up and applying disinfectant solution." In a gym that means wiping off sweat and dirt with detergent, then applying a disinfectant the equipment maker allows and leaving it for the contact time on the label, area by area as the checklist above sets out.

How often should a gym be cleaned?

No New Zealand law sets a frequency. WorkSafe's guidelines on General risk and workplace management – part 1 require that workplace facilities for workers, such as toilets and washing facilities, are "maintained to be in good working order, and are clean, safe, and accessible", so far as is reasonably practicable, and leave the schedule to the business. For a busy gym that usually means high-touch equipment and changing rooms several times a day and after each peak, a full clean daily and deep cleaning weekly.

08

Further reading, and a list to take away

WorkSafe New Zealand publishes the HSWA introduction, the workplace management guidelines and the other pages cited above. Health New Zealand's legionellosis guidance covers where legionella grows. Recreation Aotearoa publishes the aquatic facility guidelines and the Poolsafe requirements, and Standards New Zealand publishes NZS 5826:2010.

Before the next January rush, check that your gym cleaning checklist:

• is divided by area, with changing rooms and wet areas treated separately;
• adds checks after the morning, lunchtime and evening peaks;
• names disinfectants with a safety data sheet on site that the equipment makers allow;
• gives floor staff and members a clear part, with wipe stations close to the equipment;
• has a spill kit and procedure for bodily fluids, and says who to tell about a faecal accident;
• records shower flushing where the water management plan gives it to the cleaners;
• keeps cleaning separate from pool plant and pool chemicals;
• sends faults to maintenance rather than noting them and moving on;
• names who owns each area between the gym, the cleaning contractor and the landlord;
• is checked by a duty manager on a walk-round, not only signed by the cleaner.