Facility management for food facilities
Cleaning, pest control, drainage and water treated as prerequisite programmes, because on a food site that is exactly what they are.
On a food site the facilities work is part of the food safety system. Pest control, sanitation, drainage, water and building fabric are prerequisite programmes, assessed with your HACCP plan, and the records have to agree with what your own plan says you do.
Facilities work is inside your food safety system
Every other sector can treat FM as a service that supports the operation. A food facility cannot. The pest programme, the cleaning schedule, the drainage condition, the water storage record and the state of the building fabric are all prerequisite programmes, which means an auditor assesses them as part of your system rather than as your contractor's business. That has a practical consequence most providers never grasp: the FM records have to line up with your HACCP documentation, use your approved products and be producible by your technical team on the day. Each record has to show what your approved procedure requires, whoever's format it is in, and work done properly but recorded without that is a gap in your system, not your contractor's.
- A prerequisite programme is judged on records, and the work almost always happened
- Cleaning chemicals have to come from your approved list, used where they are approved
- Pest monitoring density and the site map have to match the building as it is now
- Drainage falls, floor condition and fabric defects become food safety findings, not maintenance ones
- An SFDA inspection or a customer audit arrives without notice, so the file has to be assembled already
The programmes we run on a food site
Each is a normal FM line everywhere else. Here each one is also a document in your food safety system.
Pest control
Mapped monitoring points, trend analysis per point, proofing tracked to close, records formatted to file straight into your prerequisite programme.
Read morePrerequisiteSanitation and disinfection
An area schedule with the product, dilution and contact time per area, verified where your plan calls for it.
Read moreFMIndustrial cleaning
Shutdown deep cleans with a handback time and verification, because a visual standard is not always the requirement.
Read moreFMPlumbing
Tank records, backflow protection, floor drains and interceptors, which is where most food site drainage findings come from.
Read moreFMPlanned maintenance
Fabric, doors, seals, lighting and glass registers alongside plant, because foreign body risk is a maintenance output.
Read moreFMHVAC
Air handling, filtration and pressure regimes in production areas, with readings recorded rather than assumed.
Read moreWhat the licence and the schemes ask for
The FM scope creates none of these obligations. It decides whether the facilities records are in the building, in your format, when one of them is checked.
| Requirement | What it means on site |
|---|---|
| SFDA operating licence | SFDA's own licensing guide for food and feed manufacturers and warehouses, published February 2025, lists a HACCP certificate from an accredited certification body among the required documents. Applications run through the Ghad platform. |
| Prerequisite programmes | Pest control, cleaning and sanitation, water, waste, maintenance and fabric. These are the FM lines, assessed as part of your system. |
| GFSI recognised schemes | FSSC 22000 or BRCGS where a retailer, exporter or multinational customer requires a GFSI-recognised scheme. FSSC 22000 version 7 was published in May 2026. Version 6 audits continue until 30 April 2027, and upgrade audits to version 7 run from 1 May 2027 to 30 April 2028. |
| SFDA inspection | Unannounced, and targeted at whether HACCP is present and effective, plus traceability. The evidence has to be in the building. |
| Customer audits | Frequently stricter than the regulator and always more frequent. Retail and multinational buyers audit the facility alongside the product. |
| Environmental and municipal | Effluent, interceptors and waste routes, governed by NCEC nationally or by the Royal Commission inside its cities, with municipal requirements on the premises. |
What technical managers ask
Will your records satisfy an SFDA or BRCGS auditor?
They are built to what those schemes look for: a current site map, a record per visit, trend data over time and actions closed with evidence. We cannot promise how an individual auditor will assess your whole system, and these programmes are always judged as part of it. What we will not do is leave you looking for a document on the day.
Do you certify us to HACCP or ISO 22000?
No. ITF certifies nothing. Food safety system implementation is separate work handled by our consultancy division, and certification belongs to a certification body you choose independently.
Can you use our approved chemical list?
Yes, and on a food site that is usually the right answer, because your list has been approved against your own system. Where we recommend a change we bring the data sheet and the reason to your technical team rather than swapping a product quietly.
How do you schedule work around production?
Around your windows, with high risk areas worked when the line is down and low risk areas worked live. Anything that could introduce a contamination or foreign body risk goes in a shutdown with a method statement, and hygiene clearance before restart is part of the package rather than an afterthought.
What does a typical engagement look like?
A snack manufacturer in Riyadh 2nd Industrial City has a retailer audit in ten weeks and a previous finding on drainage, and its cleaning contractor uses its own chemicals rather than the plant's approved list. We rewrite the area cleaning schedule against the plant's HACCP documentation, switch to its approved products and add verification on named high-risk surfaces. Floor drains in the fryer hall go on a documented cleaning cycle, the interceptor on a cycle set by output, and the glass and brittle plastics register is rebuilt on the fabric round. The technical manager ends up holding an area schedule aligned with the plan, a verification log, a drainage cycle record, the pest site map and trend report, and the fabric and glass registers, all filed in the plant's prerequisite programme folder.
We have a finding against our pest programme. Can you take it over mid-contract?
Yes, and the first output is a new survey rather than an inherited map. Taking a previous provider's site map on trust is how a gap gets carried into your next audit. Keep their trend history and give it to us, because the history is worth more than the map.
Part of one system
Every division keeps records to the same standard, so the second one you need works the way the first one did.
Book a site survey
On a food site the survey looks at the fabric, the drainage, the pest map and the records together, because that is how an auditor will look at them.