Commercial Cleaning Cost Norcross: How Bids Are Built
By the DBS Cleaning Services Team · · 6 min read
Our office sits on River Exchange Drive, so Norcross is the market we know best and the one where we get asked the most direct questions. Fair enough, so here is the machinery. The commercial cleaning cost Norcross buildings are quoted is not pulled out of the air, and it is not really a rate. Somebody estimates how many minutes each area takes, adds them up, converts that into staffed hours, and prints a number. Every difference between two proposals traces back to a different minute estimate somewhere. Once you see that, comparing bids becomes arithmetic instead of vibes.
Every bid is an hours estimate wearing a rate
Estimators use production rates: how much of a given area one person can clean properly in an hour. Open lobby is fast. Subdivided offices are slower. Restrooms are slowest of all.
Add the areas, apply the rates, get hours. Hours drive staffing. Staffing drives the number. There is no magic step in the middle.
What commercial cleaning cost Norcross buyers should ask for
Ask for the area breakdown and the hours. If one vendor is far below the others, they either found a real efficiency or they shortened the minutes. Both are worth naming out loud.
ISSA industry resources publishes the workloading approach the trade uses, so this is not an obscure request. It is the standard way the work gets planned.
This city is really two markets
Historic downtown around Lillian Webb Park and Thrasher Park has older buildings, tight back-of-house and small subdivided suites. Slow going per foot, and worth knowing before anyone quotes.
The Jimmy Carter Boulevard, Beaver Ruin and Peachtree Industrial corridor is flex space with wide open hard floors and loading docks. Faster per foot, heavier on periodic floor work.
Anyone quoting both the same way has not walked either. We would rather come stand in the building, count what is there, and price from the count. The crew that walked it is the crew that keeps it, which is the part a rate sheet never covers.
Most commercial cleaning gets sold on price per square foot, then quietly handed to whoever was cheapest and free that night. That’s why quality slides after month two — the scope was never real to begin with. We build yours from an actual walkthrough of your actual building, on your actual hours. Then we send the same crew who learned it. Boring? Completely. It’s also the only thing that makes month five look like month one.
DBS Cleaning Services Group
A low bid is a shorter estimate, not a discount
Labor is most of what you are paying for. If the number drops sharply, the hours dropped with it, because there is nowhere else for it to come from.
That looks fine at first. Then the trash cans in the back corridor get missed, the second-floor restroom starts slipping, and by month three you are having a meeting about it.
Serving Norcross and the surrounding area
Norcross is home for us, and we also serve Peachtree Corners, Duluth, Lilburn, Tucker, Doraville, Berkeley Lake, Lawrenceville, Suwanee and Chamblee from here.
Frequently asked questions
What is a production rate?
It is how much of a given area type one person can clean properly in an hour. Estimators apply these rates area by area to turn a floor plan into staffed hours.
Should a vendor share their hours estimate?
We think so. Hours are the honest unit behind any rate, and sharing them makes two proposals genuinely comparable instead of merely similar looking.
Why is a very low bid risky?
Because labor is the bulk of the cost. A much lower number nearly always means fewer hours on site, and fewer hours shows up as missed work within a couple of months.
How fast can you get to a building on Peachtree Industrial?
Quickly. Our office is minutes away on River Exchange Drive, so most Norcross walkthroughs happen within a few days of the call.
Ready when business begins.
Let’s walk your Norcross facility.
We are already in Norcross, so there is no reason for you to guess at any of this. Let us walk your building, show you the area counts and the hours behind them, and hand you a scope you can hold up next to anyone else’s. Ready when business begins.
(470) 357-1470Serving Norcross and all of Metro Atlanta