CMM Magazine
CMM Magazine — formally Cleaning & Maintenance Management — is an American trade magazine for the professional cleaning and facility services industry. Published by ISSA, the worldwide cleaning industry association, and based in Rosemont, Illinois, it serves the people responsible for cleaning and maintaining healthcare facilities, schools and universities, government buildings, offices and other public and commercial properties. Founded in 1964, CMM describes itself as the oldest title serving the industry. Its brand today spans a print and digital magazine at CMMOnline.com, daily and monthly e-newsletters, webcasts and training resources for building service contractors, in-house facility managers and facility service providers.
Founded in 1964
CMM was founded in 1964, at a time when commercial cleaning was becoming a distinct, organised industry rather than an informal, invisible service. Office towers, hospitals, schools and public buildings were growing larger and more technically complex, and the managers responsible for them needed practical information about cleaning methods, chemicals, equipment, staffing and costs. A specialist magazine gave that emerging profession a shared source of guidance. Over six decades CMM has kept that focus on the end user of cleaning services — the contractor or in-house team that actually cleans and maintains buildings — rather than on manufacturers alone, a positioning its publisher still emphasises today.
The magazine's longevity gives it a particular standing. ISSA's media materials note that CMM has been the voice of the industry's end user since 1964, read by top-level decision-makers in education, healthcare, commercial, retail, hospitality and industrial facilities who rely on it for business management advice and operational best practice. Few publications in the cleaning sector can claim a comparable continuous history.
Ownership by ISSA
CMM is owned and published by ISSA, the worldwide cleaning industry association. ISSA counts more than 10,500 member firms, including building service contractors, in-house service providers, distributors, manufacturers, manufacturer representatives, wholesalers and residential cleaning companies. The association is headquartered in Rosemont, Illinois, with offices around the globe, and CMM's offices share the Rosemont address at 10275 West Higgins Road.
ISSA acquired the CMM family of brands in September 2014 from Grand View Media Group, a subsidiary of EBSCO Industries based in Birmingham, Alabama. The acquisition included Cleaning & Maintenance Management magazine, CMMOnline.com, the CM e-News Daily newsletter and the Cleaning Management Institute. Announcing the deal, ISSA's leadership said the purchase supported the association's goal of strengthening the global cleaning community and increasing appreciation for cleaning as an investment in human health, the environment and the bottom line. ISSA said it would run the CMM programmes separately from its existing products while maintaining the standards readers expected. The association later added the Cleanfax brand for carpet cleaning and disaster restoration professionals to the same media family, building a portfolio that also includes its own ISSA Today publication.
Who Reads CMM
CMM's audience has two main groups. The first is building service contractors, or BSCs — independent companies contracted to clean offices, schools, hospitals and other facilities. The second is in-house facility services managers and custodial leaders employed directly by schools, universities, healthcare systems, government agencies and commercial property owners. Both groups share similar problems: recruiting and retaining front-line cleaning staff, training and supervising teams, choosing chemicals and equipment, controlling costs, meeting infection prevention and sustainability expectations, and demonstrating the value of cleaning to senior management or clients.
That audience shapes the editorial agenda. Articles are written for managers rather than solely for front-line cleaners, with an emphasis on systems, standards and leadership: how to workload a building fairly, how to bid a contract profitably, how to build a training programme, and how to measure whether cleaning is actually being done well.
Editorial Coverage: Operations and Health
Operational cleaning practice is the magazine's core subject. Recurring topics include hard floor and carpet care, restroom cleaning and design, waste handling, and the maintenance of specialist surfaces. Recent issues, for example, have examined maintaining sustainable flooring materials such as bamboo and cork, caring for high-traffic school floors, and using data-driven workloading to remove guesswork from staffing decisions, alongside guidance on autonomous mobile robots being introduced into floor care programmes.
Health and safety coverage has grown steadily in importance. CMM regularly addresses infection control in settings such as long-term care facilities, where cleaning must protect vulnerable residents while meeting regulatory requirements; indoor air quality and its common building-related causes; safe handling of cleaning chemicals, including risks of prolonged exposure; hearing protection for equipment operators; biofilms on surfaces; and emerging hazards such as narcotic residue in hospitality venues. The underlying theme is the one ISSA promotes across its work — that professional cleaning protects health, not merely appearance.
Business, Workforce and Benchmarking
Because many readers run businesses or departments, CMM devotes substantial space to management. Its Building Service Contractor Benchmarking Survey reports on labour challenges, purchasing habits and business performance among contractors nationwide, giving firms data against which to compare themselves. Other coverage tackles employee retention beyond pay — including recognition, communication and credentialing — generational differences in facility teams, budgeting for facility maintenance, asset management, contractor oversight and succession and leadership development. Business features in recent editions have ranged from pricing and bidding jobs profitably to building flexibility into annual facility budgets for unexpected events.
Training and professional development form a related strand. CMM covers credentialing and certification, new training methods including virtual reality, and the work of the Cleaning Management Institute, the training arm that came with the brand to ISSA. It argues consistently that credentials and structured training build customer trust, improve consistency and help employers keep experienced staff in a high-turnover industry.
Sustainability and Technology
Sustainability is a long-standing theme, reflecting both client demand and regulation. CMM has covered safer cleaning product choices and programmes such as Safer Choice, sustainable management of construction and demolition waste, zero-waste policies in facilities, and environmentally preferable consumables. Technology coverage follows the tools changing custodial work: autonomous cleaning machines and robots, data-producing dispensers, sensor-informed restroom servicing, and software for scheduling, inspection and quality measurement. The magazine's approach is evaluative rather than promotional, focusing on implementation — how a facility moves a new machine or system from pilot to routine, profitable use — and on the workforce implications of automation.
The Magazine Today: Issues and Digital Brand
CMM now publishes in combined bimonthly issues, such as its September/October and July/August editions, available in digital format alongside print. A typical issue mixes feature articles, departments and columns from industry consultants and association experts, plus product showcases tied to the cleaning calendar. Recent editions previewed education and networking at ISSA Show North America — the association's major trade event, returning to Las Vegas — and covered seasonal readiness, from winterisation and snow and ice removal to preparing facilities for extreme weather, fire prevention in high-risk building areas such as commercial kitchen exhaust systems, and emergency preparedness.
Beyond the magazine, the CMM brand includes its website, updated with news and articles, daily and monthly e-newsletters, and webcasts. ISSA's media planning materials have put CMM's print circulation in the tens of thousands, with tens of thousands more newsletter subscribers and website visitors, positioning it alongside ISSA Today and Cleanfax as one of the association's three main media brands, each aimed at a different segment of the cleaning market.
Role in the Cleaning Industry
CMM occupies a distinctive place because it is both a trade magazine and the publication of its industry's global association. That gives it direct access to ISSA's research, standards, education programmes and events, and it aligns its editorial mission with the association's campaign to change how the world views cleaning — from a cost to be minimised to a service that safeguards health, assets and organisational performance. For contractors and facility managers, it functions as a professional journal of practice: a place to compare benchmarks, learn methods, follow product and regulatory developments and see their work treated as skilled and consequential.
From its founding in 1964 to its current home with ISSA in Rosemont, Cleaning & Maintenance Management has followed the professionalisation of cleaning for more than sixty years. As buildings have added infection control duties, sustainability targets and smart technology to the custodial brief, CMM has expanded with them, while keeping its original promise: practical solutions for the professionals who keep public and commercial facilities clean, safe and running.
