In a tender we were asked to review some time ago, the sustainability chapter ran to nine pages. It contained a commitment to carbon neutrality, an environmental mission statement and a photograph of an electric vehicle. The costing behind it showed, for every position, hourly rates barely above the statutory minimum wage.
This is not an isolated case, and it is not deception either. The tenderer answered what was asked. What was asked about was environmental management. What was not asked about was the thing that actually determines sustainability in this sector.
Why environmental criteria yield little here
A security service consists almost entirely of working time. What a contractor deploys apart from personnel is modest: uniforms, a radio, perhaps a vehicle for patrol rounds, a guard tour system.
The strongest levers therefore sit with working conditions, because that is where the money and the performance are. The people in this sector work at night, on public holidays, frequently alone, often with a public prone to conflict, and staff turnover is high. A client wanting to change something has options here that no environmental management system offers.
That does not make environmental effects irrelevant. An item can be small in the price and significant in the environmental profile, and mileage on patrol duty is the best example. It simply needs to be assessed against the actual activity rather than against a mission statement.
The first lever: qualification above the minimum
The statutory minimum qualification under Section 34a of the Trade Regulation Act (Gewerbeordnung) is a floor. For many duties it is professionally too low, particularly where public traffic and potential for conflict come together.
A higher qualification can be brought into the procurement in two ways. As a minimum requirement in the specification of services, which narrows the field of tenderers and therefore has to be justified on the merits. Or as an award criterion that rewards a higher proportion of qualified staff without compelling it.
Which route is right is not a matter of preference but of a simple rule. What is indispensable belongs in the specification as a minimum requirement. What improves quality and can be graded sensibly is suited to being an award criterion and does not shut out smaller providers. What the company as such must be capable of is suitability.
Before any of that, though, it needs establishing which additional qualification actually helps for the particular duty. Not every certified works security officer improves every position; at a reception desk under heavy visitor pressure, de-escalation training, language skills or first aid may be worth more than a higher formal qualification.
And whatever is evaluated has to be verifiable later. A tenderer who commits to a proportion of qualified staff and receives points for it has to maintain that proportion through the term. An evaluated commitment does not become binding merely by having appeared in the tender. It has to be carried into the contract in such a way that content, evidence, audit right and the consequence of a deviation are unambiguous.
The second lever: pay and collective agreement compliance
There is no nationwide sector minimum wage for the guarding industry as a whole. The absolute floor is the statutory minimum wage, standing at 13.90 euros since 1 January 2026. Above it sit the sector's regional collective agreements, which have been declared generally binding in some federal states and then apply to every business within their scope. For qualified duties in metropolitan areas the statutory minimum wage is not viable in any case. Anyone costing on that basis there will either find no staff or will find staff who take the next better-paid position as soon as it appears.
Collective agreement compliance therefore bears directly on the contractor's capacity to perform. Since 1 May 2026 the Federal Collective Agreement Compliance Act (Bundestariftreuegesetz) applies in addition. Its scope is narrower than the name suggests: it covers works and services contracts as well as concessions awarded by the Federation from an estimated value of 50,000 euros net. Awards by the federal states and municipalities do not fall under it; for those, the respective state procurement and collective agreement compliance laws continue to apply.
Where it does apply, the client must impose compliance with collectively agreed working conditions on the contractor as a binding condition of performance; this is monitored through a purpose-built audit body. Which collectively agreed conditions are decisive for a given sector is determined by regulations issued by the federal labour ministry. What this means for your procedure and what evidence you may require needs a legal assessment before you draft a clause.
Independently of that, one point holds in practical terms: the most informative figure is not the hourly charge-out rate but the wage inside it. Two figures alone do not settle anything, though. A tender quoting the same charge-out rate as the competition while costing a higher wage grade may have leaner overheads, a lower margin, a different premium structure or an unrealistic assumption. Which of these applies is settled by clarification of tenders, and for abnormally low tenders that is required in any case.
The third lever: shift arrangements
This is the point tenders overlook most often, even though it shapes working conditions most directly.
First the legal framework, which is frequently missed. Under Section 3 of the Working Hours Act (Arbeitszeitgesetz), daily working time is eight hours and may be extended to ten provided an average of eight hours is not exceeded within the compensation period. Twelve-hour shifts require a specific legal basis, as a rule an opening clause in a collective agreement. And where working time exceeds nine hours, a rest break of at least 45 minutes is required and has to be fixed in advance. A client should not prescribe a presence structure that can only be met with rosters at the edge of what is permissible.
Long runs of night and lone shifts increase the burden and make staff retention harder. By how much depends on the building and belongs in the roster planning and the risk assessment. Frequently, though, the client created the structure itself, by specifying attendance hours from which nothing else can be built.
Three things in the specification help. First, stating the presence hours required rather than a prescribed shift structure, so that the tenderer can plan lawfully.
Second, a provision on lone working that matches the risk. An emergency call facility and regular contact with the control room are the minimum. Whether that suffices follows from the risk assessment: where the risk is elevated, a lone worker alarm system may be required, and where it is critical, lone working may be ruled out altogether.
Third, a break arrangement that can actually be implemented in the building. A rest break is only a rest break where the person is released from the duty to work. At a gatehouse staffed by one person that means relief cover is needed, and it belongs in the costing. A break that exists on paper and cannot be taken in practice is an organisational failing, not the conduct of individual employees.
The fourth lever: turnover
Staff changes are an important indication of working conditions and organisation, and they need explaining. Behind a high rate may lie workload and poor pay, but equally an expired contract, a restructuring, promotions or retirements.
Asking directly for a company's turnover rate is of limited value in any case, because the reference base stays unclear and the figure can be arranged arithmetically. More informative are building-specific, aggregated figures: how many different individuals were deployed on the last comparable contract over twelve months, what proportion of them were there throughout, how many shifts had to be covered at short notice and how many went unfilled. You do not need personal data for that.
Stability can be steered better during performance than at the evaluation stage. A contractual provision requiring staff changes to be notified to the client in advance, and new personnel to be briefed on the building before their first deployment, does more than any points system.
Taking on staff at a change of contractor
When a contract is re-awarded, the people currently deployed face the question of what happens to them. For them, that is the only sustainability question that counts.
For the client it carries a quality argument at the same time, because knowledge of the building leaves with the staff. A tender can raise the question of willingness to take on staff, and whether and in what form this is permissible under procurement law depends on how it is framed and needs legal assessment. So does the question of whether a transfer of undertaking under Section 613a of the German Civil Code (BGB) applies in the particular case anyway. What needs considering operationally at a change of contractor is covered in a separate article.
What is settled in practical terms: a client who does not raise this question in the tender will get an answer anyway, only after the award and then under time pressure.
Where environmental criteria do carry weight
Three points are worth having, provided they are not overrated.
Vehicles on patrol and intervention duty. Where a contractor drives between several properties, significant mileage arises. A criterion on the vehicle fleet is appropriate here, provided the response time requirements remain compatible with it.
Technology instead of travel. A functioning connection to an alarm receiving centre replaces inspection journeys. That saves emissions and money, but it changes the security concept and must therefore not be treated as a purely environmental measure.
Uniforms and protective clothing. Sourcing and working conditions in the supply chain are a social criterion with an environmental component. The effort involved in evidencing it is out of proportion to the contract value, however, which is why we recommend this criterion only for larger procurements.
How to evaluate without rewarding prose
A sustainability criterion that can be answered with a self-declaration rewards the ability to write self-declarations. Three rules prevent that.
Ask for figures, not concepts. The proportion of qualified staff, the wage grade costed for each position, the number of individuals deployed on the reference contract.
Require evidence that can be checked. Third-party documentation is often more robust than a self-declaration, though not automatically. What matters is whether it is current, related to this contract and substantively apposite, and whether it holds for the term. A general company certificate may say less about the actual staffing than a precise, contractually binding personnel schedule.
And make sure every evaluated commitment lands in the contract. That need not mean carrying the same requirement twice word for word. It means that content, form of evidence, audit right and the consequence of a deviation are unambiguously settled in the contract.
What to decide before the next tender
What share of the evaluation should price carry, and what is left for everything else? For a service that is ninety per cent staff costs, that figure decides everything downstream.
Which of the points above do you actually intend to monitor during performance? Anything you will not monitor does not belong in the evaluation.
And the uncomfortable question: can your own specifications on presence hours and building structure support what you expect of the contractor in working conditions?