Ask three providers for 'housekeeping for our office' and you will get three prices for three different jobs. The gap is almost never dishonesty — it is that each provider filled in the missing details differently. Specifying the requirement properly is the single fastest way to get comparable quotations.
Scope of work
- Total area to be covered, and which parts are daily versus periodic
- Number of floors, workstations and cabins
- Number and type of restrooms, and expected servicing frequency
- Pantry and cafeteria areas, including whether staff handle beverages
- Common areas — lobby, lifts, staircases, terrace, parking
- Waste handling and disposal expectations
- Any specialised cleaning — glass facades, carpets, deep cleaning cycles
Timings and shifts
State your actual operating hours, not standard office hours. Include weekend requirements, public holiday expectations, and whether any work must happen before staff arrive or after they leave. If the site runs multiple shifts, say how many people are needed in each.
Supervision and reporting
- Whether you need a dedicated on-site supervisor or shift in-charge
- Who on your side the team reports to day to day
- How attendance is recorded and shared
- What the escalation path is when something is missed
- How often you want a review meeting
Materials, consumables and equipment
This is the biggest single source of price variation. Be explicit about who supplies cleaning materials, consumables such as tissues and hand wash, and equipment such as vacuum cleaners and scrubbers. A quotation that includes consumables and one that does not are not comparable numbers.
Uniforms, ID and compliance
Specify uniform requirements and whether your building or client requires specific ID, badges or induction. If your premises sit inside a managed complex, the building's facility rules often dictate access procedures — share those upfront so they are factored into the mobilisation timeline.
Continuity expectations
State what you expect when someone is absent, and how quickly replacement cover should be arranged. A requirement that is silent on continuity will be priced as if absence never happens.
A short template
Site location and area · daily and periodic scope · operating hours and shifts · headcount by role · supervision requirement · consumables and equipment responsibility · uniform and ID requirements · continuity expectations · start date. Send that, and the quotations you receive will finally be about the same job.
Why two quotations for the same office differ so much
When prices diverge widely for what looks like the same requirement, the cause is almost always one of six things: consumables included or excluded, equipment included or excluded, supervision priced separately or absorbed, the number of shifts assumed, weekly-off cover assumed or ignored, and the wage level the provider has budgeted for. Any of these can move a number by a large margin, and none of them is visible in a single-line quotation. Asking for the price to be broken down against those six items turns an incomparable set of numbers into a genuine comparison.
Periodic work, spelled out
Daily cleaning is easy to describe and easy to price. Periodic work is where expectations quietly diverge, because everyone assumes it is included until the quarter ends and it has not happened. Write down the cycle you expect for each of the following, even if the answer is 'not required'.
- Deep cleaning of workstations, cabins and meeting rooms
- Carpet shampooing and upholstery cleaning
- Internal and external glass, including whether external access needs specialist arrangements
- Floor scrubbing, polishing and machine work
- Pantry and cafeteria deep cleaning, including appliances
- Terrace, staircase, parking and service areas
- Pest control and water tank cleaning, if these fall in your scope rather than the building's
Quality standards worth writing into the requirement
A requirement that says 'the office should be clean' cannot be measured, and anything that cannot be measured becomes an argument. Convert the expectation into checkable statements: restrooms checked and logged at a stated frequency, meeting rooms reset within a stated time after use, reception area presentable before a stated hour, waste cleared before end of shift, escalations acknowledged within a stated window. A simple checklist signed off daily by your admin team and the supervisor is more effective than any contractual language.
Statutory and documentation expectations
For deployed manpower, confirm in writing how wages are paid and by whom, that statutory contributions applicable to the engagement are handled by the provider, and what documentation you will receive each month for your own records. Also confirm what identity and background checks are carried out before someone is deployed on your premises. These are reasonable questions to ask any provider, and a straightforward answer is itself informative.
Mobilisation: what happens between signing and day one
- Confirming the final scope, headcount and roster in writing
- Sourcing and screening for the specific roles, including commute feasibility
- Documentation, identity checks and building or client access formalities
- Uniforms, ID cards and any PPE required for the site
- Site induction and a walkthrough with your admin team before the first shift
- Materials and equipment in place, with a named storage point
- A first-week review, then a first-month review with the plan adjusted once
A copy-and-send requirement template
Site address and type of premises · total area and areas in scope · daily scope · periodic scope with cycles · operating hours, weekends and holidays · shifts and headcount by role · supervision requirement and reporting format · consumables, materials and equipment responsibility · uniform, ID and induction requirements · absence and replacement expectations · statutory documentation expected monthly · required start date · review point. Send those fourteen lines to every provider and you will receive quotations that are genuinely comparable, usually within a couple of days.