How to Buy Commercial Janitorial Services: A Facility Director's Guide

Buying commercial janitorial services well comes down to doing things in the right order. Document the building and the scope first, then qualify who is allowed to bid, then compare what each bid assumes about staffing and pricing, not just the total. Score proposals against criteria you set in advance, check references, settle the contract terms, and plan the transition before the new vendor starts.

That sounds simple, and it mostly is. The hard part is that janitorial bids are difficult to compare. Two vendors can quote the same building on different assumptions about hours, wages, supervision, supplies, and scope, and the totals alone will not tell you which assumptions you are buying. This guide walks through each step with that problem in mind.

The process at a glance

1. Document the building and the scope
2. Set cleaning frequencies by space
3. Write a scope that can be enforced
4. Qualify who is allowed to bid
5. Compare bids on their assumptions
6. Score proposals on more than price
7. Check references
8. Settle the contract terms
9. Plan for absences and event coverage
10. Plan the transition

Further down: how requirements differ by facility type, a realistic timeline, and common mistakes.

What are you actually buying?

Commercial janitorial service is labor-intensive. In most bids, direct labor and the costs that come with it (wages, payroll taxes, workers' compensation and benefits) make up the largest share of the price, well ahead of supplies, equipment, supervision, insurance, overhead and margin.

That tells you where to look when prices differ. Labor hours, wage rates, and how the crew is employed are usually the biggest drivers. Other differences are real and legitimate too: productivity assumptions, equipment, how supervision is staffed, what supplies are included, overhead, margin, and differences in how each bidder read the scope. The goal is to understand which of these explains the gap between two numbers, and whether you are comfortable with it.

You are also choosing a service model. Name the one you want before you solicit anything, because comparing bids across models is where many buying mistakes start:

• In-house. You employ the crew. You have direct control, and you also carry recruiting, training, coverage, and equipment yourself.
• Single vendor, self-performing. One company employs the people in your building and is accountable for the outcome.
• Single vendor, with subcontracted labor. One company holds the contract and other companies supply some or all of the labor. This can work well, but it adds a layer you will need visibility into: who employs, screens, trains, and supervises each worker.
• Multiple specialty vendors. Separate contracts for nightly cleaning, floor care, windows, and other work. You get specialists for each service, and your team takes on more coordination and oversight.

Who should be involved?

Custodial procurement stalls when one group owns it alone. Before you start, get agreement from the functions that can approve or block the contract:

• Facilities owns the scope and service expectations
• Procurement owns the process and the paperwork
• Risk or legal owns insurance requirements and indemnity language
• EHS owns chemical handling, training standards and anything that touches production areas
• Finance owns the budget line and the escalation clause

Not everyone needs to be in every meeting. You do need to know who can say no, and at what point. A contract that clears facilities and then stalls in legal can cost you a full bid cycle.

Step 1: How do you document the building before writing an RFP?

A floor plan is a starting point, but on its own it is not enough to scope the work. It will not tell you that the third-floor restrooms serve a 200-person call center, that the loading dock tracks grit through one corridor every morning, or that a lab cannot be entered without an escort.

Walk the building with whoever cleans it now. Count restroom fixtures. Note floor types by area, with square footage. Identify restricted spaces and what access to them requires. Write down where complaints actually come from, because that is where the effort should go.

Two numbers matter most:

• Cleanable square footage is the area included in the contracted cleaning scope. Decide deliberately what is in and out. Shafts and unfinished space are usually out; mechanical and storage rooms may be in, at a low frequency.
• Occupancy by area matters because a 5,000 square foot floor with 80 people on it is a different job from the same floor with 12.

Bring that data to the bid. A vendor pricing from real numbers can commit to real frequencies.

Step 2: How often should each area be cleaned?

A single frequency for the whole building tends to overspend on low-use space and underspend on restrooms. Set frequencies by space type instead. The table below is an illustrative starting point for an occupied office or mixed-use building, not a standard. Adjust it for your usage, hours, and conditions.

Then decide what periodic work sits on top: burnishing, stripping and refinishing, carpet extraction, high dusting and window cleaning. Whether that work is included in the monthly price or quoted per event is a budgeting choice worth making on purpose.

Step 3: How do you write a scope that can be enforced?

"Maintain restrooms in a clean and sanitary condition" reads fine until someone has to enforce it. Six months in, you and your vendor may read that sentence differently.

A usable scope names four things for each task: the task, the area, the frequency, and the expected result. For example:

• Restroom fixtures cleaned and disinfected daily; at inspection, no visible soil, residue or odor, and dispensers stocked
• Hard floors in main corridors machine scrubbed weekly; at inspection, no visible grime build-up along edges
• High dusting quarterly, to the height agreed in the contract

The expected result is what makes inspections fair to both sides, and it is what an inspection checklist should score.

State exclusions in writing as well. Work that often sits outside a base scope includes periodic floor care, interior and exterior windows, high dusting above an agreed height, carpet extraction, post-construction cleaning and day porter coverage. Height limits and specialty-work exclusions vary by building, so agree on them explicitly. Excluding work is reasonable.  Discovering in April that annual floor refinishing costs extra, when you haven’t budgeted for it, is not.

Ask for line-item pricing, not a single monthly figure. Ask every bidder to state total labor hours per cleaning and the productivity rate (square feet per person per hour) they assumed. Those two figures do more than anything else to make otherwise different bids comparable.

Step 4: How do you qualify janitorial bidders?

Set a floor before you solicit. It is much easier than explaining later why you set aside the lowest bid.

Insurance and bonding. Your risk team should set the coverage types and limits, including general liability and workers' compensation, and decide whether bonding is required. Collect certificates during qualification, not after selection, and check that they are current. Keep in mind that a certificate of insurance summarizes coverage; it does not create it. The Texas Department of Insurance notes that a certificate does not confer rights beyond the underlying policies, and that additional insured status depends on the policy being endorsed. Have your risk team verify the policy language or endorsements that actually provide the coverage you require.

Relevant experience. Ask for experience with your facility type at a comparable size.

Who does the work. Ask each bidder, for every worker who will be in your building: who employs them, who screens them, who trains them, who supervises them, and who insures them. If any of that sits with a subcontractor or staffing agency, ask what obligations the prime contractor keeps: whether it sets the screening standard, audits the training, supervises on site, and carries responsibility under your contract. Also ask what percentage of the staff assigned to your site are direct employees of the company you are contracting with.

W-2 status alone does not prove that screening, training, or supervision are good. It does make one company answerable for all of them. At McLemore, every person we place in a facility is a McLemore W-2 employee: we hire, screen, train, and supervise them, and they are covered by our workers' compensation.

Access and onboarding. Badging, background check turnaround, and escort requirements can add weeks to a start date on a secured site. Ask what each vendor's onboarding takes and build it into the transition schedule.

Step 5: How should you compare janitorial bids?

Bids for the same building can vary widely. Line them up and compare the assumptions behind them, not just the totals:

• Total labor hours per cleaning, and the productivity rate behind them
• The wage behind those hours
• Supervisory hours, and whether supervision appears as a visible cost
• Whether supplies and consumables are included
• Who owns and maintains the equipment
• Any scope items a bidder excluded, qualified, or read differently

When one bid is well below the others, treat the gap as something to investigate. It may reflect genuine efficiency or better equipment. It may also reflect fewer hours than the scope needs, wages that make it hard to keep staff, thin on-site supervision, or a different reading of the scope. Ask the bidder to walk you through how they built the number.

Keep two issues separate while you do. Subcontracting is a legitimate structure; the question is whether you have visibility into who employs and supervises the crew. Worker misclassification, where people who should be employees are paid as independent contractors, is a different and more serious problem, because it can shift wage and injury exposure in ways you did not agree to. Asking who employs each worker, as in Step 4, helps you identify which workers you are looking at.

Step 6: How should you score janitorial proposals?

Price is a sound award criterion when bids are genuinely comparable. When they are not, a weighted score helps. The table below is an example of how criteria might be weighted, not a recommended standard.

Whatever weights you choose, set them before bids arrive. Weights decided afterward tend to favor the bid someone already preferred. Public buyers should make sure the criteria and weights fit the procurement method they are using and match what is published in the solicitation.

Step 7: What should you ask references?

A reference check that only confirms a vendor has customers does not tell you much. Ask for a reference at a facility of your type and size, and ask questions with factual answers:

• How long have they been your vendor?
• Has your account supervisor changed in the past year, and how often?
• What happened the last time service dropped, and how long did it take to correct?
• Has the price changed, by how much, and with how much notice?
• What is on your punch list right now?

It is also worth asking the vendor about an account they lost and what they learned from it. The answer tells you how they handle problems.

Step 8: Which contract terms matter most?

The terms decide how year two goes. Settle them before you tell a bidder they have won, while you still have room to negotiate:

• Termination rights, notice periods, and whether either side gets a cure period
• The price escalation mechanism, its cap and its notice period
• How scope changes are priced and who approves them
• Committed supervision, written as hours on site rather than a job title
• Inspection frequency and reporting cadence
• Who supplies consumables, and on what terms
• The auto-renewal date and the notice deadline, which often falls well before the contract end date

On pricing structure: McLemore prices on a fixed monthly basis for a defined scope and contract period. That means the invoice does not move with hours worked, but it is not a promise that the price never changes. Scope changes and any agreed escalation still apply. The reasoning is that the work of estimating labor belongs with the party who knows how long the job takes. We wrote about why contracts that start well can slip after the first few months in Why janitorial contracts start strong and fall apart after 90 days.

Step 9: What happens when someone calls out, or an event needs coverage?

Two questions are easy to leave out of a scope and hard to fix afterward.

Absences. Ask each bidder how they cover a custodian who calls out: whether there is a relief pool, how quickly a replacement arrives, and what happens if no one is available. Ask whether the contract states a minimum staffing level or only an outcome, and how missed work is reported and credited.

Events and special requests. Schools, campuses, and many facilities have games, graduations, board meetings, open houses, or shutdowns outside normal hours. Ask whether event coverage uses additional labor or pulls the regular crew away from routine work. If routine work will be deferred, the contract should say which tasks, and when they will be caught up. If additional labor is used, agree how it is scheduled and billed.

Supervision matters here. When someone is out, or an event runs long, a supervisor on site is the person who rebalances the work. We covered that in more detail in why on-site supervision changes everything.

Step 10: How should you plan the transition?

Transition is where a sound contract can still stumble, and the plan is easiest to negotiate before award.

Ask for it in writing: the pre-start site walk, area-by-area documentation, facility-specific crew training, the check-in schedule for the first 30 days, and the date of the first joint inspection. Ask what happens to the incumbent crew, because the people cleaning your building now know things nobody has written down.

For more on the handoff, see how to kick off a risk-free vendor transition, and for an example of a takeover run during peak season, our distribution center takeover case study.

How do requirements differ by facility type?

The steps above apply everywhere, but the details change with the building.

Schools and campuses. Coverage has to fit the academic calendar: daily cleaning while students are in, heavy project work over the summer, and events on nights and weekends. Background check standards for anyone around students deserve their own line in the scope. Many public school districts can buy through a cooperative purchasing contract instead of running their own solicitation. More on how we approach this on our education services page.

Distribution and manufacturing. Cleaning often happens during operations and across shifts, around forklift traffic and production areas. Scope needs to state what janitorial staff do and do not touch, include site safety orientation, and set floor care by traffic lane. See our manufacturing and distribution page.

Cities and public agencies. A portfolio may include offices, libraries, recreation centers, and public restrooms with very different use patterns, often under one contract. Specifications have to survive a public procurement review, so scope, evaluation criteria and pricing format need to be clear and consistent across sites. See our government services page.

How long does the process take?

A compressed timeline usually produces a weaker scope. If you are replacing an incumbent, work backward from the contract's notice deadline, not its expiration date.

From the first site walk to award approval is typically about three months, or somewhat less where phases overlap, for example when references are checked during the bid period. Transition adds 30 to 90 days on top. Secured sites with badging requirements, large multi-building portfolios, specialty areas and board or council approval cycles all push toward the longer end.

Common mistakes

• Bidding from a floor plan alone. The scope ends up missing work, which shows up later as change orders.
• Comparing totals instead of assumptions. It becomes hard to tell a lean bid from one that is short on hours.
• Timing the process from the contract end date. Auto-renewal notice windows can close months before expiration.
• Leaving periodic work undefined. Floor care and other periodic work are a frequent source of unbudgeted cost.
• Settling terms after announcing the award. You have less room to negotiate once a vendor knows it has won.

Where McLemore fits

McLemore has run janitorial programs from Houston for more than 50 years and cleans more than 30 million square feet nightly, with 96 percent client retention year over year. Every person on site is our W-2 employee, pricing is a fixed monthly rate for a defined scope, and a named supervisor is accountable for each account. Scoping the work carefully at the start, before the first night of service, is a central part of how we work.

More guides on buying, budgeting, staffing and managing custodial services, organized by role and by facility type, are collected in the Facility Services Resource Center.

If you have a contract coming up and want a second read on the scope before it goes out, we will walk your building and give you a straight assessment of what the work takes. Reach the sales team at sales@mbminc.com or (713) 528-7775.