Clean It Up
UK Window Cleaning Forum => Window Cleaning Forum => Topic started by: jo5hm4n on January 19, 2018, 05:52:46 pm
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Been asked by a large builders surveyor company to give them a quotation for a one off clean/builders on a large building, inside + out. They have a cherrypicker on site that i can use for outsides. thing is though, is it better to trad a big building for a one off, or would it be better to use wfp? When i say better i mean, what will be quicker. I don't have much experience with builders cleans at all. I realise it all depends if there is cement/paint/render etc on the glass, but lets just say there wasnt and its just standard filthly windows, what would you do. Use a cherrypicker with trad or wfp the outsides?
I rarely ever do commercial most of my work is domestic. I want to put a quote in though, for the challenge of taking on a big job and trying something different and seeing how it goes. How do you go about pricing on a big one off job.
My thoughts are to split up the building into sections, count all the windows, charge what i would normally per window set, double it as its a one off, then depending on what that figure is i may add more on for hassle and extra time wasted etc. Also will factor in how dirty windows are ofcourse.
I am not desperate at all for work, so if it looks like a real pita, then i will just put in a high price and then atleast if i do get the job, it's going to be a good earner. Either way i'm not that bothered if i dont get it.
What would you charge per day on a commercial one off job to be happy with.
Bear in mind, i'm used to doing £200 a day solo wfp or £325 with 2 of us in winter time as an average day rate that i am comfortable with.
Cheers guys.
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I would use a combination of both. Wfp and trad, basicly whatever it takes to get it clean.
You should be charging at least £600 a day imo which is around 3x your daily rate for easy work.
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If its a builders clean you won't get away with WFP. End of story.
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I would start with wfp get all the dust off etc. And detail trad
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I will see the state that the windows are in tomorrow and know from that whether WFP will be acceptable or not, but i am gearing more towards trad as i know for sure that it can do a more thorough job on glass for one off/first cleans sometimes better than wfp.
See what happens tomorrow! :)
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I would use a combination of both. Wfp and trad, basicly whatever it takes to get it clean.
You should be charging at least £600 a day imo which is around 3x your daily rate for easy work.
£600 a day sounds good to cover my backside really. Just need to figure out how long the job will take roughly aswell and go from there.
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Stupid question, but do i need any sort of license or training if me or the lads go up the cherrypicker? Or would we be legally covered by my liability insurance. I use Gleaming Insurance for my cover.
Never used one before and not done much commercial as i say so all new to me really.
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i personally wouldnt take the job on.....some jobs are just not worth it (whatever money you can get for it)
itll be hassle and very hard work and you ll probably need a day or two off to recover when its done!(which negates the money you might get for it!)
also a scratch waiver needs sorting or you could get accused of scratching/ruining the glass.....
....rather you than me mate!i like an easy life these days.... :)
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Good point dazmond.
Day rate should go to 2 grand
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You wont be able to use the picker without a liscence , and operators are not cheap per day , find out if they are giving you a driver before you put a price in ,
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Good point dazmond.
Day rate should go to 2 grand
goodness me, might just put in for £10k and 3 days work and see what they come back with ;D ;D ;D ;D
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You wont be able to use the picker without a liscence , and operators are not cheap per day , find out if they are giving you a driver before you put a price in ,
thats what i thought, il ask them tomorrow when i go in for the quote. Thanks
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i personally wouldnt take the job on.....some jobs are just not worth it (whatever money you can get for it)
itll be hassle and very hard work and you ll probably need a day or two off to recover when its done!(which negates the money you might get for it!)
also a scratch waiver needs sorting or you could get accused of scratching/ruining the glass.....
....rather you than me mate!i like an easy life these days.... :)
Scratch Waiver! Yes defo need to sort that. I have 2 lads that work for me. If i can price the job with high high profit, i might just send them to do it and pay them good money and ill carry on with the normal work. One of my workers has done tons of big commercial jobs and builders and one off cleans. He's worked contracts for hospitals and big estates in the past all by himself so i am confident in his ability.
I'll see what vibes im getting when i do the walk around tomorrow on site.
Easy life does sound good though, i think we should all aspire to be you Daz!!!
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Is it the same email I had from Llandudno?? The convent!
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I would use a combination of both. Wfp and trad, basicly whatever it takes to get it clean.
You should be charging at least £600 a day imo which is around 3x your daily rate for easy work.
£600 a day sounds good to cover my backside really. Just need to figure out how long the job will take roughly aswell and go from there.
I doubt that they will pay anything near that , we did a quote for a large national house builder and they came back to me saying the maximum per house they would pay was £25 I laughed and said you will be lucky not intrested , that was for in and out on 3 bed semis , they also expected me to drop my regular work at short notice to do stuff for them , now I just refuse to Evan go and look at builders cleans wouldn’t do them at any price , they are more hassle than they are worth , and any scratches they will more than likely blame you and try and take the replacement cost# out of what they owe you , my advice would be walk away but if you do go ahead be very careful and don’t let them build up a large bill
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Run Josh Run
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What ever price you are thinking of, triple it.
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Did a new build house last month they had covered 6 patio doors with plastic ,when removed left all the glue on the glass ,took over 3 hours to remove ,if you decide to price for job do a thorough inspection first .these jobs always take longer than you think
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We did one about two years ago that was also covered in glue residue. Nightmare. Unless you know what you’re doing, run a mile.
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I've done builders cleans in the past, absolute nightmare.
The time you spend looking at it, quoting, sorting documents, buying stuff, worrying etc would be better spent canvassing for decent domestic work.
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What ever price you are thinking of, triple it.
Threes not enough, 5.
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I did a builders clean just before Christmas, I was there for 7 days in total. It was a refurb really I guess, direct with the owner.
I charged her £2,250, regularly the same work will be £450.
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It has always amazed me when developers etc have a big job coming to the end , and then want to have a professional clean done but are so reluctant to pay for the service.
All of us at some time have taken on these types of job and almost always there a pain.
It's either working round lots of other trades who are all flying around getting there last bits done, or some windows can't be done till later as something like snagging has to be done first, then there is lunch breaks where everyone parks there backsides down in a room just when you want to get in there!
Then someone wants to borrow a piece of equipment, it goes on.
As has already been said you need a day off to get over it.
Lots of good advice has been given out already,.
The pay can be good but for me it really does have to be worthwhile over good scheduled work.
Like Daz I prefer any easier life.
Steve
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Builders cleans are what introduced me to window cleaning the first time , i was left without a job , just needed money coming in and this came up so took it , they were called Yeo Valley Services and did for the likes of Persimon and Redrow , we had to go all over the Southwest getting in just before the snaggers came , back then nobody covered anything up , it was a total nightmare .
Render all over , taping had been left to bake on , scaffold was down early or they turned up while you were stood on it !
And this was all done at £40/£50 a house regardless of size , pretty much every job had a glass claim against them , i dont see how they made any money .
In the end they took my van away as i was using it weekends to start my domestics off , luckily i had enough to leave .
I havent done one since and never would , you have to price so high to make it worth it you normally dont get it .
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Spoke to the manager on site. He told me about the Penalty Clauses, and the deadline and what was involved. Mixture of using cherrypickers, mansafe systems and cleaning on roofs. Most of which we dont have training for.
I just told them it was a project that unfortunately we could not take on.
Actually feeling pretty happy i turned it down, was stressing me out just thinking about doing it.
Already stacked with work until March anyway, so really dont need the added hassle!
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Is it the same email I had from Llandudno?? The convent!
Yeah it is!! I was really thinking about doing it, but after sleeping on it last night and speaking to the contract manager today, i decided it was too big of a job too take on as there is cherrypicker work and mansafe systems/harnesses and some roof work aswell. Contract clause was £10,000 per week if the work gets behind which he said i would be responsible for if the cleaning wasn't completed on time!!!! Don't think so, i'm happy to stick to most of my easy domestic work.
In any case im stacked with work, don't know about you mate but ive had literally tons of new customers come in since January 1st dont know whats going on.
Are you thinking about taking on the Llandudno job? If you are good luck and i really do mean that.
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Contract clause? Screw that.
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...you ve dodged a bullet there methinks....... ;D
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Totally agree with you there Daz,
What a pain that job would be!!!
If you have plenty of work, then it's a good decision to avoid that job.
Domestic work is usually straight forward, go, clean, customer pays (or later online),drive away, next job.....
With these kind of commercial jobs, you can also wait for ages to be paid!!
Good decision I reckon Josh👍🏼
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...you ve dodged a bullet there methinks....... ;D
Yeah that's i'm thinking :P Now counting my blessings for having straight forward domestic work. Thanks for the advice
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Is it the same email I had from Llandudno?? The convent!
Yeah it is!! I was really thinking about doing it, but after sleeping on it last night and speaking to the contract manager today, i decided it was too big of a job too take on as there is cherrypicker work and mansafe systems/harnesses and some roof work aswell. Contract clause was £10,000 per week if the work gets behind which he said i would be responsible for if the cleaning wasn't completed on time!!!! Don't think so, i'm happy to stick to most of my easy domestic work.
In any case im stacked with work, don't know about you mate but ive had literally tons of new customers come in since January 1st dont know whats going on.
Are you thinking about taking on the Llandudno job? If you are good luck and i really do mean that.
Sensible decision to walk away from that we have all the qualifications and training but wouldn’t work for firms like that as they pay is minimum wage better off doing a few plastic cleans or building up regular customers for your self also don’t like paddling through ankle deep mud !!!!!😂😂😂😂
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Is it the same email I had from Llandudno?? The convent!
Yeah it is!! I was really thinking about doing it, but after sleeping on it last night and speaking to the contract manager today, i decided it was too big of a job too take on as there is cherrypicker work and mansafe systems/harnesses and some roof work aswell. Contract clause was £10,000 per week if the work gets behind which he said i would be responsible for if the cleaning wasn't completed on time!!!! Don't think so, i'm happy to stick to most of my easy domestic work.
In any case im stacked with work, don't know about you mate but ive had literally tons of new customers come in since January 1st dont know whats going on.
Are you thinking about taking on the Llandudno job? If you are good luck and i really do mean that.
No mate...didn't even consider it!
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And when you've done the job really well and you put in your invoice you have that lovely feeling as you wait to get paid.
And sometimes wait ... and wait ... and wait ... and wait ...
And then you chase the accounts dept who promise to get back to you.
And you wait.
Then you chase them again and they mumble something about speaking to the manager and they're "restructuring".
And you wait.
Then you get a letter from the administrators telling you there is no money and if there is you'll get 11p in the pound if and only if the workers get their wages, the HMRC get their tax and VAT, the bank gets the directors houses and you might as well whistle pal.
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And when you've done the job really well and you put in your invoice you have that lovely feeling as you wait to get paid.
And sometimes wait ... and wait ... and wait ... and wait ...
And then you chase the accounts dept who promise to get back to you.
And you wait.
Then you chase them again and they mumble something about speaking to the manager and they're "restructuring".
And you wait.
Then you get a letter from the administrators telling you there is no money and if there is you'll get 11p in the pound if and only if the workers get their wages, the HMRC get their tax and VAT, the bank gets the directors houses and you might as well whistle pal.
Ever the optimist. Mind you, I wouldn’t touch it. Way outside my simple comfort zone.
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Once bitten twice shy for me last one that I did the builder tried to blame me for some scratched windows that were already scratched before I started! It's a good job that I took a close up picture of every window that I was asked to clean before I started job!
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I do the occasional builders' type clean for the owner but would never do them for a large building company. They're a headache enough doing the cleaning without the potential risk of paying the builders thousands for the privilege!
John
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Every builder's clean I've done has been a PITA,, often about issues not directly related to the cleaning.
I did my most recent one about three years ago. I promised myself it would be the last.
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My last builders clean was last summer - I've dabbled before if I was ahead of my work at the time but after this last lot never again. Every (and I mean EVERY) window had the tape baked on, brick and render covering each pane, snots everywhere. Most glass had silicon on. Then there's working with other trades who have a strange hierarchy of their own and guess what - cleaners of any type are bottom feeders. And mostly treated like that. Had a few cross words with one particular bloke who thought being a spark made him top of the pile. (If he was that good he wouldn't be someone's employee -
Carillion, so who's laughing now ;D )
Finally there's the endless demands placed on the way you work and cover they want you to have. And the way you are expected to work to a price (minimum wage) yet produce a perfect result. And then wait for your invoice to make its way through the Byzantine accounts department.
Sooooo.... yeah. Not worth any of the hassle. Even if the agent agreed to a suitable rate it simply wouldn't be as good as the easy life on domestics 8)