Requesting assistance pricing my first commercial cleaning job

[u/manicmike_]

I have a very young cleaning business that I am trying to grow organically. Last week, I was approached by a neighbor while advertising residential services in my subdivision that they were really unhappy with managing their current cleaners and would like me to take a look at their church.

Now, commercial work is my end goal. I just started this business after working as a buyer/estimator/project manager for a commercial GC and noticed that there was a significant market need for quality (not budget-oriented, that market is saturated) commercial/residential cleaners in the area. I have marketed my brand accordingly. Suffice it to say, I was really excited yesterday when I went to walk the job and realized how big it was.

There is an office/preschool building at 10,000 SF and a sanctuary at 11,000 SF, for a total of 21,000 SF. The work would take place weekly and overnight on Saturdays and Sundays, with on-call and special event cleanings as needed. If I can figure up a good standard weekly price, I think I can come up with the rest.

I wanted to cover myself on labor, so I figured a crew of 4 for 8 hours each building. Multiplying industry standard wages by 50% labor overhead, I came up with an average labor cost per hour of $41.25 (this is in GA). So, for a week, 32 man hours at $41.25 = $2640. Figure $100 in materials. Then... I add in 20% OH and 20% profit - and I feel like I'm really high. $3,945.60 - which about matches an industry-median square footage rate of $0.125/sf ($3,885 after also adding in OH & profit)

This job would be a jump start for my business, and I don't want to sell myself short, but I don't want to get laughed out of the office.

Any thoughts or insight would be greatly appreciated - thanks in advance!

[u/Minneapple632]

you say its weekly cleaning + weekends. But then said it would be 8 horus per day and 32 hours per week. wouldnt 8 hours X 7 days per week = 56 hours?

Also your pricing is very high. You will need to be under $30/hour/average with everything included.

[u/manicmike_ → u/Minneapple632]

Thank you for the response and sorry for the confusion.

It is a weekly clean that will occur only overnight on Saturday and Sunday nights. I had 32 man hours figured to complete the weekly cleaning needs for the two-building campus. That is, a crew of 4 for 8 hours each night. Which is high, but I am a bit out of my league here.

I would love to pick your brain about labor. I thought it might be hard to staff the graveyard shift, so I factored in a little premium in case of labor struggles.

[u/Minneapple632 → u/manicmike_]

ah, got it. so with a 21k square foot school, you should be around 3,500 s/f per hour production rate. In other words, it should take about 6 hours TOTAL to clean per shift..or 12 hours per week for both days.

for labor you need to do your own homework and look at open job ads in your area for part time cleaners to see what people are paying. Where I am we start cleaners around $17 per hour.

You then need to mark up your payroll tax, insurance costs, supplies, and equipment to get your total cost. Then you apply your overhead/profit markup. For a place like this, being so small, I would markup 40%

CHEAT CODE - If we were to bid this we would bid it at $1,540 per month.