The Real Cost of a Low-Bid Janitorial Contract

A low janitorial bid is usually low because something is missing from it. Sometimes it is detail work that never gets scheduled, sometimes supervision, sometimes the insurance, and sometimes the people themselves, placed by a subcontractor instead of employed by the company you signed up with. These gaps may not show up on the proposal. But they can show up over the next year, in tenant complaints or a lobby floor that needs refinishing early, and the extra hours you spend managing a vendor that wasn’t supposed to need managing.

This post goes through what low bids sometimes leave out, what each omission costs you, and how to read two proposals side by side. If you are earlier in the process, how facilities managers evaluate cleaning vendors covers the full checklist.

Why a bid comes in low

Cleaning is labor. What a program costs is mostly a function of how many hours a crew needs to be in a building and what tasks they need to perform, as well as what the people are paid, how they were trained and who is checking the work. If one bid is well below others, it usually means they cut a key component, or left something out (something they can price as an extra later). This can be hard to detect just looking at the total on the last page.

What a low bid usually leaves out

Wages below the market rate

The simplest way to lower a bid is to pay the people doing the work less, and this is hard to see from the outside. Below-market wages typically result in higher turnover, and high turnover means the people in your building are new to it, unfamiliar with it, and are not always the qualified professionals you were expecting.

There is a publicly published market rate for this work. Under the Service Contract Act, the federal government sets the minimum wages and benefits its service contractors must pay, by labor category and by locality, through Department of Labor wage determinations. A janitorial contractor cleaning a federal building in the Washington metropolitan area has to pay at least that rate.

WellNest uses the Service Contract Act wage determinations for our area to set pay, and we pay at or above them for every labor category. Ask any bidder how their wages compare to the SCA rate for the Washington metro area.

A scope that says what, but not when

This is the most common gap. A thin scope lists tasks without frequencies, so the crew decides what gets done on a given night. Trash and restrooms happen because they are obvious. Baseboards, high dusting, vents, interior glass and trash rooms sometimes do not, because nobody wrote down when they should. Six months in, the building may look tired, but nothing in the contract has technically been missed.

A proper scope separates what happens on every visit from what happens on an agreed upon cadence, and includes the detail work on a calendar. In a WellNest proposal the periodic deep cleans are written into the program from day one, with the frequency, the supplies and a named supervisor who checks all work. The janitorial services page shows the standard scope items.

People the vendor does not employ

A bid can come in low because the labor is subcontracted or placed through a gig platform. The company you signed with did not hire, train or background-check the people who will be working in your building, and further your insurance may not cover them. If that person does not show, or something goes missing, accountability is lacking, and you are the one in the middle.

Every WellNest cleaner is a W-2 employee, hired, background-checked and E-Verified, trained, bonded and insured by WellNest directly. There are no gig workers and no day-labor placements, and documentation for the crew assigned to your building is available on request.

No supervisor

Supervision costs money, so it is one of the first things a low bid removes. Without it, nobody walks the building before the first night, nobody checks the work afterward, and the standard becomes whatever the crew settles into. The quality on the first visit and the quality in month eight can be very different, with inconsistent results that you will notice.

WellNest assigns a specific crew to each account and a dedicated supervisor walks the space with them before service starts. Inspections, both scheduled and unannounced, are documented so you can see the results.

Thin or missing insurance

Liability coverage and bonding are real costs to the vendor, so a low bid may leave these out, or at least try to cut some corners. This gap is invisible until a fixture is damaged, a laptop goes missing or someone is hurt in the building, at which point the question of whose policy responds becomes yours to answer.

Ask every bidder for insurance and bonding documentation before you compare totals. WellNest provides this on request.

Consumables and supplies priced as extras

Trash liners, hand soap, paper towels and cleaning products all have hard costs. A bid that excludes them looks lower on the page, but either you will be getting billed extra later, or you’ll be expected to provide these items directly.

WellNest supplies all cleaning products and equipment for the agreed scope. Consumables can be included in the scope or supplied by your facility, and the proposal says which, so the number you compare is the number you pay.

No one to call

The last thing a low bid leaves out is a person. When something is missed, you email a general inbox or call a number that rings to whoever is on shift, and the fix depends on who picks up.

Every WellNest commercial account has a named point of contact. You get a same-day response during business hours and a response within one business day after hours, and if something was missed or not done to the agreed standard, we address it promptly and make it right. If a problem needs escalation, it will quickly go up the chain to a named account manager or to Phil Harper directly.

What the gap can cost you

None of the above issues show up clearly as a line on an invoice.

Your time. A vendor without supervision or a named contact is a vendor you will need to spend more time supervising. You walk the building yourself, you chase the missed items, you field the complaints, and eventually you probably feel the need to run the bid process again.

Tenant complaints. Restrooms generate more complaints than any other part of a building, and they are often a victim of a thin scope of work. Tenants judge the building on what they see every day: the lobby, the elevator, the break room, the restroom. Renewal conversations start from that impression.

Surfaces. Floor finish, restroom fixtures, stone counters and lobby glass each need the right product and the right technique. Untrained crews using the wrong chemistry cause etching, staining and premature wear, and the repair or refinish comes out of your capital budget. Phil’s post on commercial floor care covers how routine maintenance extends the life of floors specifically.

Risk. Spills, wet floors and cluttered trash rooms are hazards. A crew that follows a documented scope checks the hazard-prone areas on every visit and reports maintenance issues to management. A crew working without one does what it notices.

Then there is the cost of switching

When a low-bid vendor does not work out, you pay for the change: another round of walkthroughs and proposals, onboarding, and a new crew learning the building from scratch. Some of WellNest’s longest-running accounts came to us a year or two after choosing a lower bid the first time.

We would rather you did not go through that year. If you are comparing proposals now, the section below is the short version of how to tell them apart.

How to read two proposals side by side

Put the totals aside and check each proposal for these nine things:

• Does the scope say what happens on every visit and what happens on an agreed frequency?
• Is the detail work (baseboards, high dusting, vents, interior glass, periodic deep cleans) dated in the program?
• Who employs the crew: the vendor or a subcontractor?
• What are the crew paid, and how does that compare to the Service Contract Act rate for the area?
• Is insurance and bonding documentation attached or available on request?
• Is there a named supervisor, and does the crew walk the building before the first visit?
• Are consumables and cleaning products in the price or billed separately?
• How is quality inspected, and can you see the results?
• Who do you call when something is missed, and what is the response commitment?

A proposal that answers all nine in writing is a proposal you can hold the vendor to.

What a WellNest proposal looks like

We quote after an on-site walkthrough, not over the phone or from square footage alone. You receive a written proposal within two business days covering scope, frequency, supplies, pricing and a named supervisor. A specific crew is assigned to your facility and walks it with a supervisor before the first visit, and quarterly account reviews keep scope, quality and pricing front and center as your building changes. WellNest does not compete on price; we compete on reliability and on being accountable for the work. Phil’s post on why janitorial contracts deliver better results than hourly cleaners goes further into what a structured program changes day to day.

Schedule a walkthrough

If you are comparing bids and would like a proposal from WellNest, please schedule a walkthrough. We typically come out within a few business days, and you will have the written proposal within two business days after that. We’d love to work with you!