How to Compare Commercial Cleaning Bids Without Buying an Empty Scope

Two janitorial prices are not comparable unless both bids list rooms, frequencies, exclusions and hours. Here is how Eastern Ontario managers read a cleaning proposal.

Emerald Cleaners wrote this guide for commercial facilities in Eastern Ontario. It is operational advice for this topic, not a copied template and not medical or legal advice.

A cheap monthly number is not a specification

When three envelopes arrive for a Belleville office, the lowest price often won because it omitted washrooms on Friday, never mentioned kitchens, and assumed a 20-minute visit that cannot cover the floor plate. You only learn that after start, when staff complain.

This is not a guide about firing a vendor. It is about reading two proposals side by side before anyone gets keys. The “five signs it is time to switch” conversation comes later, when a contractor is already failing.

Demand the same headings from every bidder: rooms, tasks, frequencies, exclusions, hours, supplies, insurance, and how missed work is fixed. If a bid cannot fill those headings, it is not competing. It is a teaser.

Line up the room lists

Put both scopes in a table. Reception, open office, private offices, boardrooms, kitchen, washrooms, stairs, elevator, storage. If one company listed “offices” and the other listed eight rooms, they are not bidding the same building.

Frequencies must sit beside rooms. Dusting monthly and vacuuming nightly are different products. A bid that says “general cleaning” with no cadence cannot be compared to a bid that says “washrooms nightly, kitchen nightly, boardroom twice weekly.”

Exclusions matter. High dusting, interior glass, carpet extraction and strip and wax are often extra. If one price includes a yearly floor restoration and the other does not, the monthly figures are lying to you.

Hours, staffing and what happens when someone is away

Ask how many people and how many minutes the visit assumes. You do not need a theatrical labour matrix. You do need to know whether the price assumes one person for 45 minutes in a building that needs two hours.

Ask who covers vacation and illness. A one-person route with no backup is a risk. Local companies should be able to say how a missed night is handled.

After-hours access should be priced as part of the plan, not discovered when the alarm company calls. If two bids assume different entry hours, the cheaper one may be illegal to perform as written.

Specialty work hiding inside a janitorial price

Carpet extraction, grout restoration and strip and wax are not nightly tasks. If a bid folds them into the monthly fee with no calendar, you will either never get them or the nightly clean will be starved to pay for them.

Ask for a separate specialty calendar or a clear extra. Then you can compare apples: nightly program versus nightly program, project versus project.

Emerald Cleaners splits commercial and specialty on purpose so the quote path matches the work. Use that split when you evaluate anyone else too.

A scoring sheet you can reuse

Score: completeness of the room list; match to your hours; insurance and WSIB offered in writing; screening described; missed-work process; and whether the price is tied to the list. Do not score logo colour.

A walkthrough still beats a spreadsheet. Invite the two finalists to the same building with the same packet. The visit will show who is estimating from a photo and who is looking at the mop sink.

When you are ready, send one packet through the quote form so the written estimate can be compared to whatever else you collected.

Next step for this topic

Two janitorial prices are not comparable unless both bids list rooms, frequencies, exclusions and hours. Here is how Eastern Ontario managers read a cleaning proposal.

If that matches your building in Eastern Ontario, review commercial cleaning or request a free quote. Emerald Cleaners is at Unit C-444 Dundas Street E, Belleville, ON K8N 1E9. Call 613-922-8074 Monday to Friday, 9 to 4. More in Office & Workplace and the resource centre.