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Evaluating Specialist Cleaning Services Contractors

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Cost of Commercial and Office cleaning

It is so easy to choose the lowest cost provider for a cleaning services company that can appear to be basic and simple to carry out. For an experienced facilities manager it is easy to see the pitfalls of installing a poor service provider however it is increasingly commonplace for inexperienced managers being given the responsibility for building services and the cleaning contract often makes up the largest part of the budget, therefore we have included some tips to avoid costs associated with re-tendering, changing suppliers or being hit by unexpected costs and legal implications. This article is especially useful for public sectors looking for education, school cleaning services company .

Commercial cleaning questions to ask

Are the costs transparent?

Did the service providers give complete cost breakdowns demonstrating what the cleaning team were being paid, what was allocated for equipment and materials?

Was there enough money allocated to providing off-site management one of the key areas to ensuring a successful cleaning service?

Below we have provided an example of an open book costing proposal for a commercial office premises, note the contractor is paying above minimum wage in an area of low unemployment, this will add to costs but demonstrates an understanding of the employment market and your area. They didn't hide the rate of pay but highlighted their profit, if they made less you would question why they wanted to provide the service or if they were capable.

Commercial office cleaning proposal

Rates are provided as a cost per hour demonstrating the value for the service; note direct labour costs are 78.4% of the overall cost, once you include equipment and materials this increases to 83.71% of the total cost thereby leaving 11.28% for management and overhead if you exclude profit or just over £1 per cleaning hour.

Commercial cleaning is a mature and highly competitive market and as budgets rarely increase in current market conditions it is increasingly important to choose the service provider that will be in a position to provide or exceed the service level agreement and meet the key performance indicators. Once a provider has been chosen and does not meet the service level agreement (SLA) and requires replacing, it is increasingly common that the budget will not meet the costs of replacement providers' who initially tendered correctly but were beaten by a lower cost bid that didn't live up to its promises.

Specialist and commercial cleaning key metrics

Recent Plimsoll reports that analyse the cleaning industry indicate up to 1/3 of contractors within the UK market are loss making, in many cases for at least 2 years and are chasing turnover to prevent collapse, this is especially the case with smaller companies suffering from not having the economies of scale of larger companies.

Therefore we recommend looking at the key metrics of the service provider's business or business intelligence, can they tell you:

How many contracts have they won and lost of what values over the last 12 months?

How many contracts and in what geographical areas do their account managers' work with?

How many references can they provide for either a similar type of contract, size of contract or managed by the proposed account manager?

How many of their customers would provide a reference for their services at any given point in time?

How do they report service delivery? Is it a paper check sheet or have they moved onto accurate live reports to include, training records, CRB checks, reference checks, health and safety, accidents at work, KPI's, correspondence?

Conclusion and final questions to ask

Having considered cost, transparency of service, the contractor's commitment to providing high levels of service through transparent reporting you face the dilemma of whether the company has the resources to meet your requirements both financially and from a service viewpoint. Are they too large to care, are you important to their business or indeed make up too large a % of their turnover and therefore a danger to their business should the relationship not work out? Do they provide the expertise and safety checks that you require to focus upon your own business with the assurance they have covered you against any exposure to commercial risk?

Popular myths include larger companies have more management or greater expertise, often this is not the case as a PLC has to answer to shareholders and faces greater pressure to provide higher returns, it may be true of a small business although you have the owner manager commitment to meeting your requirements, in the more corporate environment the references will tell the story, if you can make the time ask to meet the account manager to see if you can work together, do they understand your perspective?