What should a buyer include in an equipment brief for cleaning commercial exhaust hoods?

A single line reading "kitchen exhaust hood cleaning" is the most common cause of a disputed invoice. Break the extraction line into components and give a quantity for each:

• Hood canopy — internal surfaces, external surfaces, grease filters and filter frames.
• Ductwork — the length in metres that is reachable, plus the position of inspection doors and access hatches.
• Extract fan and housing — blades and interior casing, and whether motor cleaning is included or excluded.
• Discharge louvre and the terminal section on the roof or external wall.
• Cooking equipment beneath the hood — griddles, fryers, grills, salamanders and splash-back panels.
• Floor, wall tiles, and pipework or lighting in the extraction run.

Attach an annotated plan and dated photographs of the dirtiest sections. The before photographs become the reference point for the final inspection and settle any argument about a mark that was already there. Where the duct route is unknown, say that a survey is required before pricing instead of leaving bidders to guess — a guessed length is the reason the final bill is higher than the quotation.

State how often the work recurs and when it may be carried out. One deep clean per year and a monthly light clean are different jobs needing different equipment; a contractor who knows the frequency can price a programme rather than an incident.

Give the access window in hours and say whether the kitchen must serve again the same day. For a site trading seven days a week, an overnight or early-morning slot is the only practical option, and that has two consequences worth writing into the brief: the equipment should not be loud, and it should not leave the floor flooded with water that staff walk through an hour later. Machines that remove grease with low water volume suit these conditions far better than cold pressure washing.

Include the practical access details as well — distance from the delivery point to the kitchen, lift or stair access, whether the roof is reachable, the power supply available on site with its voltage and socket type, and whether work may proceed while the restaurant is trading.

Do not leave the method to the bidder. Name it and explain why. For grease-heavy kitchen extraction, high-temperature steam is a sensible choice because heat softens hardened cooking fat so it lifts off a surface with far less water and far less scrubbing than a cold wash needs. That matters in a working kitchen, where the alternative is a soaked floor, detergents used close to food-contact surfaces, and a long drying time before service restarts.

Specify the performance figures you need rather than a brand. The useful numbers for a hood and duct job are the steam temperature, the delivered pressure, whether the machine switches between dry and wet steam, the water tank capacity, and the power supply the machine requires. Fixed Steam Cleaning Machine PowerDe HW02 is documented on its product page as a 220 V unit with a 6 kW heater, 160° steam temperature, 0.8 MPa vapour pressure and an 80 L stainless steel tank, with selectable dry and wet steam. If your site needs the machine moved along corridors or between floors, the handling details — castors, handles, hose length, overall dimensions — belong in the brief for the same reason, and any bidder offering alternative equipment should be required to state the equivalent figures.

Add the constraints that follow from the method: which detergents, if any, are allowed near food preparation; how run-off water is contained and removed from the building; and how the team protects equipment, stock and packaging while working.

If you are buying the equipment rather than a cleaning service, the brief should treat the machine as an asset with a service life, not as a single line on a pro forma. Ask for:

• The material of the wetted and heated parts — a stainless tank and heater assembly behave differently from mild steel where the water is hard.
• The electrical protections built into the machine, since hot water and mains power meet on a kitchen floor.
• Consumables and wear items — seals, nozzles, hoses, filters — with part references and replacement intervals.
• The guarantee terms and, separately, the price and lead time for spare parts once the guarantee ends.
• Who supports the machine locally, in which language, and within what response time.

A one-page spares schedule is worth more than a page of marketing claims, because it is the part of the paperwork you actually use in year two. Where you plan to buy several machines over time, ask whether the same model, fittings and consumables stay available for the rest of the estate; a mixed fleet with incompatible parts is a reliable source of downtime.

Ask the supplier to state which figures are measured and which are nominal. A steam temperature is easy to quote; how long the machine holds it under continuous trigger pull is the question that decides whether one operator can finish a hood before the shift changes.

Several responsibilities are easy to leave ambiguous, so state them. Confirm that the supplier provides equipment, labour and consumables unless a line says otherwise; that work at height, on a roof or inside ducting requires the supplier's own access plan and permit; and that their staff follow your site rules on food safety, hygiene, hot works and out-of-hours access. Ask each bidder to name the supervisor on site and to state plainly whether the work is subcontracted.

For buyers with several kitchens — a restaurant group, a hotel portfolio, a hospital estate — add a standardisation clause: one method specification across all sites, one inspection form, one reporting format and the same evidence pack everywhere. Without it you receive a different deliverable at each site and cannot compare them.

This section decides whether the invoice is paid, so write the acceptance test into the brief before the work is ordered:

• Dated before-and-after photographs of every item on the scope list, matched to the pre-work photographs.
• A signed checklist confirming which components were reached and which were not, with the reason — a sealed duct section, a locked roof hatch, a fan that could not be isolated.
• Access panels and louvres refitted, the area left clean and dry, and waste removed from the building.
• The machine used, with its steam temperature and pressure recorded, so the next cycle can be quoted on the same basis.

Name the person who signs acceptance, and set the period in which defects may be reported. A short re-visit clause covering any section missed at the first visit costs the buyer nothing and removes the argument later.

It is equally useful to say what the brief does not cover. Duties connected with fire safety of ductwork and the requirements of your local authority remain with the duty holder; the brief should require the supplier's work to be compatible with those duties, but it does not replace a fire-safety assessment or the inspection intervals your authority sets.

Require a priced schedule that mirrors your scope list line by line, so a bidder who has quietly dropped the fan housing or the roof louvre becomes visible at once. Then require a separate exclusions list, and name the items you expect to find on it: unreachable duct sections, additional access doors, corrosion or damaged panels discovered during the work, an asbestos survey in older buildings, and any repair work.

For recurring work, ask for a unit price per metre of duct and per hood, plus the fixed call-out element. Those two numbers let you extend the agreement to a new site without a fresh tender.

Keep the document to two pages plus photographs. A structure that works in practice:

• Site details, contact, and access rules.
• Scope list with quantities — hood, filters, metres of duct, fan, louvre, cooking equipment, floor and walls.
• Frequency, access window, and required return-to-service time.
• Method: high-temperature steam, dry and wet steam modes, permitted detergents, run-off control.
• Equipment requirement: steam temperature, pressure, supply voltage, water volume, handling.
• Supplier obligations: staffing, permits, site rules, insurance.
• Acceptance test and evidence pack, with the signatory named.
• Priced schedule format, exclusions, and guarantee or re-visit terms.

Once the brief exists, read the replies against the same columns: method offered, machine offered with its figures, what is excluded, and what evidence is promised. A buyer who fixes the method and the evidence in advance receives comparable quotations; a buyer who does not receives three different jobs at three different prices and no way to establish which one was done.

If the next step is choosing equipment for kitchen extraction, review the PowerDe cleaning equipment range, or send your scope list through the PowerDe contact page and have the machine selection confirmed against the figures in your brief.