Tag Archives: janitorial information

Let’s start off with the number question you may be asking. What exactly is a Janitorial RFP? To put it simply, it is a document that solicits proposal, and often made by an agency or company interested in the procurement of a service, product or any asset that they deem to be valuable to qualified contractors. This is often times completed through a bidding process between these suppliers.

Below, we will go over some tips, from our experiences, to help you find a new cleaning company that is the best fit and value for your facility.

Tip #1: Don’t Oversaturate Your Search

What do I mean by this? Often times you want to give many companies the opportunity to bid for your business, but you leave yourself at risk since not every company is going to be the best fit for your facility. One example of this is you may be a large corporate office building that requires nightly cleaning along with a day porter during the day, and you may find yourself with companies bidding that specialize in medical facilities and retail stores. This may not be the best “marriage” between the two. Or, you are a very large facility and smaller janitorial companies may not have the capacity or resources to tackle a job like that.

Do some research beforehand to potentially eliminate some of this unnecessary hassle and do NOT send RFPs to a company that you know will not be able to handle the task at hand. This is a waste of their time and money and your time by reading it.

Tip #2: Keeping It Simple

RFPs are not everybody’s favorite to read since they can become a mess or a cluster of random pieces of information seemingly thrown together without any organization. While you want to give vendors/contractors as much information as you possibly can, as with anything there is a “too much”. Before just sending a mass request with a document from past RFPs make sure you are updating this and reading it over as most companies do change, adapt and grow from year to year. There may be added work from years past or different scopes of work needed. Make sure you are checking for outdated information. What information is needed for a vendor to create a good proposal. Some examples include:
Times of day the facility needs to be cleaned
How many people are in the facility
Square footage
Number of restrooms/kitchens etc.

Tip #3: Be Specific About Pain Points

Try to sit back and ask yourself a couple key questions. Are you unhappy with your current or previous janitorial company’s services? Is this switch in vendors solely cost related? Has the scope of work changed wherein the current servicer cannot get the job done? If there is one piece of advice, I can give you on this it’s be transparent. If you are honest with your issues, this will give vendors the opportunity to speak to these issues you are having and offer some solutions rather than just following the generic protocol. This will also give you a good look at their commitment to customer service as well as quality control.

If you follow these tips when creating your next RFP for janitorial services, this will create a significant connection with a distinguished and reputable janitorial vendor.

The Top 3 Things To Look For In A Janitorial Company

July 28, 2021

It can be a challenging task now more than ever to find a reliable commercial cleaning company. Sure, you can go on your Google machine and search for “commercial cleaning near me” or “janitorial services near me”, but what exactly are you getting yourself into when you do that? Whether it be Yelp, Bark, Home Advisor, etc., some (not all) are simply marketing companies that pose as a commercial cleaner, and what exactly do they do? Some examples are Vanguard, Executive Cleaning Services and Jensen Brothers that simply gather your information and subcontract the work. All you want to do is find a REAL cleaning service without all the additional hassle, and unfortunately can be more tough than need be.

However, once you do find a REAL commercial cleaning company, your work is only halfway done since there is a slew of companies in the cleaning market. Are you starting to weigh the idea about outsourcing your cleaning? Click here for more information. Are you currently outsourcing your cleaning and think it may be time for a change? Click here to find out more. So, the million-dollar question, how can you find a commercial cleaning company that can give you the best and most consistent results? Read on for the top 3 things to look for during your search.

Problem Solving – I’m sure at one point in time or another you have heard the common phrases such as “We have been in business for over 30 years”, “customer service is our #1 priority”, “we use the latest technology”, or “our core values are x,y,z”. Who cares? The one thing you are looking for is for your problems to be solved so you have one less thing to worry about on your busy plate. It is super important for a commercial cleaning company or anyone for that matter to understand your problems and provide swift solutions to them! This involves reducing the number of distractions caused by janitorial issues, and having the peace of mind knowing that your facility will be properly staffed each and every day while bringing solutions to you without even having to ask.

Local Presence – In other words, it can be challenging at times to find a service that can provide consistency. To put it simply, janitorial work is not overly complicated to the point where it requires years of experience or all of this extensive training to go along with it. Sweeping, mopping, dusting, emptying trash, cleaning the restrooms, kitchens, etc. doesn’t sound super overwhelming right? What it all boils down to, is the adequate oversight. This mainly stems from the management level (i.e., field managers) that are relatively close to your facility. This is very important when you bring in a cleaning service since it A.) reduces risk and B.) it builds TRUST! A good cleaning company will always be looking to improve their work, encouraging their teams while coaching them!

Industry Leadership – As mentioned at the beginning of this post, there is a slew of commercial cleaning companies in this market that can easily blend into the crowd. Look for a company that goes above and beyond. For example, they are heavily involved in the local community, they genuinely care about the industry and providing the necessary services for your own well-being first, they are involved in the industry through association memberships along with learning and spreading helpful information.

Let’s face it, the internet today is FILLED with anything you can possibly think of. This ultimately can be and is a very good tool with seemingly anything you desire right at your fingertips. However, with a tool such as this providing such ease in our lives it can also be layered with fraudsters and an extra layer of caution with office/facilities managers alike. By learning these few items listed above, this will be able to help lead a decision maker in the right direction to eventually make the correct decision for their company.

What Are the Reasons For A Site Visit

June 30, 2021

Terry Sanson

Uncategorized No Comments

One of the most important steps in the sales process for any commercial cleaning company in general is a site visit and/or a tour of your facility. Yeah, it is possible to receive a pricing proposal from your potential vendor within reason without even laying eyes on your facility, but how accurate will the results be? Below, we will discuss a little deeper about the purpose of a site visit along with some best practices to prepare for the visit.

Purpose of the Visit

– 90% of the costs affiliated with a commercial cleaning program stem from direct labor and labor related costs.

-Obtaining the most accurate number of labor hours needed to properly meet your expectations is single handedly THE most important factor when estimating the cost to clean your facility. -Seeing your facility first hand helps us create the most personalized experience possible!

What Items are Cleaning Vendors Seeking to Discover?

– Space density: This is essentially looking for the “tightness” of the area needing cleaning. A perfect example would be a call center office type. An office with cubicles everywhere tends to be very dense. Denser spaces tend to take more time to clean due to reduced efficiencies.

-Working Conditions: While not necessarily having a direct impact on the number of hours needed to clean, it could play a part in the wages needed to attract cleaners to work in certain conditions. This typically is the case with certain places like manufacturing facilities where working conditions may require extra personal protection equipment.

-Flooring Types: One of the main parts of any commercial cleaning program is, you guessed it, cleaning your floors! Cleaning companies need to see what types of flooring (i.e., carpet, tile, wood, etc.) are in your space along with measurements of each type. Hard surface flooring generally takes longer to clean with sweeping and mopping as opposed to carpeting which typically requires only vacuuming.

-Current State of Cleanliness: Potential cleaning vendors tend to look for a couple of items here. Firstly, they will look to see if the space/building has been cared for well. If not, it will require more labor time to bring the space back to a manageable level. Secondly, as stated above, cleaning companies want to assess your expectations. If there is a very high level of cleanliness expectations, then this will come into play when developing an estimate for work hours needed.

-Location and Size: This one is pretty simple, how big and how spread out are the spaces. Things a cleaning company must consider is how much time a cleaner will spend traveling from one space to the next or one building to the next and so on.

How You Can Help Making the Site Visit Productive and Efficient.

-Directions/Instructions: It can be helpful to provide some things to the potential vendor prior to the visit such as where to park or enter the building, who to ask for upon arrival, and any visitor safety requirements.

-When to Clean: It is good practice to help prospective cleaning vendors when you desire to have your space cleaned, even though your may have an RFP (request for proposal) that covers this. This would cover if you wish to have your space cleaned after hours, weekends, requiring a day porter during the specific days, etc.

-What to Clean: Circling back, you may have already provided this summary of work to potential cleaning vendors. This is very important to help understand what you wish to have serviced and how frequently. A good example of this would be, some places wish to have their bathrooms cleaned every day or every service, while let’s say dusting would only be required on a weekly basis.

-Specific Information: This would entail any unique and specific information pertaining to YOUR location and YOUR needs. Certain types of buildings require specific needs that others do not require. Or even just something that is a nuance to you that you wish was fixed and never has been.