contractor success The Secrets Of BIDDING Metrics, calculations and conversations are all important when it comes to landing new business. By: Michael Jenkins I It is a common question in the building ser-vice contractor (BSC) market. What is the answer to successful bidding? First, know how to bid. The keys being to stay in the price ball park, ensure a profit and sell benefits. During my 25 years experience in the in-dustry, I have helped hundreds of compa-nies win new accounts. Bidding is really quite easy once you have established methods/metrics. Here are some helpful tips. ■ Who will pay for client consumable supplies ■ Day porter options (affects labor) ■ Cleaning times (day/night and how much access you have to the building) ■ The challenges the client is facing with their current service ■ The client’s goals and vision of where they want to be. Calculate Expenses If you know your expenses, you can be sure to make a profit off the account. The biggest expense and the hardest one to calculate is labor. A production rate is the rate at which a per-son can perform a given task/set of tasks. You may have your own, which is best, because they are proven rates based upon how you work. If not, there are industry rates you can use like ISSA’s 540 Cleaning Times . Beware — these may need a little modify-ing to fit your company. Gather the necessary metrics, apply the rates and calculate time. For example, in team cleaning, a light-du-ty specialist who performs trash and dust-ing duties usually has a production rate of 13,000 square feet per hour. Gather Metrics And Information You will need to gather metrics and infor-mation regarding the building and the pros-pect in order to bid properly on a potential account. Here is a list of some information you will need: ■ Square footage (in order to calculate labor) ■ Number of fixtures in the restrooms (in order to calculate labor) ■ Density (how packed a room is with fur-niture/people — this also affects labor) ■ Services expected (affects labor) ■ Age of facility (affects labor) ■ Expectations of client (affects labor) If I had a 25,000-square-foot building, I would take the 25,000 square feet, divide it by the 13,000 square feet per hour rate, and would get 1.92 hours; the time it takes that person to clean that 25,000-square-foot building doing those services. Then you calculate the labor expense by taking the time and multiplying it by the em-ployee hourly rate, applying labor burden expenses like unemployment insurance and matching payroll taxes. Doing this for all services will get you your labor expense. Other expenses might include possible health insurance — with the new government mandates, I would need five hours to tell you all of the requirements — equipment, sup-plies, liability insurance, bond, training, back-ground checks, badges, uniforms, commu-nication/inspection devices, etc. Ensure Profit After you calculate all of your expenses, it is time to calculate price. This can be calculated many ways, the end result being you achieve a reasonable profit off the account. Some ways to get you to a competitive price is cost per square foot (e.g., $.065 per square foot), a percent used for profit (e.g., 4-7 36 CM/Cleaning & Maintenance Management ® • July 2013 Image courtesy of DigitalVision/Thinkstock Successful
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