How to Add COVID-19 Disinfecting to Current Cleaning Contracts

In today’s COVID-19 environment, there are generally two types of cleaning and disinfecting jobs janitorial business owners find themselves being asked to bid on.

The first kind are project requests from building owners and property managers who are not current clients of the cleaning company, but who want a one-time COVID-19 cleaning and disinfecting proposal for their facility, office or retail store.

These are often prospective clients who may be contacting the cleaning service for the very first time, providing an estimate of the total square footage of the facility and wanting a set price for the one-time disinfecting project.

They may also express an interest in additional scheduled, periodic disinfecting service visits, but not always.

The second kind, which are the focus this article, are requests from current customers whose buildings the commercial cleaning business already services on a regular basis, looking to add disinfecting or increase the frequency of disinfecting to the current work schedule, job specifications (i.e. daily or weekly cleaning) being followed by the janitorial staff for their office. 

But these current clients often want to know not only about the COVID-19 disinfecting process itself, but also how adding a disinfecting task might change the number of budgeted cleaning hours currently assigned to their building, as well as their monthly price.

Now, while some of today’s leading janitorial software are helpful in pricing and creating cleaning proposals for the first kind of request; one-time disinfecting projects for new prospects – few cleaning business bidding software programs are pre-loaded to handle the second kind from current clients asking to add specific, individual tasks such as disinfecting to one or more areas of their commercial building.

Why?

The answer comes from looking at how the bidding software is programmed, specifically, how it is coded to calculate the cleaning hours needed to perform the job specifications required; clearly identifying the important difference.

Most cleaning business bidding apps simply use broad, one-size-fits-all production rates assigned to an equally broad set of duties (assumed to represent some standard or acceptable level of cleaning) rather than specific production rates for individual tasks.

But, to effectively customize a cleaning work schedule, such as adding a disinfecting task or increasing its frequency to one or more areas in buildings whose size and layout are often quite unique as well – is not easy, if even possible, using crude, overall production rate(s).

As a result, this one-size-fits-all production rate approach offers cleaning business owner little more than a ‘rough’ cleaning time estimate, with potentially costly consequences. 

For example, this method of calculating time generally ignores significant differences between buildings in important factors such as size of building (7,500 sq. ft. vs. 125,000 sq. ft.), frequency of cleaning (1x/ week vs. 5x/ week) and kind of business (industrial/manufacturing vs. legal/accounting). 

And again, this one-size-fits-all production rate approach to janitorial bidding becomes essentially useless when a cleaning business owner wants to adjust cleaning tasks on a detailed level; consisting of specific duties being required in specific areas of the building with specific frequencies (i.e. 1x/ week, 5x/ week)

In summary, when building owners and property managers are asking commercial cleaning companies to add one specific task, as they are today with disinfecting related to COVID-19, general production rate bidding software falls flat. 

Is there an answer? Fortunately, yes.

Janitorial bidding software using task-based work loading is the easy and effective way for janitorial businesses to calculate cleaning times by task, by area – for current clients wanting to add disinfecting services to their company’s existing job specifications and current cleaning contract.

CleanGuru Janitorial Bidding Software is preloaded to calculate cleaning hours using task-based workloading.

Here’s how:

1/ it comes pre-loaded with a large selection of individual tasks, like disinfecting, along with an associated production rate for each; providing a detailed, task-based work loading tool for calculating cleaning times from the ‘ground up’ – task by task, area by area.

2/ it lets cleaning companies add one specific task, like disinfecting to the current work schedule/job specifications in one or more areas of a building, or increase the frequency of that one task in certain areas, but not in others

3/ it empowers janitorial business owners to effectively ‘isolate and highlight‘ one task so they can clearly ‘show and explain’ to the customer:

• where the specific task was added, or increased in frequency,

• how it would affect the cleaning time (average hours/visit), and

• how it would affect monthly price

No mystery.  No confusion.  

Again, task-based work loading, like the kind built into CleanGuru Cleaning Business Software is the real ‘secret’ and power; allowing janitorial companies to take control of actual work schedule/job specifications on a specific, task by task basis.

The good news is adding disinfecting to current cleaning contracts can be easy for commercial cleaning businesses with the right janitorial bidding and estimating software. 

Put simply, the ability to isolate the impact of a specific change, such as adding or increasing disinfecting within a current cleaning contract, as well as to explain any associated change in cleaning time or price, makes the value of software utilizing task-based work loading – clear.