Pricing my first big commercial job.....

[C&S Window Newbie]

Hi all,

ive been invited to price a large commercial job which has gone up for tender review. i have only had to price domestic house cleans so i am abit lost how to quote this job, do i base it on £1 per window and charge for the inside and outside as there is a fair amount of under dry pad intenal work required for the common aera of the property and the glass banisters in ressisdents living quaters.

i have uploaded one picture ans thats the max i can upload but all 4 sides are similar to this picture would appreciate any help or advise in pricing this job

 

[dazmond]

I'd pass the job on to a window cleaning company with staff myself....its too big for me.....its got hassle written all over it......?

 

[NewGuy]

Yes I agree, looks too complicated for a single (and new?) window cleaner.

 

[Neil.. Lancashire]

Yes I agree, looks too complicated for a single (and new?) window cleaner.

We do a lot of commercial work and you after be carful not to under price these jobs.

Its defo not for a one man on his own.  Your website must be good if your getting invited to quote for work like this, or there just going through the motion and they are happy with who they have but need to get new quotes every 3 years.

Best of luck if you have a go.

It could be good experience for you if your interested in getting this type of work.

 

[Pjj]

To price up a job like this it certainly isn’t a £1 per window territory , again it would need detailed pictures of all elevations to check access , height ,type ,size etc ,as for internal windows when will they be done m di people work in this building ?.. will you have to move desks , tables , ornaments ?. Etc , we do  a lot of large commercial and every job is vastly different to the next job each needs a bespoke price which will vary due to frequency of cleans , location, what dirt is on it and how bad it gets between cleans etc . There is no one size fits all with pricing  this type of work Ime afrade , again it’s not really a job for one guy in his own I doubt a risk assessment would allow that , having said that years ago before I had staff I did a couple of places a bit like that on my own was hard work ????

 

[matt1458]

I’m pretty new too so no expert (I believe @Pjj is definitely the best person to take advice from on this) but my personal preference is commercial work (we’re now doing periodics at two considerably sized schools, a large GP surgery, a few retailers and just taken on a 92 bed hotel) so I’ll have us have a crack at most things but looking at the photo I would still probably steer clear - there’s a lot going on there!

We were asked to submit a tender for a major retail site with over 900 large  panels being done by a team of 5  multiple times a week. Every part of me wanted to go for it, staff it up, but we bowed out with a good relationship before we bit off more than we could chew right now. I’ll bloody well get that on the next renewal though ?

Good on you if you go for it but everything I’ve gone for commercially has been priced time wise (with a decent buffer built in) rather than price per window, from even my limited experience I can confirm there’s always something that will come up to bite you in the backside if you don’t price it accordingly!

 

[Cghwindowcleaning]

That job is not exactly the shard if it was outside only one man could do that in a day easily.However there is a hell of a lot of faff involved.

One piece of advise I will give you is never put potential jobs especially commercial on the internet it took me around 5 seconds to work out where and who that job was for and your competition maybe watching.

The company in question I have priced work for here in Hertfordshire.

Every area maybe different but round here one company does the whole area of Hertfordshire and they get them done very cheap.I was asked to price jobs for them and unless I went in really low I Was never going to get them.

They expect gutter and gully clearance as part of the contract and you are expected to go through each apartment to clean the reverse of the balcony and out side balcony doors.If there's 50 units that's a lot of going through which is a lot of excess time and care.With the way things are at the minute with covid god knows how you'll get round safely all the internal work.Your RAMS will need to very good.

For me there is too much faffing about and not enough money involved and never price commercial at £1 a window it's not 1980.

 

[dazmond]

I've been window cleaning for 27 years and even I would pass  on that job!??

 

[Martyn]

That's got pain in the **** written all over it, where I live that would go to companies that employ Portuguese or Latvian workers on low wage.