Contrary to many on and off line conversations I have had recently regarding the acute shortage of competent employees in the labor market these days, I feel positive about the help in our industry.  

I’m forecasting greater availability of part-time janitorial service employees in the coming 12 months. When the economy slows down, the cleaning industry gains from an influx “nontraditional” (full-time employed professionals & higher wage hourly employees) part-time cleaning employees who work for supplimental income to counteract consumer debt and rising adjustable rate mortgages. And just like in the early 90s we can probably expect a return of the franchised janitorial model as unemployment rates rise… 

Underbid custodial services contracts have been the primary bane of building owners and cleaning contractors since the beginning. Why? It takes experience on hundreds of proposals over many years to simply to acheive basic competancy. Many don’t know where even to begin, so people resort to wild guessing loosely based on what the property manager would like to pay.

I receive dozens of emails and phone calls each year from people all over the country inquiring on how to bid corporate, government or institutional janitorial contracts, so I will answer it once for all here: First determine the net cleanable space (gross square footage - non-cleanable space) and divide by your cleaning production ratio for each type of building (typically between 1,500 to 5,000 sq. ft cleaned per man-hour). This is your time needed to clean the building per shift. Multiply by the your loaded hourly rate (cleaning employee’s wage rate x Federal & State payroll tax % + insurance costs i.e. liability & workers compensation). This is your labor cost per shift. Multiply your labor cost by the number of times per month you are required to perform the work. This is your monthly labor cost. To this add your monthly cleaning chemical and consumable costs and monthly amortized equipment costs. Finally, add your overhead and profit (which ranges from 7% to 30% of the sum total of previous figures)

You now have your monthly janitorial invoice amount to present to your customer!

All bidding programs used by anyone is based on the basic steps above. For more commercial cleaning production ratios, see the following janitorial timestudies and workloads from organizations such as BSCAI (Building Service Contractors Association International) , ISSA & BOMA (Building Owners and Managers Association)

This is a frequent question of facility managers, even in Connecticut. Should we hire our own custodial staff or contract the work? Decades ago, many support services (work not directly related to a company’s main product) were performed by all employees on the payroll. It was a less competative world when you could profitably achieve superiority in many business areas without compromising your main product line. When you dedicate your best managerial talent, it must be on your core business

I have also spoken with many property managers (itself an outsourced business) who also consider hiring their own employees after experiencing setbacks with contractors. I have posed to property managers, after they become proficient in self-performed janitorial, that they should consider changing their line of work and becoming a janitorial contractor. This suggestion is often taken as absurd, with the response being, we are in the property management business, not cleaning.

My point, with the application of intelligent and thoughtful management all business problems can be solved. That is how they solved their custodial issues. If the property mangers do not then change their business, then all their gains would go away with the next employee turnover. If the property mangers keep managing to avoid turnover to keep their gains then they have de facto changed over to the janitorial business.

I have not mentioned what type of business in question. In the case of class A office space for a financial firm, it is obvious. What if it is a business or institution who already have high numbers of hourly service employees in their main business? (a nursing home, manufacturing, food service, education)   I believe that in-house janitorial too in these industries succumb to the same pressures to a lesser degree with the differences be also continually reduced as global competition increases  See: http://www.acui.org/publications/bulletin/article.aspx?issue=448&id=2298