Hey guys,
I'm new to this cyber stuff. Been in business a long time. Circumstances are such that business has been 80% floors and 20% carpet, even though I always wanted it to be the other way around. Been using encap cleaning for over a year and Cymex for 18 years. Anyway, four months ago we cleaned about 10,000 s/f of common area carpet in a 100,000 s/f medical office complex. They were on a three month schedule. I call to schedule the next clean and am told the carpet looks so good it can go another month. One month later and it still doesn't look bad. Now they want an annual contract to maintain the common area carpet. They were paying $875 per clean. Areas include hallways, conference room, copy room, waiting rooms etc. Need some tips on working up a full maintenance program & pricing. I billed $950 for the last job. Thanks for any help. Never did one of these before.

Hey Bro,

You've got mail.

Do you have a digital camera? Here's a cool way to work up the floor plan. Snap a digital picture of each section throughout the facility, reduce each picture to a thumbnail size, place each photo into an Excel Spreadsheet, and type the measurement and description of each area in the cells next to the photo. Next, e-mail the file to the property manager. Then together you can decide which areas will require various levels of cleaning. After you've both agreed to the maintenance intervals for each section, you can proceed to write an intelligent contract. The benefit to this is that the facility director is in charge of the cleaning that they're ordering. And they have a copy of the file with photos and all the details. This spec sheet will be attached to the contract.




Rick Gelinas
encapman

To avoid this, we schedule for a year ahead, so we don't let the building people tell us to delay a scheduled cleaning, after all the idea is to keep the building looking like it does not need cleaning.

Interesting point.
The local hospital had carpet just about 18 months old.
They had allocated 8400. oo dollars to replace it because the 'in house' staff with a porty had blotched it so bad, they thought it wasnt repairable.
Long story.. short.. I encapped it. It took a whole morning.. this particular section of halls, etc.. was about 3000 sq. ft.

It has been 4 months ago. The carpets look brand new. I can't even get back in there to get a maintenance plan. It will be about ea 6 months.
I know, there is a difference between maintenance cleanings and restoration.
But this lady that does their vacuuming, vacuums each and every sq. in, dirt visible or not.
the hospital accountant sent me a niceletter,, seems this particular division,, came in under their maintenance purchases,, etc.
and saving the carpet brought them to budget for the year.
I will still maintain the account, but encap is costing me money. LOL

and a great house staff , private janitorial lady, not in house floor crew,, lol

Goes to show that with good maintenance,, encap is an awesome method.
it is all about preventive maintenance.
spotting when needed and vacuuming daily.

dobs

Steve Dobson
ProFloor
Custom Cleaning Services

Steve, you can "sell" how you are saving $$$ for other facilities and then you will be earning the "big bucks"

Rick and Don on right on target. As a former many facalities mgr. we looked for clean carpet not carpet cleaning and budgeted monthly billings and annual contracts. Floor plans that indentified what, when and where was being done (color coded was a plus and a mark of a professional CCer) If a problem arose we had to be able to open a folder immediately and discuss our method, daily, weekly, monthly and yearly for providing "clean carpet" for any facility we were responsible for. And in my case that was 22 million square feet in 10 states and Puerto Rico. I looked for companies that could provide that with little if any supervision. If I had a problem, I wanted to pick up the phone, speak to the "owner" point out the problem and get it solved immediately. I always tried to give one company a District (11 or 12) stores so I had enough clout to "git-r-done" Maybe this will help you a little with the mind set of a manager. If you as the Contractor can make the Manager feel that there will be no suprises if he give you that building or many buildings you are more than half way home to getting a long term contract. I wish that I had known Rick back then, I would have given him all 22 million square feet and then I could have moved on to my other problems like Energy Management.

In my opinion, I would not go after hospitals, nursing homes or that type of facility for my maintenance contracts.
That is for the very same reason you experienced, these facilities are on a tight budget and are always looking for ways to move money from one budget to another.
Go after office buildings, retail, or facilities that would be more concerned about their corporate image, than you will can generate contracts ranging from weekly to quarterly cleaning cycles.