Cleanzine: your weekly cleaning and hygiene industry newsletter 18th April 2024 Issue no. 1110
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The story below in ‘This week’s news’, headed ‘Contractor ended up biting off more than it could chew’, highlights some of the issues faced not only by the cleaning industry worldwide but by anyone providing/buying a service: if the quote’s a great deal more expensive than everyone else’s the service provider will lose the bid; if it’s too cheap the service provider may end up with more work than it can handle with the resources available and the client can suffer from poor service and bad results. Or indeed no service, as the story reveals.
Following the original article, which appeared in Alaskan newspaper Juneau Empire and which reports contractor Reach Custodial Services losing its contracts in a re-tender process to rival JJG Cleaning Services, which vastly undercut Reach’s prices, were a number of comments from readers. One says: “JJG's bid was $193.000.00, Reach's bid was $312,000,00. Looks like ya get what ya pay for(sic).”
It led me to thinking about the fine line a contractor treads when entering the tender process. It can’t be easy to ensure that you have all the necessary resources available in terms of staff and equipment and all your costs covered as well as some profit written in, whilst making sure that your bid is attractive enough to the decision-makers to be in with a chance of success.
And what happens if you suddenly lose a big contract? What happens to all the staff and the expensive equipment you’ve earmarked for the job?
Those who believe that running a cleaning business is easy, clearly don’t know quite what's involved ...
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Yours,
18th July 2013