I am often asked; how do you get cleaning contracts for State, County and Municipal cleaning accounts?
The answer is quite simple in most cases. These cleaning contracts get put out to bid by the various agencies involved.
All you need to do is be on the lookout for them, and ask a few questions about the process. Starting at the beginning, “going out to bid” means the agency in question must get pricing from several cleaning companies to clean the various facilities under their control.
This may include court houses, public works buildings, county buildings, police stations, athletic field restrooms and the concession stands or numerous other possibilities. Normally certain procedures are followed during this process to ensure they get a fair price and to make sure no “back room” deals are brokered by keeping the process open to the public.
How do you do get a piece of the action you ask?
Well you can start by simply contacting the major players in this game. This means calling your township, municipality, county seat and state house. Just find out who is the key person to speak with concerning the cleaning bid, then start asking questions.
These 4 questions should be on your short list:
- How often do the cleaning contracts go out to bid?
- When is the next available opportunity to bid these accounts?
- What requirements must be met by the cleaning company?
- How do I go about submitting a bid?
My first cleaning contract for a local government was earned by going to the municipal headquarters for my town and asking these simple questions. I just made sure I went through the proper channels and I got the job because of it.
This particular instance was for a large one-time janitorial cleaning of the town hall building. This in turn lead to getting the carpet cleaning contract for that building too. Then this lead to the performing these two services for the town library across the street.
After performing our services the second time, they then asked me to submit a price for cleaning all the buildings and all of the athletic fields in the ENTIRE township. As you can see, things can move rather quickly once your known as a quality contractor.
The real amazing part is, there is nothing complicated about this process. This was all done by just getting out of my seat and going to town hall. You may also be able to check you local newspaper, as many agencies provide notice in that manner too.
You will need to educate yourself on the specific details of each bid. This may include insurance, workman’s comp requirements and how and when you get paid among other issues unique to that particular contract. In the end that’s a small price to pay to get in on the action.
To summarize, acquiring this type of work is not that hard. You will have success with this approach if you just make a solid and consistent effort.
If you liked this post, you can subscribe to our RSS feed and get loads more by clicking here.
If you need detailed instructions on how to start your own cleaning business, then check out my value packed course by clicking here.