i forgot to mention that the building has glass balconies ( panels) all around it (we need to clean only the balconies / panels) each glass panel is about 4’x4’ square there’s around 4,600 panels, if I price it by panels @ $8-10 I’m at $37K to $46K , the panels are really dirty.
Hey [MENTION=41880]TopRope[/MENTION] welcome to WCR. Where is the first part of your question?
Hummm…can’t find it…the fist part was that I’m bidding on a 46 story high round building with only balconies we are 2 guys and it will take us about 18-21 days I calculated 8 hours a day it will be nice to price it at $1600 a day…times 18. But from what I heard it’s more like $350. I gave a first quote for $32000 for one time…but now I feel like I need to change it to $32000 for 2 times a year…Soooo I’m New to this business, but it is really that low???
I have no idea of your area, however I really can’t see this being an acceptable figure.
I worked for a high rise commercial company for 12 years and here in Australia each man is on around $25/hr so about $200 for wages add another $200 for costs still a way off your $800 per man per day.
I have a feeling there may be other quotes for the same building that are half if not less than your 32k, from my experience rope work does not generally pay more than every other type of window cleaning, in fact it tends to be the other way around.
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It used to not be that way…
I’m not sure when that trend changed. Maybe the late nineties/Early 2000’s
At one point there was a lot more competition (in my personal experience) and that would sensibly drive things south.
But I can’t see the same numbers of really solid commercial people these days.
Also, the commercial real estate took a nose dive shortly after.
My personal guess: those who experienced this beating/change are the ones who set the new bar.
(the new bar, being lowball)
I’m kind of passing blame on the owners, I DO know quite a few who were rolling, and now wonder “what happened?”
I used to hate it on a rope its much more physical on many jobs and it would always be more time consuming, we worked off a pay structure that was split evenly there was a set amount of hours on every job, if we went over we would be payed for those additional hours but it meant that all hours we made would equate to only standard hourly rate.
However when you averaged out the hourly rate for fast rope guys vs fast other window cleaning work the rope guys normally had to work more hours to earn as much as the guys that never touched a rope.
the pay structure worked well on many jobs, many times we would be payed for 15 hours when only spending 5 on the job and/or similar but the split on the rope jobs you generally had 1 newbie who was slow so he only got hourly til he/she was fast as the rest of us but still when 1 guy is doing 1 drop to your 2 then its a real downer and drains the hours fast.
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Thanks guys for the heads up I sent a new qoute half the price $1600, let see how this goes. …by the way has anyone can recommended on liability insurance in the U.S for high rise window cleaning?
I have found that you can partner with the building owners. They want to have the same company do that work year after year. It is a pain in the butt to bring on a new company and get them vetted. Contract talks are easy if you are completely honest with them. You want a evergreen contract and decent wages that is in your best interest and theirs. Be courteous friendly dress like a professional. Have on your works clothing even during negotiations. They want to see you in action. It is like poetry in motion.
Try to mix hi rise and ground work with your crews. It works believe me. Stage or saddle work is hard on your body. We all need a break. Your crews will love you for it. Generally your work load will fill up in short order. Having help is the key to a good business and by the way women are by far better window cleaners than men. They are on time. Work harder without all that macho crap. Try it you will like it. Everyone needs a couple of laddies on their crew. Balance has its own reward. You will be the winner if you have the best crews in the business.
Without photos of building -anchors-degree of difficulty hard to give advice here but I say price high before low on a job that size and height (here in the US not supposed to exceed 300 feet for chair work according to the IWCA I!4.1 unless it cant be done with suspended scaffolding)…One factor that jumps off the page for me is you only have a crew of 3 so if you take this monster on you have to factor in work you will lose when you cant get to it-especially last minute calls that are willing to pay a premium. In other words price it high then look at lowest possible number then meet in middle.Sometimes bids are 1 shot 1 deal others are negotiable so you start a little higher than you want to give client sense he won a victory and saved some $…Another factor is job to be performed in extreme heat-cold or during your busy or slow season? ANy high rise over 200 feet i schedule for June to Septmember in the NE region of the US to avoid the windy season.
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One way of making your investment into highrise window cleaning pay off would be to advertise to the tenants. Send a notice that you will be cleaning the exterior window and would like to apologise for any inconvenience this might cause. No need to worry you are highly trained professionals. Any questions or concerns please call and put your phone number or internet address and you also do residential window cleaning with a deep discount for all your commercial customers homes and businesses. Leverage your exposure, wear shirts that advertise your contact information and a large truck wrapped with your advertising that can be seen by as many potential customers as possible.
I’d say you’re totally right. We got into high-rise around 2006, its probably around 25% of our work now. When we started, we realized some people bid lower hourly on high rise than most companies would for residential. That or they’re just terrible at estimating on the job hours.
In my experience once there is a low bid on a building, the property manager will adjust their budget and usually there is no way they’ll ever accept a higher bid after that, because the last thing they want to do is add to their budget when they already had a company do it for beans.
For us some of our high rise has baseline low profits (which we usually only accept because there are other high profit buildings included in a package with it) and some with very high profits and they kind of balance themselves out. We’re definitely shifting to more residential/small commercial, less headaches and more profit. We usually never get new high rise jobs because someone is always there to lowball (not going to name names)…
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Well that’s the saving grace, is when you have other jobs, within the contract, that makes up for the ‘shit eater.’
And it’s like anything else, when it balances, it’s good.
My problem was when those bad jobs would get singled out and less of the Frosting Jobs were included.
After so long, I just said “F-it.”
But it’s like I was saying in another thread about winter/regular work…
You find the percentages of what jobs outweigh the bad ones and accumulation brings more numbers according to those percentages.
Honestly, more than anything… I just got sick of having a single boss, in control of long periods of my/our time.
If I don’t like the way things are going right now, I can walk… I got another one scheduled in an hour.
JM window you hit the nail-post 2008 financial crash the new normal is once a pm firm gets a low price it doesnt matter if they fired the firm for whatever reason they use that as a benchmark for future bidders. Boston MA is now dominated by several low cost service providers (1 of them markets himself as such!) which makes it an exercise in futility.If you are willing to drop clients as fast as you gain them or dont care about your rep if you are in a large market with plenty of work,then high rise is the way to go…The other problem in beantown is the large cleaning firms giving away the windows to get the office cleaning accounts -good biz on paper but terrible for our industrry.If they get caught skimming the work they just tell the client they are doing it at a loss or breakeven and are you willing to disrupt the entire jan san contract to fire us…its discouraging at times but there are clients willing to pay for quality-experience-safety if you are diligent
