A practical guide for facility managers who have received multiple quotes and cannot tell which one to trust.
If you have sent a request for quote to three janitorial contractors and received three different numbers back, you probably cannot tell which is the best value. The bids almost certainly do not cover the same scope. One contractor quoted nightly visits; another quoted five days and excluded Fridays; the third quoted per-visit rather than monthly. The prices are not comparable because the services are not comparable.
This is not accidental. Scope ambiguity benefits contractors who want to win a bid on price and then negotiate services downward after the contract is signed.
Before you compare numbers, ask each contractor to provide a written scope of work — a document that lists every task, its frequency and the standard it should meet. If a contractor cannot produce this, they are not quoting in good faith, and whatever they deliver will be defined by whatever the crew feels like doing that night.
The written scope should specify, at minimum:
Convert all quotes to the same per-visit cost. A monthly quote divided by the number of visits that month gives you a per-visit rate. A per-visit quote multiplied by the visit frequency gives you a monthly cost. Once all three are on the same basis, the comparison becomes meaningful.
In a market like southern Dakota County — where Hastings, Farmington and Rosemount offices are common contract targets — monthly flat-fee contracts run across a wide range depending on square footage, floor type and restroom count. A 3,000 sq ft office cleaned five nights per week will cost meaningfully more per month than the same facility cleaned three nights per week. If one bid is significantly lower than the others, the most likely explanation is that it excludes something the others include.
Ask each contractor two questions directly:
What happens if the crew does not show up? The answer tells you how they handle absence. "We'll reschedule" is meaningfully different from "We fill from our own staff roster." The first means your facility does not get cleaned; the second means it does.
How do you verify work was completed? A contractor who cannot answer this clearly does not inspect their own work. Supervisor check-ins, sign-in logs and phone-in completion reports all exist; "we trust our crews" is not an answer.
Request a certificate of insurance from all three before you sign anything. General liability, employee dishonesty bonding and workers' compensation should all be present. In Minnesota, workers' comp is required by law — a contractor without it transfers liability for crew injuries to you as the property owner or manager.
The lowest bid is almost always the one with the least coverage, the least experienced crew or the least overhead — which includes insurance, supervisory staff and equipment maintenance. A contractor who prices below market has made a trade-off somewhere. The question is where.
The highest bid is not automatically the best. A regional franchise adds franchise fees to every contract, and that premium does not produce better cleaning — it produces a brand name and a call center. Independent contractors with documented histories and written scopes frequently outperform franchise operations at lower cost.
Once you have selected a contractor, request the following before the first clean: a signed written scope of work, a certificate of insurance naming your facility if required, the name of the crew assigned to your account, and a contact number that reaches a person during business hours. These four items tell you whether the contractor runs a professional operation or a loose one.