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Advisory for clients in the public and private sector

Procurement of Cleaning Services
expertly prepared

We relieve your specialist department of the preparatory burden, prevent the typical pitfalls in the specification document, and bring sound market knowledge to your procurement.

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What makes a sound cleaning tender — and what can go wrong

In cleaning services, quality issues rarely surface in the tender document itself. They appear months after the contract has started, and they almost always come from the same root causes: an imprecise specification, frequency schedules that have not been thought through to the end, unclear quality benchmarks, missing provisions for remedial work and defects.

On top of this: the procurement procedure itself must be structured and documented — from needs analysis through specification to bid evaluation and award decision. Each of these phases ties up capacity in the procurement department and the building management, which still has to handle day-to-day business in parallel.

All of this can be avoided.

Three reasons why we are commissioned

01

Relieving the specialist department

Preparing a cleaning services tender — including baseline survey, area definition, frequency schedule, bill of quantities, quality criteria and procurement documentation — typically requires several hundred hours of specialist capacity. We take on this preparatory work in modular form, tailored to your needs. The decisions remain with you; we handle the demanding detail work.

02

Quality assurance in the specification

The most common disputes between contracting authorities and service providers do not arise at contract signing, but later — because the specification had gaps that allowed differing interpretations during operations. Our specifications are structured so that it is clear what needs to be cleaned how often to what quality, how defects are to be remedied and how additional services are to be delineated. We close these gaps consistently, because we know them from many procedures.

03

Market knowledge and pricing insight

For years we have been supporting tenders in building services, and we understand how providers in this market price their bids: which positions are realistic, where renegotiation typically occurs in practice, which service components carry disproportionate weight. We bring this knowledge into the bid evaluation — without recommendations for or against individual bidders, but with a technical assessment of which bids are sustainable.

Our services — modular and individually bookable

You decide which part of the process you keep in-house and where you bring us in. The following modules can be commissioned individually or in combination.

01

Needs analysis and baseline survey

Systematic recording of the areas to be cleaned, broken down by room category, surface type and intensity of use. Assessment of the current cleaning quality. Identification of optimisation potential in the cleaning concept — for example in frequencies, choice of methods or area allocation.

02

Specification and bill of quantities

Preparation of a differentiated specification with a clear separation of routine cleaning, periodic deep cleaning, glass and façade cleaning, disinfection cleaning and additional or remedial services. The bill of quantities is structured so that bidders submit comparable price calculations and subsequent claims for additional work are minimised.

03

Procurement documents and procedure support

Support in compiling the complete procurement documentation, technical input on the development of suitability and award criteria as well as the evaluation matrix. Technical support of the procedure through to the award decision — including communication with bidders, bid evaluation and technical assessment.

04

Contract input with quality assurance mechanisms

Technical input to the contract document — so that topics such as quality controls, sanctions for poor performance, adjustment mechanisms for area changes and clear responsibilities for points of contact are addressed in a practice-oriented way. Consideration of the binding sectoral collective agreement (Rahmentarifvertrag, RTV — the cleaning industry framework collective agreement) and the resulting pricing basis.

05

Quality measurement and acceptance

Definition of measurable quality criteria using recognised methods (DIN EN 13549 sampling procedures, visual inspection). Establishment of control routines that work in practice during contract operations and do not turn the day-to-day acceptance process into an excessive burden.

06

Social and environmental criteria

Integration of social standards (ILO core labour standards, minimum wage requirements, provision of work clothing) and environmental requirements (cleaning chemistry, water and energy consumption, transport and waste concept) into the specification — as award criteria or as binding minimum requirements, depending on your priorities.

07
Beyond contract award

Quality assurance and ongoing contract management

Our involvement does not end with the award. We support quality controls during the contract, acceptance protocols, the handling of defect notices and the structured escalation in cases of recurring poor performance. This keeps the contract sustainable over its full term, and remediation happens in a planned rather than reactive manner.

Advisory path

Restructuring mandates — when existing contracts no longer hold

A frequent reason for being engaged is not new tenders, but existing contracts that no longer hold: quality declines, additional claims accumulate, the underlying conditions have changed, the specification is outdated.

In such cases we conduct a contract analysis, identify the root causes of the difficulties and develop an approach — which can range from remediation within the existing contract through to a full new tender. The aim is a baseline that will hold for the years ahead.

Restructuring existing contracts is a distinct advisory path — for public sector and private sector clients alike.

Specialist insights

Technical specifics of building cleaning

A cleaning services tender differs from other service tenders in several technical respects, which we address in the specification and the contract:

Collective bargaining

The framework collective agreement for the cleaning trade (Rahmentarifvertrag, RTV) is, through its general binding declaration, applicable in nearly all cases. We reflect the resulting minimum conditions in the specification and in the assessment of bid pricing.

Frequency schedules and standards

DIN 77400 and related standards provide the framework for cleaning benchmarks. We use these standards as a reference, but tailor the specific configuration to your buildings.

Quality measurement

Visual inspections, sampling procedures under DIN EN 13549 and metric checks can be combined so that quality becomes verifiable without making day-to-day acceptance disproportionately complex.

Logistics and area planning

Key management, working hours, room access, trolley locations — these seemingly small topics determine whether a cleaning concept actually works in practice or not.

Environment and sustainability

Cleaning chemistry, water consumption, waste generation and transport logistics can be weighted as award criteria — with concrete, verifiable requirements.

Frequently asked questions

Frequently asked questions

What does it cost to support a building cleaning tender?

Costs depend on the scope: number of properties, lot structure, total area, and the extent of support required. Fixed-fee or hourly-rate models are both common. You will receive a concrete estimate in the no-obligation initial consultation.

How long does a building cleaning tender take?

With thorough preparation, below-threshold procedures can be completed in 3–4 months. Open procedures above EU thresholds realistically take 6–9 months. Preparation is the decisive phase — it lays the foundation for a smoothly running procedure.

What are the most common mistakes in cleaning tenders?

Inaccurate area surveys, missing hygiene zone definitions, unverifiable quality criteria and overly generic evaluation matrices. These weaknesses generate bidder queries, uneconomic bids and disputes during contract performance.

Can we run the tender process in-house?

Yes — if sufficient internal capacity and current sector knowledge are available. External support is particularly valuable for first-time tenders, after long contract periods, or when the previous procedure led to operational problems.

Further reading

Related content

General ·

Procurement Advisory: The Questions Most People Have — But Rarely Ask

What does procurement advisory cost? When does it make sense? How does the collaboration work in practice? This article answers the questions that public and private contracting authorities most commonly face before a procurement procedure — directly, honestly and without evasion.

Building Cleaning ·

Tendering Cleaning Services: Twelve Mistakes That Start Before the Contract Is Signed

Most problems in cleaning contracts don't begin at the execution stage – they're embedded in the tender documents from the start. Knowing where specifications typically fall short is the first step toward avoiding costly disputes down the line.

Building Cleaning ·

Fixed-Price Works, Hour Requirements, and the Legal Limits of Invoice Deductions

Under settled German case law, cleaning contracts are classified as works contracts (Werkvertrag) — what is owed is a clean result, not a set number of working hours. Yet in practice, clients regularly reduce invoices on the grounds that contracted or estimated hours were not delivered. Whether such deductions hold up legally depends less on how the contract is labelled and more on three specific questions: Were the hours expressly agreed as a binding performance obligation? Is the reduction clause sufficiently transparent? And does it survive scrutiny under Germany's standard terms control regime? This article maps the relevant case law — from the 2019 Federal Court of Justice judgment to the diverging Court of Appeal rulings from Hamm, Düsseldorf, and Cologne.

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