Director of OperationsCommercial Cleaning
The Director of Operations Who Had Scaled Commercial Operations Across Multiple States
A South Florida commercial cleaning company with a growing government contract portfolio created its first Director of Operations role to take ownership of the full operation. The brief called for someone who had already run a cleaning business at scale, with government accounts as part of the mix.
The Client
Public sector and institutional contracts anchor the account portfolio of a commercial cleaning and janitorial services company serving the Fort Lauderdale and Miami market. The company provides scheduled cleaning programs, floor care, and maintenance services to government, office, and institutional clients across South Florida, and has grown its workforce and account base substantially in recent years as it built out the management layer to support continued expansion.
The Challenge
The Director of Operations was a new role, created to own the operation at the executive level: account performance, staffing coverage, financial discipline, bid support, and the compliance obligations of a government contract portfolio, reporting directly to the CEO.
Those compliance obligations were what set the brief apart. Public sector facility accounts in South Florida require Living Wage Ordinance and prevailing wage adherence, level 2 background clearance for all staff on site, OSHA standards, and audit-ready documentation. Direct experience carrying these requirements was essential.
The Solution
The search focused on building service contractors, commercial cleaning operators, and multi-site facilities management companies in markets where government contracting is a significant part of the business mix. Keller Executive Search targeted candidates who had held direct P&L accountability at the director level in this sector and had personally managed the compliance requirements of government facility accounts. The client’s name was not disclosed during outreach.
The Results
The appointed Director of Operations had more than 18 years in commercial cleaning, accumulated across two companies, where his role was to build the operation from the ground up.
At a commercial cleaning company in the Southwest, he led the business through a sustained growth period, expanding the account base to more than 900 clients and the workforce to more than 1,500 across three states while growing annual revenue past $7 million. He transitioned the business from manual tracking to a unified ERP platform covering field operations, billing, and sales, added mobile geo-verified quality inspections across the account portfolio, and drove client retention from 92% to 97%. He took the company into a public sector account as well, personally managing the staffing plan, level 2 background clearance compliance, and operational launch of a government facilities contract.
He also co-founded and built a commercial cleaning and building services company from inception to approximately $8 million in annual revenue, operating across four states and Puerto Rico as co-owner for more than eight years.
The Impact
Running a building service contractor with government accounts at scale calls for a specific combination: direct P&L ownership across a large distributed workforce, firsthand experience with the compliance cycle on public sector contracts, and the ability to use technology to create quality control and financial visibility across field operations. The three are not common together at the director level in this sector.
The company now has a Director of Operations who has spent his career building exactly what it is building: the staffing systems, account management discipline, compliance processes, and reporting infrastructure that a commercial cleaning business with a government contract portfolio needs to sustain service quality and scale its account base.
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