[jo5hm4n]

Fairly new to commercial, but been asked to quote for a large hospital building.  6 Monthly exterior only.  Will be the biggest commercial job i've ever taken on.  I'm estimating somewhere between 1000-2000 windows maybe more.  Haven't done my site visit yet.

Just wondering if any on here can give me any tips at all.  How to price a job like this?  For those who already do large commercial jobs.  How much turnover wise would you expect from 1 van 1 man, and also 1 van 2 man in order to make it pay.  I'm thinking £500 for 2 man 1 van is good considering we normally only aim for around £250-£350 turnover per day on domestics.

Before anyone tells me to stay clear, i've already decided i want to break more into commercial and have a bit of a new challenge with hopefully some decent rewards at the end of it all.

Any advice appreciated.

Thanks

[Richard iSparkle]

the most important thing is not to underquote it.

getting a big job at a bad price can be really bad for you.

its better not to get the job, than to get the job at a bad price.

as an absolute minimum look for your maximum day rate on domestics. then you shouldn't go too wrong.

your day rate of £250 sounds very low to me so your profit margins there are poor.

also make sure that you can handle the payment turns. if its a big job and they pay slow your wages will be high and you'll essentially be lending them money whilst you wait for payment.

before you start looking at commercial it would be better to get your domestic profitability right rather than making your business more complicated. but you dont want to hear that advice do you! 

[jo5hm4n]

Hi Richard,

Thankyou for your reply appreciate it.

Yes i've already decided im going in high regardless of what happens.  We are already in a position where we dont need any more work so if i take this on, it will be because it ends up being a good earner.

Based in North Wales, personally i dont think a day rate of £250 for 1 van 1 man is low?  I realise it could be higher, but i still think it's pretty solid.

Good point about the outlay on wages.  I can handle it, but ofcourse it is still not ideal.

We don't have enough staff to do this job without it totally messing up our schedule for domestics, so on this big job i have decided it's only viable if i sub contract out to other small businesses in my area who can help with the job.  Was thinking of getting 3 or 4 Vans 6/8 men to clean the hospital all in one go.  That way we get it done much quicker and it doesn't affect our regular schedule that much.  Sadlly i'm not in a position right at this moment to get another van and more staff, i am holding off until next year.  I want to improve the quality of our business before i permanently start adding more vans and staff.  This year i've achieved quantity.  Next year, i'm focusing more on quality.

[Dry Clean]

John another thing you need to check is what level of insurance does the hospital require and will it cost you extra to cover it.

[jo5hm4n]

Will look into that aswell, Thanks.

[nathankaye]

Be interesting to hear what you end up doing n quoting, esp with NHS cutbacks etc if your able to get a good high quote for such a job.
(I have no idea and purely speculating, you'll have to let me know how wrong I am, i guess)

[Richard iSparkle]

Based in North Wales, personally i dont think a day rate of £250 for 1 van 1 man is low?  I realise it could be higher, but i still think it's pretty solid.

I always wonder what assumptions people make when they say what is a good daily rate in their area.

what is your price for a simple 3 bed semi in your area?

[Smudger]

you really need to walk the job, break it down into smaller sections that you know can be done in a set time.

add all these areas/times together and you now have your hours - add an extra 25% for misc.

I take it your tendering for this ? there will be a huge amount of paperwork to fill out - how long is the contract for ?

I'd be careful using sub contractors - thats the reason the job is up for tender they don't normally like awarding work only to find you are subbing it out

I loved the NHS work a full weeks cleaning for 5 twice a year all at one site

Darran

[jo5hm4n]

I always wonder what assumptions people make when they say what is a good daily rate in their area.

what is your price for a simple 3 bed semi in your area?
[/quote]

Our new pricing for 2019 is a standard 3 bed semi £13 all day long.  If a conny add £5-£7 more.  Problem is alot of our older customers are still in old prices.  Even with price rises.  We have some rounds that we are doing £300 a day easily and other rounds £250 a day and its hard work.  This is what i ment by upping the quality next year.

[Smudger]

you need a turnover p/h

For example - NK1 may charge £20 for a seminar does 2 per hour the biz turns over £40
Dry clean may only charge £14 for a semi but due to his skill, equipment, experience can do 4 of these an hour thats £56 p/h

all our work is costed this way be it a bungalow or mansion - residential or commercial

bespoke work, like sfg - Conny's  - pressure washing is costed differently

Darran

[Richard iSparkle]

I always wonder what assumptions people make when they say what is a good daily rate in their area.

what is your price for a simple 3 bed semi in your area?

Our new pricing for 2019 is a standard 3 bed semi £13 all day long.  If a conny add £5-£7 more.  Problem is alot of our older customers are still in old prices.  Even with price rises.  We have some rounds that we are doing £300 a day easily and other rounds £250 a day and its hard work.  This is what i ment by upping the quality next year.
[/quote]

so at £13  semi I'd be expecting £350-400 per person per van depending on how condensed your work is

if you're not on target for that I would be looking at how to get our daily rate up and concentrating on that rather than getting into big commercial jobs.

if you're not getting that rate up, and if you want to grow, i would be worried that you will not have enough money to grow, paying VAT, staff,  and all the associated cost

i think not having a solid core business will bite you on the bum in the future.

getting into big commercial jobs will take up a lot of time and stop you spending that time on the current business which is your bread and butter.

anyhow... smudger has given you a good answer on quoting..

good luck!

[DrewHastings]

Like Smudger said, this is a tender?

If so, it will specify within the tender documentation how they want the pricing laid out, and that is you starting point.
Read ALL the documents, twice, and get a good idea of what they are after. It may well say that certain parts can only be accessed on certain days, and other parts are done at other times. Only once you've done this can you know where you're going.

Also, be aware, that after the Carillion debacle, I've seen local authority / NHS tenders for cleaning are now issued stating that you must either have £500K turnover, or 2 x contract value in the bank. Yet they still say its suitable for SME's..........

If its not a tender, and its NHS, then I'm surprised.

[NWH]

Someone has mentioned bread and butter work that is the thing you want to bear in mind,do NOT neglect this work in order to do this other commercial type work.
The commercial stuff is what can disappear overnight literally if you lose 1 job it can be 5-10 grand a year,you might start off thinking you won’t neglect other work but you will if your not careful.

[Splash & dash]

Usually jobs like this will require , chas , safe contractor or similar , as has all ready  been said at least 500k in the bank and confirmed  by your accountants figures for the last 5 years , that’s how most tenders like this work , you will more than likely have to be iso90001 , and have policies in place for sexual, religious, ethnic , and gender non discrimination , unless you are a big company I doubt you will evan qualify to tender , they certainly won’t allow sub contracting . You might not want to hear this but if you want regular well paying  commercial work look else ware , this isn’t the type of job to start off with you need many years of large commercial in the private sector before trying to do stuff like this , and I bet they will only want to pay  peanuts after you have jumped through all the hoops as well . Don’t waist your time filling out all the paper work that will take hours to revive an email later saying “ sorry but you weren't successful this time but we will keep your details on file “

[nathankaye]

Someone has mentioned bread and butter work that is the thing you want to bear in mind,do NOT neglect this work in order to do this other commercial type work.
The commercial stuff is what can disappear overnight literally if you lose 1 job it can be 5-10 grand a year,you might start off thinking you won’t neglect other work but you will if your not careful.

This is the main reason why I no longer chase commercial work.  It can be very lucrative but as mentioned, if can soon be taken away just for the saving of £50 for instance.

This is why I chase quality well priced jobs.  I certainly dont clean 2 x £20 houses in an hour lol, but smudgers example is right. However, I expect you to know this.

[jo5hm4n]

you need a turnover p/h

For example - NK1 may charge £20 for a seminar does 2 per hour the biz turns over £40
Dry clean may only charge £14 for a semi but due to his skill, equipment, experience can do 4 of these an hour thats £56 p/h

all our work is costed this way be it a bungalow or mansion - residential or commercial

bespoke work, like sfg - Conny's  - pressure washing is costed differently

Darran

We aim for a turnover of a minimum of £40 p/hr but for new domestic customers its now £50 p/hr.

For commercial i want to be hitting £75-£100 p/hr or i dont think its worth the stress and hassle.

I have been to asked to quote for the job by a large cleaning company who have lots of NHS Contracts in England but have been asked by existing client to take on more in Wales.  Done my research on them.  They dont cover my area with their cleaning operatives so want to sub it out to me.  Have told me to quote the jobs myself and they will add their own flat rate fee.  From what i gather it all seems legit but who knows for sure!

Im sending my quotes in on Tuesday for the buildings in question.

Going to price really high.  Rather lose the quote or win the quote knowing im making good money regardless of difficulties.

[Status Check]

"I have been to asked to quote for the job by a large cleaning company"

Don't waste anymore of your time, honestly.

[cgh window cleaning]

You can view most tenders online.The federation send out upcoming tenders every week on the tender lists you can see the current contract or expected contract value.

you will need a minimum 5 mil public liability and possibly CHAS,safecontractor or iOS.

I would expect you would have to pass a health and safety assessment before they even consider you.I have to do this for some of the large housing association and management companies I work with.They also state that none of the work can be subbed out at all.

You have to be careful some cleaning companies phone round and get window cleaners to go out and price jobs they are never going to get.They will ask four or five then take the average.It saves them doing the leg work.

[NWH]

I tell you what you could go out and get all these huge jobs have the stress and hassle of managing staff invest in new equipment etc or farm the work out,you could be having to go Vat registered be turning over a couple of hundred K a year  and still be worse off than you would be cleaning quality domestic work.
Fair play in people making the jump to the next level but it’s a different world of window cleaning,it’s not in the same post code of what most of us do a lot of companies that do this kind of work do it almost full time and they charge not anywhere near what most of us would think it should be cleaned for.
I’ve quoted schools etc and years ago they were very very lucrative to clean but  not anymore,I quoted 3k and it was getting cleaned for 1200 and they stuck with them on price regardless of the complaints they were getting.
I’ve known guys to clean a huge chain of supermarkets with all there eggs in,1 email killed em overnight.

[Klean07]

We quoted for a large academy school about 3 months ago. I walked the job myself and quoted £1500 which would have taken two of us approx. 4-5 days to complete working almost flat out for 8 hours every day.
Never heard from them!