Industrial cleaning services: why a plant is not priced like an office, and what the published rates miss

What the companies publish

What an industrial scope has to say that an office scope does not

1. Separate production areas from everything else. Most industrial sites are two buildings in one: offices, welfare and meeting rooms that price like any commercial space, and a production area that does not. Split the square footage on the first page of the specification, because a single blended rate hides which half the money is going to and makes two bids impossible to compare.
2. Name the soil. Oil, metal fines, food residue, dust and chemical splash are five different jobs with five different methods and consumable costs. A specification that says the floor will be cleaned has not said anything a contractor can price, and the bids you get back will vary by more than the work does.
3. State the access and the shutdown. A line that does not stop is the single biggest cost driver on an industrial site. Whether the work happens during production, in changeover windows, or only at an annual shutdown changes the crew size, the hours and the rate, and it belongs in the scope rather than in a conversation after award.
4. Say who provides the permits and the confined-space cover. High-level work, confined spaces and anything near live plant carry permit and standby requirements that are labour before they are cleaning. Leaving them unstated does not remove them; it moves them into a variation after the contract is signed.
5. Decide what is cleaning and what is maintenance. Machine cleaning often sits on the boundary between the cleaning contract and the maintenance one, and on many sites it ends up in neither. Naming each item as one or the other in the scope is a five-minute job that prevents a year of arguments.

Common questions

Can I use a per-square-foot rate for a factory?

Not from this record. Every per-square-foot figure here was published for commercial and office space, and the companies publishing them say so. An industrial quote is built from crew hours, method and access, and a square-foot number is at best a sanity check on the office portion.

What does an industrial clean usually include?

Floors, structural cleaning, high-level dust, welfare facilities and often external areas. What it includes on your site is a decision you make in the specification, not a standard anyone can hand you.

Is the contractor for my offices the right one for the plant?

Sometimes, and it is worth asking which of their existing sites look like yours. The skills genuinely differ, and a strong office contractor with no production experience will price defensively or under-scope.

By market