Cleaning Tips · Real Project · Case Study
A five-story burn building, 29,000 square feet, and $13.5 million of federal ARPA funding — here's what it took to keep Polk County Fire Rescue's new training campus clean from mid-construction to opening day, with the real visit counts and crew-hours from our own records.
The short version: Polk County Fire Rescue's new 29,000 sq ft training facility — a $15.6 million build by Whitehead Construction, funded with $13.5M in federal American Rescue Plan (ARPA) dollars — was cleaned by Orchid crews across roughly 18 months: about 43 visits and ~710 crew-hours, from mid-construction cleans through the final construction clean before the facility opened in spring 2026.
Polk County Fire Rescue — a department with a roughly $65 million annual budget and 50 stations — opened a new training campus in spring 2026: a five-story burn building, a driving pad, vehicle and propane fire props, and EMS simulation rooms across 29,000 square feet. The Board of County Commissioners awarded the $15.6 million construction contract to Whitehead Construction (Everett Whitehead & Son, Inc.), a Winter Haven general contractor, funded by $13.5 million in federal ARPA dollars plus $2.1 million in other funding.
Orchid Cleaning was Whitehead's cleaning subcontractor on the build.
| Measure | From our job records |
|---|---|
| Engagement span | ~18 months (January 2025 → July 2026) |
| Completed crew visits | ~43, across ~40 working days |
| Total crew-hours on site | ~710 |
| Peak crew size | 7 cleaners |
| Cleaners who worked the project | 25+ |
| Final construction clean | June 26, 2026 (7-hour crew day), touch-ups into July |
A fire training campus is an unusual cleaning brief. The point of the facility is controlled burns, smoke, and heavy apparatus — but classrooms, EMS simulation rooms, offices, and the burn tower still have to hand over spotless, with construction dust, concrete residue, and trade debris gone from every level of a five-story structure. Our crews worked the same way they do on any active heavy-construction site: OSHA-compliant, scheduled around Whitehead's trade sequence, and scaled up or down visit by visit as areas finished.
Like the Winter Haven Recreation & Cultural Center, this project was built largely with federal dollars — and ARPA funding brings documented compliance requirements down to every subcontractor. Background-checked employees, OSHA-compliant crews, and paperwork that never holds up the GC. Across all of our work for Whitehead Construction — fire stations, municipal projects, and this training campus — our records show 81 visits and roughly 1,192 crew-hours. General contractors keep a sub for years for one reason: the crew shows up clean, every time.
Background-checked crews, OSHA-compliant work, progress-through-punch-list coverage. See our post-construction cleaning service or more of our commercial work.
Talk to us about your project →Visit counts, crew-hours, crew sizes, and dates come from Orchid Cleaning Service's own completed-job records in our field-management software (crew-hours are per-visit on-site time multiplied by crew size; scheduled time is used where clock data is incomplete). Project facts: Polk County Fire Rescue department page (~$65M budget, 50 stations); Polk County Fire Rescue announcement of the $15.6M contract award to Whitehead Construction with $13.5M ARPA funding; FOX 13 and Tampa Bay 28 coverage of the facility's opening (29,000 sq ft, five-story burn building); Whitehead Construction's projects page. Orchid Cleaning Service has cleaned homes and businesses across Central Florida since 2012.
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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