1) when a prospect gives you a measurement, do you ever go by their figures or do you ALWAYS measure it yourself?

2) of course i can see the benefit of measuring it yourself, but what if the prospect tells you a figure and it may come across to them that you dont trust them if you go ahead and measure it up anyways....then what do you do?

3) what type of instrument do you use to accurately measure a big job (50,000 - 500,000 sq.ft.)?
i have a 160' vinyl tape and a "roll-a-wheel" that i have only used 3 times, several years ago...i dont trust it.

thanx for any input fellas! --- Derek.

We just tell them that we always measure. And often times their guesstimate is higher than our measurement is.

We use Roll-A-Tapes. We learned from someone on the message board to attach a rubber band to the wheel to avoid slippage on the carpet (it works).




Rick Gelinas

i always measure too as well, just for safety sake.. theirs and mine. I have seen mistakes made before. We are all human.
i do like rick said and tell them that i want to double check to make sure that I am not overcharging them as my bid will be my bid. I want to get it right.
I too use a rolling wheel that i had from the golf course work.
In the commercial arena, you too can count ceiling tiles as most commercial ceilings, or alot of the time, are drop ceiling and most have tiles that are very easy to count. I look at that first. But then you are talking about a large,, very very large sq. footage in your example for this thread and I would hate to be looking up for that amount of time. Ouch!
good luck Derek

Steve

Steve Dobson
ProFloor
Custom Cleaning Services

My first week working for a larger janitorial contractor, he sent us to a course run by Daniels Associates, a training firm in the contract cleaning business. They stressed the need to measure, citing the example of a 'half million square foot building' that no one ever measured, since everyone knew it was a half million square feet. Said so in all the company literature about their building, so why would anyone bother checking? He checked as a matter of policy and found out it was a quarter million. Everyone had been off by a factor of 100% for years. Lotta money spent for nothing over the years.

The following week I had an appointment to see a large downtown office building that was supposedly 168,000 square feet, according to the customer. Since I was new at the job, I just did the measuring the way Daniels said to. Kept coming up wrong. Hmmmm, must be cuz I'm new and dumb at this. So I re-measured. Came up wrong again. Third time (I'm a persistent cuss, even if I do waste time on occasion!) I kept getting the size of about 250,000 feet. Manager saw me spending half the day there and looking all confused like. Took pity on me and invited me back into his office.

"Clay, you're the only one of the 8 bidders for this job that has a clue what we're up to. We had a fancy consultant come out last year and he guaranteed us he could save us big bucks on our maintenance costs. We said OK, and he proceeded to measure every file cabinet, every desk, every piece of furniture and all dead spaces like janitorial and electrical closets, and then delete them from the count of square footage that we tell the cleaning, pest control contractors and any other trade that needs a building measurement to create pricing. The consultant used the logic "Well, they're not cleaning under the file cabinets, are they? So delete that space and the stupid idiots will never know the difference. If they complain, at least you'll kinda sorta have a logical enough rationale, and if not, you are waaaay ahead on $$ for maybe lots of years before they figure it out."

I'll let you draw your own conclusion about the ethics of that. But measuring helped our company avoid winning a contract that would have had a hidden additional payroll cost of about $35,000 per year and wondering what was wrong with our stupid operations manager.

Since then I have become a raging advocate of measuring. I've won $40,000 jobs that all the other bidders bid $60,000 due to being the only one who knew that the place was really smaller than the customer insisted. (Yeah, I did try to tell him. But have you ever met someone so in love with his own self that if you save him $20,000, but also prove he was wrong, he will become your sworn enemy? That was this customer, not wanting to hear anything. So I did not force it on him.)

Just recently we got a contract for a job for 25,000 feet that the customer told me for sure was not to be measured. I checked....it's 22,500. They usually use gross figures, such as their lease mentions. But we clean net, less wall space, dead spaces and elevator shafts, storage closets, etc.

If they absolutely won't allow measuring, use my friend's technique. Say "size measurements provided by client will be presumed to be correct, but will be confirmed and pricing adjusted prior to commencing work"

My three cents worth.

some good info in there. I took notes. LOL
thanks We can all learn from some of what you said.

Steve Dobson
ProFloor
Custom Cleaning Services

thanx for the response Clay and others....worth the read!

take care --- Derek.

BTW, Clay what do you use to measure with? Roll-a-tape?

Derek,

I always measure even on houses that we have cleaned for years, I will measure every time I go out there. It is habit now.