SectorsCleaning
Tenders in cleaning
In cleaning you win on work that can be measured. Buyers want to know how you reach the quality and prove it, what happens to the current staff and how your price moves with wages.
What buyers ask for
- Quality that gets measuredCleaning specifications often set out how quality is measured, for example with the VSR quality measurement system from the Dutch standard NEN 2075. It comes with an acceptance limit (AQL) per type of room. In one public specification, for example, the limit for washrooms and front-of-house areas is stricter than for offices. Your method statement has to show how you meet that limit and what you do when a measurement falls short.
- Staff when the contract changes handsThe Dutch collective agreement for cleaning and window cleaning provides that staff who have worked on a site long enough get an offer from the new contractor when the contract changes hands, under conditions and with the same hours and pay. For large sites, the current contractor shares anonymised staff data with bidders on request. That belongs in your planning and your price.
- Social returnMunicipalities regularly ask that part of the contract value is spent on work for people at a distance from the labour market. How that works and where it goes wrong: social return.
- A price that movesWages are the largest part of your price. How they follow increases in the collective agreement is set in the indexation clause. Work it out with the indexation calculator.
- Keurmerk SchoonKeurmerk Schoon, formerly the OSB mark, is the quality mark of the Dutch cleaning industry association Schoonmakend Nederland. It checks, among other things, your staff and financial records, how you apply the collective agreement and how you measure the quality of the work.
In a private tender
At a company or property manager, the request is often a list of rooms, frequencies and a question for a monthly price. If you only send a price, you are only compared on price. Use a short proposal to show how you keep quality up, who the fixed contact is and what happens in the first weeks.
How Atvalio helps
Atvalio reads the documents, knows your company and helps you write. You decide and you submit. In this sector that looks like this:
- UnderstandThe measurement system, the AQL per room, the social return requirement and the staff provisions in one list, with the page.
- DecideA recommendation that weighs whether your references, quality mark and capacity fit the size of the site.
- AskA question for the clarification round when it is unclear which room falls under which AQL, or which staff data you will get.
- WriteYour approach from your profile: how you measure, adjust and train new people, with your own references.
- CheckA simulated committee reads along, and Atvalio checks that every requested part and every format rule is in.
What often goes wrong
- Fictional examplePriced without the current staffA cleaning company prices the work with its own, new people. After the award it turns out that twelve staff of the current contractor are entitled to an offer, with their current hours and pay grade. The calculation no longer holds. Atvalio puts such a provision at the top under Understand and asks whether you have included it in your price.
Read on
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Sources
Rules and certificates change. Always check what the documents of your tender say. Most sources are in Dutch.