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.
Further down: how requirements differ by facility type, a realistic timeline, and common mistakes.
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:
Custodial procurement stalls when one group owns it alone. Before you start, get agreement from the functions that can approve or block the contract:
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.
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:
Bring that data to the bid. A vendor pricing from real numbers can commit to real frequencies.
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.
| Space type | Illustrative starting frequency | What should drive the final number |
| Restrooms | Daily, with daytime checks in busy buildings | Fixture count, users per fixture, operating hours, observed conditions |
| Entryways and lobbies | Daily, plus weather response | Foot traffic and weather |
| Open office | Daily trash; vacuum 2 to 3 times weekly | Occupancy density more than floor area |
| Private offices | Trash daily; detail weekly | How many are occupied and how often |
| Break rooms and kitchens | Daily, with attention to touchpoints | Meal-time use and appliances |
| Conference rooms | Daily reset; detail weekly | Meeting load |
| Warehouse floor | Scrub main traffic lanes on a set schedule (daily to weekly by traffic); spot-clean as inspections show | Forklift and foot traffic, spills, debris load |
| Storage and mechanical | Monthly or quarterly, if in scope | Whether they are in the cleanable scope at all |
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.
"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:
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.
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.
Bids for the same building can vary widely. Line them up and compare the assumptions behind them, not just the totals:
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.
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.
| Criterion | Example weight | What you are testing |
| Price and pricing transparency | 30% | Is the number complete and explainable? |
| Staffing model and labor structure | 20% | Who employs, screens, trains, and supervises the crew |
| Supervision structure | 15% | On-site hours, dedicated or shared |
| Quality and reporting program | 15% | Inspection cadence and what reaches you |
| Transition plan | 10% | How the first 90 days will be managed |
| Relevant facility experience | 10% | Same building type, comparable size |
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.
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:
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.
The terms decide how year two goes. Settle them before you tell a bidder they have won, while you still have room to negotiate:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
| Phase | Typical time | Output |
| Site walk and data collection | 2 to 3 weeks | Cleanable square footage, floor types, occupancy, access |
| Scope and RFP drafting | 2 weeks | Scope with expected results, exclusions, pricing format, scoring weights |
| Qualification and issue | 1 week | Shortlist with insurance and bonding requirements set |
| Bid period, with a mandatory walk-through | 3 to 4 weeks | Comparable line-item bids |
| Scoring, references and interviews | 2 weeks | Scored matrix and reference notes |
| Finalize terms and obtain award approval | 2 weeks | Agreed terms and approved award |
| Transition | 30 to 90 days | Documented start and first inspection cycle |
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.
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.