Cleaning Tips · Real Project · Case Study
Some of our biggest jobs never touched a residential kitchen. During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Orchid Cleaning was the vendor providing the recurring fogging / electrostatic disinfection service that let construction continue, legally, on Amazon's ~$100 million regional air cargo hub at Lakeland Linder International Airport. Here's what happened, with full sourcing at the bottom of the page.
By Beverly Hughes — Commercial Operations Lead, Orchid Cleaning Service.
Representative photo of an Orchid post-construction crew. We don't have on-site photography preserved from this 2019–21 engagement.
The short version: during the COVID-19 pandemic, an active Lakeland, FL construction project — Amazon's regional air cargo hub and sorting facility at Lakeland Linder International Airport, a roughly $100 million Amazon investment — could only legally keep working under pandemic-era safety protocols that included a recurring sanitation fogging / electrostatic disinfection service. Orchid Cleaning was the vendor running that service: a roughly six-month (~26-week) weekly contract at $4,750/week, for total gross billings of approximately $125,000.
A note on sourcing: this project predates Orchid's current job-tracking system (which starts in 2023). The scope, weekly rate, and total figures above come from owner Joey Maher's own business records of the engagement. Full sourcing detail is in the Methodology section below.
Amazon announced its air cargo hub at Lakeland Linder International Airport in May 2019 (Tampa Bay Times, May 21, 2019) — a specialty sorting facility for Amazon Air, not a fulfillment or distribution center. The project totaled 285,000 sq ft (a 223,000 sq ft main sorting building plus additional support/accessory warehouse space) built alongside a seven-jet cargo hangar, representing roughly $100 million in Amazon's own investment and an expected ~1,000 jobs for the area. The City of Lakeland and the airport authority separately undertook about $44.9 million in complementary airfield and landing-system upgrades to support the hub — so the combined public-and-private investment in the site was considerably larger than Amazon's figure alone. Construction ran roughly 2019–2021, squarely inside the window when Orchid's COVID-era fogging/electrostatic disinfection engagement took place.
Orchid's own account of its role: providing the weekly fogging/electrostatic disinfection service that was part of the site's COVID-19 safety compliance, as a vendor to the project (very likely the general contractor rather than Amazon directly, as is standard on large builds) — the general contractor's identity is not confirmed in our current records.
Orchid ran the site's weekly fogging and electrostatic disinfection service for roughly six months — about 26 weeks — billed at $4,750 per week, for total gross billings of approximately $125,000. The visit happened every week without exception, since the general contractor needed the site in pandemic-era safety compliance to keep construction moving.
Orchid's own digital job-tracking system only goes back to July 2023, so this contract predates line-item records; the weekly rate, duration, and total above come from Joey Maher's own business records. We also found a July 2020 customer letter from Orchid explaining COVID sanitation science — correctly distinguishing surface disinfecting from air fogging — which fits the timeline, though it doesn't name this project. Full sourcing, including what's public record versus company records, is in the Methodology section below.
Fogging and electrostatic disinfection is a different skill set from routine janitorial or post-construction cleaning — it means EPA-registered disinfectant products used correctly for airborne/surface application, the right equipment, and a crew that understands the difference between fogging (effective on air) and surface cleaning (still required for anything the virus could live on for days). On an active, high-security construction site during a public-health emergency, a vendor also has to show up on a fixed weekly schedule without fail — the whole point was keeping the project legally compliant so work didn't stop. A six-month recurring engagement on a nine-figure construction project is the kind of vote of confidence that doesn't happen without a vendor proving out the work early and repeatedly.
From EPA-registered high-touch disinfection to full electrostatic fogging programs, we've done this at a scale most cleaning companies never see. See our commercial cleaning services or more of our commercial work.
Talk to us about your project →Contract terms (weekly rate, duration, total billings, service description) are from owner Joey Maher's own account and business records of a COVID-era engagement; Orchid's current digital job-tracking system only extends back to July 2023, so these figures are not independently re-derivable from our live systems, and we searched our available historical records (HCP job cache, Google Drive documents, contract and check-payment logs) without finding surviving line-item documentation from the engagement itself. The facility itself — Amazon's regional air cargo hub and seven-jet cargo hangar at Lakeland Linder International Airport, a roughly $100 million Amazon investment covering 285,000 sq ft (223,000 sq ft main sorting building plus support/accessory warehouse space), expected to bring about 1,000 jobs to the area, with the City of Lakeland/airport authority separately investing about $44.9 million in complementary airfield and landing-system upgrades — is public record, reported by the Tampa Bay Times on May 21, 2019, when Amazon announced the project. Construction ran approximately 2019–2021. That public reporting confirms the facility and its scale and timeline; it does not confirm the general contractor Orchid worked for or the exact start/end dates of Orchid's own contract, which remain owner recollection. Orchid Cleaning Service has cleaned homes and businesses across Central Florida since 2011.
You're welcome to cite or reference this case study with attribution to Orchid Cleaning Service (orchidcleaningservice.com). Published July 2026.
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