Custodial Services for Cities and Public Agencies
A city, county or public agency buying custodial services needs a defensible procurement route and a specification bidders can price the same way. It also needs evaluation criteria that look past the lowest number, and insurance and bonding terms that fit the risk. On top of that come any wage requirements that apply to the contract, and a timeline that lines up with the fiscal year so coverage never lapses. Cooperative purchasing contracts can take the solicitation off your plate entirely, but the scope, the evaluation and the oversight remain your job. This guide walks through each piece.
Public custodial contracts are looked at closely. City halls, courts, libraries, recreation centers and public works yards are used by the public and staffed by employees who notice when something is missed. The contract may be reviewed by council, by an auditor or by a losing bidder. The program has to work in the buildings, and the paperwork has to stand up to review.
Reviewed by Brittany Keller, Sales Director at McLemore Building Maintenance, who reviews janitorial bids and builds staffing plans for commercial, industrial, education and public-sector facilities.
The program at a glance
- Which procurement route fits
- How cooperative contracts work
- How to write a specification bidders can price
- How to evaluate bids beyond the lowest price
- What to require for insurance, bonding and screening
- When prevailing wage rules apply
- How to time the contract to the fiscal year
- How to oversee the contract once it starts
Further down: where McLemore fits.
Which procurement route fits your agency?
Most agencies have three options for a custodial contract, and state law and local policy decide which are available:
- Run your own formal solicitation, either an invitation for bids or a request for proposals
- Buy through a cooperative purchasing contract that another public entity has already competed
- For smaller contracts below your formal threshold, use your agency's informal quote process
Thresholds vary by state and by agency. In Texas, for example, a city must use competitive sealed bids, competitive sealed proposals or another method the law allows before entering a contract that requires spending more than $100,000. That threshold was raised from $50,000 effective September 1, 2025, according to the Texas Municipal League's 2025 guide to municipal procurement law. A multi-building custodial contract can easily cross a threshold like that, so check your own state law and purchasing policy before you choose a route.
How do cooperative contracts work for custodial services?
A cooperative purchasing organization runs one competitive solicitation, evaluates the responses and awards contracts to vendors. Member agencies can then buy from an awarded vendor without running their own solicitation, because the competition has already happened.
In Texas, Local Government Code section 271.102 provides that a local government purchasing through a cooperative program satisfies any state law requiring it to seek competitive bids for that purchase. Other states have their own cooperative purchasing statutes, and your attorney or purchasing office can confirm how yours works.
For a public buyer, the vendor does the hard part: it has to win a competitive award from the cooperative. For your agency, joining a cooperative is usually a short membership form and approval by your governing body. Once you are a member, you contract directly with the awarded vendor and define your own scope: which buildings, which tasks, what frequency, what staffing and supervision, and what reporting. Pricing is built for that scope under the cooperative contract's terms.
A cooperative purchase does not replace your own judgment. You still need a clear scope, you still compare what you are getting, and some local policies or dollar limits may still call for your own solicitation. Cooperative and local procurement rules interact, so confirm the fit with your purchasing office before you start.
How do you write a specification bidders can price?
A custodial specification only works if every bidder reads it the same way. Specifications that say "clean restrooms daily" or "maintain floors as needed" produce bids that cannot be compared, because each bidder fills in the blanks differently.
A defensible specification includes:
- A building list with square footage, floor types and restroom counts, plus a site walk for every bidder
- Task-by-task frequencies for each space type, written as a schedule rather than a narrative
- Service hours, and any spaces that must be cleaned while occupied, such as courts, jails or 24-hour dispatch centers
- Periodic work such as floor stripping and refinishing, carpet extraction and window washing, listed separately with its own frequency
- Who supplies consumables such as paper, liners and soap, and how they are priced
- Staffing and supervision expectations, including on-site supervision where the size of the site justifies it
- Reporting requirements and the inspection method you will use
Our buying guide covers the general process in how to buy commercial janitorial services, including how to run a site walk and compare scopes.
How should you evaluate custodial bids beyond the lowest price?
Where your procurement rules allow best-value evaluation, price is one criterion among several. Criteria that tend to say something about how a contract will run include:
- Staffing plan: hours per building per night, and whether the hours match the scope
- Who employs the people doing the work, and whether any of the work is subcontracted
- Supervision structure and who your day-to-day contact will be
- Experience with comparable public facilities
- Safety record and training program
- Transition plan and timeline
- References from public agencies of similar size
When one bid comes in well below the others, investigate before concluding anything. Compare its staffing hours to the scope, ask how it is staffed and supervised, and confirm it carries the required insurance. A low bid can reflect a different reading of the specification, which is a reason to tighten the specification next time.
What should you require for insurance, bonding and screening?
Set insurance requirements to match the risk: general liability, workers' compensation, auto liability where vehicles are used, and in many cases a janitorial or employee dishonesty bond that covers theft by the vendor's employees. A certificate of insurance shows that coverage existed when it was issued. It does not prove the endorsements you required are in place, so have your risk manager review the actual endorsements.
Performance and payment bonds are common on construction contracts and less consistent on service contracts. Whether you need one depends on your state law, your agency's policy and the size of the contract. Ask your attorney rather than copying requirements from another solicitation.
Some public buildings have screening rules that commercial buildings rarely do. Police facilities, courts and some records areas can require background checks to a specific standard, such as CJIS-level checks for access to criminal justice information areas. Ask every bidder who employs the people on site, how they are screened, and how access is removed when someone leaves, along with the other questions in our guide to janitorial labor, safety and liability. At McLemore every person in your building is a McLemore W-2 employee, screened by our HR team, and we run enhanced background checks, including CJIS checks where they are required, for staff working in government buildings.
When do prevailing wage rules apply to custodial contracts?
It depends on who is paying and where. Federal service contracts are covered by the McNamara-O'Hara Service Contract Act, which requires prevailing wages and fringe benefits set by the Department of Labor for service employees on covered contracts over $2,500. Janitorial work is a common example. A city or county contract is generally not covered by that federal law, but some states and cities have their own prevailing wage or living wage requirements for service contracts.
If a wage requirement applies, put the wage determination in the solicitation so every bidder prices the same labor rate. If it is left out, bidders may price different wage assumptions and the bids will not be comparable.
How do you time the contract to the fiscal year?
Public custodial contracts run on budget calendars. Fiscal years commonly start on July 1 or October 1, and a contract that expires a few weeks before the new budget is adopted can leave an agency without coverage or on an emergency extension.
Work backward from your contract end date:
- Confirm the budget amount early in your budget cycle, before the department submits its request
- Allow time to write the specification, hold a site walk and answer bidder questions
- Allow time for evaluation, any protest period and governing-body approval
- Leave a transition window of several weeks between award and start date
If you are buying through a cooperative contract, most of the solicitation time drops out. Scoping, approval and transition still take time.
How should you oversee the contract once it starts?
Oversight is easy to underplan, especially when the person who wrote the specification is not the person who manages the contract. Write the oversight into the contract:
- Monthly inspections using the same checklist, ideally done jointly with the vendor's supervisor
- A named contact on each side, with an escalation path
- Scheduled reports covering inspection scores, completed periodic work and staffing
- A process for adding or removing buildings and adjusting frequencies during the term
- Quarterly reviews with the vendor's management
Fixed monthly pricing helps here. When the invoice covers a defined scope for a defined period, subject to agreed scope changes and escalation, budget variance comes from documented changes rather than from hours that are hard to audit.
Where McLemore fits
McLemore has run custodial programs for more than 50 years from our Houston headquarters, including city, county and other public-agency buildings. McLemore holds competitively awarded contracts through four cooperatives: TIPS, Choice Partners, PACE and 1GPA. A member agency can contract with us directly, and an agency that is not yet a member can usually join with a short form and a board or council approval. Every person in your buildings is our W-2 employee, and pricing is a fixed monthly rate for a defined scope and contract period. More detail on how we work with public agencies is on our government building janitorial services page.
More guides on buying, budgeting and managing custodial services, sorted by role and by facility type, are in the Facility Services Resource Center.
If your agency is approaching a renewal or rewriting a custodial specification, we will walk your buildings and show you how we would scope them. Reach the sales team at sales@mbminc.com or (713) 528-7775.