Janitorial competitive bidding (rant) and ?'s

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1

Hello all, well I am upset and dissaponited this evening. I can’t believe what others are charging for commercial janitorial these days.

This week I went to two mandatory walk-throughs with owners of other companies. Both county buildings are county libraries located in a wealthy neighboring county. The nicer of the two buildings is maybe two years old located blocks from gated million dollar mansion communities. 16,000 sq ft. building, beautiful, kids room for projects, lobby, 3 bathrooms, several private study areas behind closed doors, and I counted apx. 275 separate windows that need to be cleaned quarterly, 32 of which are 25ft high inside and must be accessed from the tile roof outside. About 14,000 sq ft. of commercial carpet that is cleaned semi annually. Regular duties dusting, trash, spot mop, and carpet spotting, all baths cleaned three times a week.

So roughly you will be able to complete this work nightly mon, wed, fri, and other work as described for the current rock bottom price of 856/mo.

I about crapped myself when I finally asked for clarification about the pricing frequency. The numbers “almost” work if that bid price was priced for semi monthly.

Lets break that down to a weekly visit 856/mo x 12 months = 10272 yearly/ 52 weeks = 197 weekly /3x week = $68.58, for 68 bucks there is about 4-6 hours a night, I would gross about 17.60/hr

The point of bidding on buildings like these is so I can hire someone to do it so I can go bid more, right ?

I’ve had two jani accounts for 11 yrs and another for 6 yrs w/o much experience with competitive bidding. I could hire both of these buildings out anytime and pay someone on the books 15 or maybe more a hour.

How do these companies bid at such bottom feeder prices ?? You could never pay someone more than 8/hr and pay taxes, and materials, ect.

What gives ? am I missing something you old hats could teach me about ?

2

Who provided the $856/mth number?

3

The county gave that number in the email/bid/contract terms, as the current contract price. Just as an added note the contract term is for 2 years.

4

sounds like you should let the current company continue it at that price…unless they went out of business:cool:

5

They turn around and pay their help $7 - $8 bucks an hour. This is why i hate commercial work altogether. Price seems to always be the selling point.

6

Did you really just call me an “old hat”?

jk

The reality is, in these cases, they are getting the work done for peanuts, from people who value their own time at $8/hr.

You can’t win in this game, if hey are showing up and doing even a mediocre job.

If you have a conscientious, serious competitor that doesn’t value their own time very highly, you’re dead in the water.

Commercial janitorial is even more notorious than commercial window cleaning for this, since its an even higher ratio of immigrant workers happy not be getting shot at or living in a refugee camp.

(true story, no disrespect intended or implied, just the way it is)

7

But then again I guess I would work for $8/hr too if I didn’t pay taxes, lived in subsidized housing, was on food stamps/ebt/or wic, got free bus fare, and gov’t assistance to pay my utility bills.

8

Not every $8/hr worker fits the profile you despise so greatly.

9

No - I was speaking on behalf of myself only. One more drop to the melting pot… :frowning:

10

I agree. Two years ago I put in a bid for the county here. 70 buildings. I lost the bid. Winning bid was like 46 grand and that was for 2 cleanings per year on some of the buildings. I would not have been so freaked out but I know these buildings because I live here. One of the buildings is a HUGE county justice complex. There are others that are 4 and 5 floors high with glass walkways over roads. Like I said I was shocked. Well the bidding opened again this year and they removed some of the buildings from their list. I put in a bid again but this time I went $1 below on every building from the last bid. I wanted to see if I would actually get this. I was prepared to complete the work. Still lost the bid by $3000.00. Same company won.

What shocked me was I never ever seen a company clean any of these buildings and I pass them everyday. I’m sure I could be missing the guys cleaning but never once has the glass looked like it was ever cleaned. This glass is so dirty if I could not notice they were recently cleaned I should get my eyes checked. But anyway after that last bid I stopped bothering. The winning bid was for like 28 grand now. Just insane.

This is one of the main reasons jani companies have been trying to fight the US government on a law they are trying to pass or have passed by now. Not sure. But it would require them to prove the employees are legit to work in the US. Also any of these companys doing business with the fed’s were going to have backround scopes run to really make sure these employees are allowed to work in the US.

Easy to pay someone dirt wages who knows they could be kicked out of the country at anytime. I also ran across a company in atlantic city who were cleaning Ballys casino. Don’t remember the exact number now, but there were like 5 mexicans not one speaking english on a manlift. I asked the one mexican who looked like he was in charge how work was etc, and introduced myself. We got to talking about pay and they were paid $7.50 per hour. $0.25 over the states minimum wage.

11

For all those interested the bids came in:

The 16,000 sq ft library came in at 756/mo. ouch to the person doing that job thats 100 less than the previous bid with more work added in.

Its this building:

El Dorado County Library El Dorado Hills Branch

The other library went for I believe 605/mo for an older 10,000 sq ft. building

El Dorado County Library Cameron Park Branch

Maybe the prices reflect the economy ?

We are going out today to pass out flyers, wish us luck!

12

Tysonh,

These building vary on production rate. A ton of factors taken in. Let say this 16k building has production rate @ 5k sq ft, hr. That 3.2hr, round up 3.5hrs. 3.5/ 58.20 = 16.62hr. If company Nation wide, thy will come in @ 16hr all day long. In general cleaning, you can avg around 18-20hr, unless you want compete for bigger stuff that nation wide companys want.

Very sad hourly rate… In order to survive in this business, VOLUME the key.

Some of this is economy, other part compention.

13

5 to 7 cents/square foot is about all you can expect for government buildings.

That always chaps me. Whenever the city or county wants to hire an administrator or bureaucrat, they always try to justify paying the highest salary in the state for that position because they want “a quality person,” but when they want me to provide paper or floor finish or cleaning services, they demand it at 25% under my cost. Then, after the lowball bidder scams them or provides an inferior product, they whine and cry about the quality.

I stopped doing RFB’s a few years back and I will only provide a RFP for a project if they make it worth my while. They pay their buddies thousands in consulting fees, but want me to detail my proposal so they can use it as bid specs for free…I don’t think so

14

Have you considered offering your services to spec out the job? They might be interested, you never know.

15

More than once. I used to work with them and they started abusing the relationship. I would work to put the wording of the RFB’s specs together and when the bid sheets came out, they had taken my specs and reworded them to narrow the qualifications to a select few. They were rigging the bids thru the spec sheets so they could control which companies could meet the qualifications so they could award the bids to whom they wanted.