Blog

We at TIDY feel like we are close to fully automating cleaning and maintenance management, so no human is required. We expect to achieve roughly human level cleaning and maintenance management by the end of 2025, and superhuman by the end of 2026. Our approach of having humans in the loop allow us to serve customers as if AI is ready, and deeply understand the remaining issues. As we get close to and surpass human level, we expect to see more edge cases come up and we plan to add the missing pieces to this benchmark. We could be wrong on the dates, but after 10 years in the business we seem close.

We are throwing down a challenge to the industry. We are happy to compete and figure out how to create completely autonomous cleaning and maintenance operations.

The benchmark outlines the critical features that a fully autonomous cleaning and maintenance management system should have. While actual cleaning and maintenance tasks may still require human work, the focus here is on automating complex coordination—managing vendors, scheduling, quality control, compliance, and overall business operations.

To be effective, a system must handle both routine operations and unusual or emergency situations. The checklist details standard features and challenging edge cases, such as:

• Basic scheduling and vendor coordination.
• Handling emergency situations.
• Managing multi-party disputes without human intervention.

The benchmark is divided into eight main categories:

1. Property Understanding: Create a digital twin by mapping property data, assets, surfaces, and more.
2. Task Requirements: Define and manage work needs based on property details and client preferences.
3. Vendor Management: Coordinate service providers with cost and timing optimization.
4. Schedule Management: Handle job scheduling and manage unexpected edge cases.
5. Quality Control: Verify that work is completed to the required standards.
6. Property Updates: Keep records updated with completed work, inventory changes, and property conditions.
7. Financial Operations: Manage all aspects of payment processing.
8. Third-Party Integrations: Seamlessly connect with external systems.

These categories help companies:

• Assess their current level of management automation.
• Identify gaps in their autonomous capabilities.
• Plan development roadmaps to increase automation.
• Benchmark against industry standards.
• Validate systems against real-world edge cases.

Each category includes detailed criteria to ensure systems can handle tasks without human intervention. While it's a comprehensive list, the idea is to aim for most of these capabilities—similar to a typical human performance. Achieving all could mean the system outperforms most humans.

Here's a snapshot of how vendors have scored so far, in the v1 of this benchmark:

Note: More detailed results will be published as additional vendors participate in the benchmark.

• Submit Your Vendor: If your system automates cleaning and maintenance management, please submit a PR. Your submission should include your system's name, a description, and a demo or another form of validation.
• Improve the Checklist: We welcome improvements and suggestions. If you have ideas to make the checklist more specific or relevant, create a PR with your changes.