Resources
Janitorial bids, compared task by task
Proposals for one property can share a price range and still promise different work. A single grid of areas, tasks and nights shows where they part ways before you sign.
Request a quoteCall (408) 668-0624
Rebuild every bid on a single grid
Each cleaning company writes its proposal in its own format. One lists work room by room, another sorts it by nightly, weekly and monthly duties, and a third sums up the whole building in a paragraph. Read side by side, they look comparable. They usually aren’t, and the only way to tell is to translate all of them into one layout before you judge any of them.
Build a spreadsheet with the building’s areas down the left: entry and lobby, tenant suites or open office, private offices, conference rooms, restrooms, breakroom, corridors, stairwells, elevator cabs, and any storage, mail or fitness rooms. Give each bidder a column. In every cell, copy the task and frequency that bid actually commits to, in its own words. Where a bid says nothing, leave the cell empty.
The empty cells are your question list. A blank is not a sign that the work is missing, only that it wasn’t written down, and anything unwritten is hard to hold anyone to later.
Read the task wording closely
Two bids can both say “restrooms cleaned nightly” and mean very different things. One means fixtures, mirrors, partitions, dispensers and a mopped floor. The other means toilets wiped and trash pulled. Ask each bidder to break its restroom, breakroom and workstation lines into the individual tasks a crew checks off, then compare those lists.
Watch for wording that sounds complete but narrows the work:
- “Dust as needed” instead of a stated surface and interval
- “Vacuum traffic areas” nightly, with full-room vacuuming only weekly
- “Empty trash” with no mention of recycling or compost streams
- “Spot clean glass” when you expect entry doors cleaned every night
None of these is wrong on its own. They simply describe a lighter program than a bid that lists every surface every night, and the grid makes that visible.
Convert every frequency to visits per week
Frequencies arrive in mixed units. One proposal offers five nights a week, another offers three nights plus a midday porter, a third promises daily service without saying which days count. Turn all of them into the same measure: how many times each area is serviced in a normal week, and which tasks happen on which of those visits.
“As needed” is not a frequency. When you see it, ask what triggers the task, who decides, and whether it costs extra when it happens. Ask about holidays too: which ones the bidder skips, and whether a skipped night is made up or simply dropped.
Once each bid is expressed as weekly visits per area, a schedule that looked generous often turns out thin in exactly the rooms your tenants notice most, such as the restrooms and the breakroom.
Put periodic work on its own rows
Periodic work is where bids drift furthest apart. Hard-floor scrubbing and refinishing, carpet extraction, high dusting, interior glass detailing and restroom deep cleaning happen monthly, quarterly or a few times a year. One bidder builds them into the recurring price, another lists them as extras quoted separately, and a third leaves them out entirely.
Add a row for each periodic task beneath the nightly grid and record, for every bid, whether it is included, at what interval, and in which areas. If one bid includes floor refinishing twice a year and another omits it, the difference in the recurring number reflects a difference in work, not efficiency. The same holds for carpet extraction and restroom deep cleaning.
Ask how each bidder schedules that work, too. A periodic task with a named month on a written calendar tends to happen. One that waits for someone to call it in tends to slide, and a year later the floors and carpets show it. Record which bids attach dates and which leave the timing open.
Check who stocks the restrooms
Consumables are easy to overlook in a bid review. Find out, for each proposal, who buys the toilet tissue, hand towels, soap and can liners, who keeps the dispensers filled, and who owns and maintains the dispensers themselves. One bid can include restocking with product supplied, another can assume you hand over stock from your own closet.
Note the same for equipment and cleaning chemicals, which the cleaning company normally brings, and for storage: whether the crew needs a lockable closet with a sink, and whether the building has one. A missing janitor’s closet changes how a crew works more than most buyers expect. See janitorial supplies for how restocking can ride inside a cleaning program.
Compare hours, staffing and oversight
Labor hours are the clearest sign of how much work a bid can actually deliver. Ask every bidder how many crew hours per night the price assumes, what time the crew starts and finishes, and whether that window fits your alarm, lockup and tenant schedules. Two bids with identical task lists and very different hours deserve a direct question about how the shorter shift gets it all done.
Look at crew turnover and absence cover as well. Ask who covers the building when a regular cleaner is out, how a replacement learns the building’s alarm codes and quirks, and whether the same person cleans your floors most nights. Consistency on the night crew shows up in the details a task list can’t capture.
Then compare oversight: who supervises the night crew, how quality inspections are run and reported, who your single contact is, how a tenant complaint gets logged and closed, and whether the company provides a certificate of insurance for your files. Continental’s quotes follow a walkthrough of the property and set out every area, task and frequency in writing, so they slot straight into a grid like this one.
Close the gaps with one clarified scope
When the grid is full, the gaps usually fall in the same places: interior glass and entry doors, elevator cabs and stairwells, breakroom appliance fronts, high and low dusting, light switches and door hardware, recycling streams, and carrying trash out to the enclosure. Mark every item that one bid includes and another skips.
Rather than negotiating each bid on its own terms, write one clarified scope that covers everything you want and send it to every bidder for a revised proposal. Now the bids answer the same question, and the comparison is fair. The guide to building a facility services scope walks through how to write that document. When you’re ready to add Continental to the list, request a walkthrough and we’ll price against your grid.
A few useful answers
Common questions.
Should every bidder see the same walkthrough?
Yes. Give each one the same tour, the same floor plan and the same answers, and send any clarification you give one bidder to all of them in writing. Different information produces bids you can’t compare.
What if one bid comes in far below the others?
Put it on the grid before you react to it. A big gap usually traces back to fewer service nights, fewer crew hours, periodic work left out or supplies billed separately. If the task list and hours really do match, ask the bidder to explain how.
Can a porter-plus-night bid be compared with a night-only bid?
Yes. Convert both to hours of coverage and weekly visits for each area. Daytime porter hours count toward restrooms, lobbies and breakrooms, and the grid shows whether the night shift still covers everything else.
How many bids should a building collect?
Enough to see a pattern, which for most buildings means three or four from companies that walked the property. More than that adds review time without adding much information.
What should I ask a bidder after the grid is done?
Ask about every empty cell, every “as needed” and every periodic task with no interval. The answers belong in the revised proposal, not in an email you’ll lose.