Procurement
How to read a janitorial bid without getting taken
Four numbers separate a real commercial cleaning bid from one that will be renegotiated in ninety days: cleanable square feet, productivity rate, burden, and supervision hours.
Three bids land on your desk within eleven percent of each other and one is thirty percent below. The low bid is not a better company. It is a different set of assumptions, and you can find them in about twenty minutes if you know which four numbers to pull out.
1. Cleanable square feet, not gross square feet
Gross leasable area includes shafts, mechanical rooms, stacked storage and space that is never touched. Cleanable square footage is the area actually serviced. A bid priced off the rent roll is usually 8 to 15 percent high on area and will be renegotiated the moment the vendor works out what they signed.
Ask every bidder for their measured area, broken out by space type. If two bidders disagree by more than a few percent, one of them has not walked the building.
2. Productivity rate per labour hour
This is the number that reveals whether a bid is deliverable. It is how many cleanable square feet one technician covers in one hour, and it varies enormously by space type.
| Space type | Cleanable sq ft per labour hour | What moves the number |
|---|---|---|
| Open plan office | 3,200 to 4,500 | Desk density, waste at desk versus central, carpet versus hard floor |
| Private offices and corridors | 2,600 to 3,600 | Door count, furniture, glass |
| Restrooms | 250 to 500 | Fixture count is the driver, not floor area |
| Exam and treatment rooms | 900 to 1,600 | Terminal versus routine, equipment to be wiped down |
| Classrooms | 2,400 to 3,400 | Desk count, floor type, whether chairs are stacked |
| Warehouse aisles | 18,000 to 30,000 | Ride on scrubber, racking layout, traffic windows |
3. Fully burdened labour rate
A wage is not a cost. The cost is the wage plus payroll taxes, workers compensation at the janitorial class rate, general liability, unemployment insurance, paid time off, training hours, uniforms and equipment. In Illinois that burden typically lands between 28 and 42 percent on top of the base wage.
A bid priced from a bare wage is either a subcontracting arrangement dressed up as employment, or a company that has not run the arithmetic. Both end the same way.
4. Supervision hours, stated separately
If supervision does not appear as its own line, it is not funded, and the crew is unsupervised on your site at 11pm. Ask for supervision as a percentage of total labour hours and for the name of the person who walks the building. A working supervisor on shift and an account manager who inspects monthly are two different roles, and a serious bid prices both.
The question that ends the conversation
Ask each bidder to show you a real, redacted monthly quality pack from a live account of similar size. A company with an inspection programme will send it the same day. A company without one will send you a brochure.
About this article
Written for a demonstration website. Desmond Achterberg is a fictional person and Meridian Facility Services is a fictional company. The operational guidance reflects real commercial cleaning practice, and every figure given as a range is a range because the real answer is building specific.