Tenders for UK Cleaning Contracts

Challenges of tendering for cleaning contracts

Cleaning is a service that is regularly outsourced, so there are plenty of opportunities but also plenty of competition. Therefore, one of the main challenges is matching the tender requirements to your level of experience, so that you are competing in the right race. You do not want to waste time and resources on tenders that your business has no chance of winning.

Consequently, you may have to read through several cleaning tender specifications to find one that is relevant to your business and appropriate to the level of experience you have. Ensuring you have an efficient system to sort through information and make an informed decision to tender will help achieve a much better return on your tendering investment.

---

Tender top tips

Top tips for winning cleaning sector contracts

1. Read all of the tender documentation

Read all of the tender documentation carefully to get a full understanding of what the buying organisation is looking for. What are their criteria and can you meet all of them? If you cannot, then develop a strategy to fill those gaps so that you can compete for the next tender.

2. Visit the site

If you can visit the site beforehand, do so. That way, your cleaning tender can be much more specific and relevant.

3. Quality control

Buying organisations (who might be schools, hospitals, housing associations, councils etc), are not just looking for outstanding cleaning, but assurances on how you will achieve this consistently over the course of a contract. So, think about what your processes are for quality control, i.e. monitoring and checking your services? Do these need to be improved before you tender? What are your remediation processes if there is a problem?

4. Provide as much evidence as possible

Provide as much evidence as possible on previous experience. Can you supply accurate management information on how well you have cleaned in the past, can you show monthly reports on meeting the Service Level Agreement (SLA)?

5. Environmental awareness

Demonstrate that you have a robust environmental awareness and that you are committed to a sustainable future, e.g. by using the right consumables. You are likely to need good environmental policies and procedures. Can you provide evidence to support your commitments e.g. calculation of your carbon footprint or your water consumption used for window cleaning? The best responses will consider how this commitment will then help the buying organisation with their own environmental program. So, try to calculate specifically the environmental impacts of your service on the buyer – e.g. how much water will be saved if they use your service?

6. Accreditations, qualifications, policies and procedures

Make sure you have all the necessary accreditations, qualifications, policies and procedures in place to show that you have established a solid business foundation upon which you can deliver the required cleaning services. It is important that you demonstrate your cleaning staff have the correct training and follow procedures. Do you have training certificates and use a matrix to control staff training?

7. Focus on the evidence

If you’re a small business consider how you can use that to the buyer’s advantage. Focus on the evidence you can provide from your other customers that a smaller, local service is better. Can you support this with customer testimonials? If not, collect some.