How to Write a Commercial Cleaning RFP: Template and Tips

Four companies walk the same 18,000-square-foot office building. Two weeks later the monthly prices come back at $1,420, $2,650, $3,300, and $4,900. Nothing about the building changed between visits, so that spread isn't telling you about the market — it's telling you four people priced four different jobs. One assumed restrooms nightly, another three times a week. One included paper products, two didn't. One priced quarterly floor work; the rest will invoice it in March.

A commercial cleaning RFP ends that problem. It defines the work once, in writing, so every bid prices the same job — and after award, that document becomes the standard you hold the winner to. Here's the whole thing, section by section.

When an RFP Is Worth the Effort

Not every cleaning decision needs one. A 2,000-square-foot insurance office on a simple nightly scope is well served by three walkthroughs and three quotes. The threshold is complexity, not square footage.

Write the document when any of these are true: multiple buildings or floors, mixed facility types under one contract, specialty work in the scope (a hard-floor care program, post-construction turnover, medical or senior-living areas), a contract value that needs ownership sign-off, or an incumbent you're replacing and want a defensible record of why.

One thing worth knowing going in: you're shopping a mature market, not a niche one. Federal labor data puts the largest share of janitors and cleaners inside the "Services to Buildings and Dwellings" industry — roughly 825,000 of about two million workers in the Bureau of Labor Statistics wage series. There will be real competition for your building.

The Seven Sections Every Cleaning RFP Needs

Strip away the procurement language and the document has seven parts. This is your template — fill each one in order.

1. Facility profile. Addresses, total and cleanable square footage, floor types by area, occupancy, hours of operation, restroom and fixture counts, special areas — kitchens, labs, docks, elevators, stairwells.

2. Scope of work and task-frequency matrix. The core of the document; the next section is entirely about it.

3. Service windows and access. Shift hours, how keys or fobs and alarm codes are issued and tracked, badging and background-check expectations, holiday handling. Most commercial cleaning happens in empty buildings — BLS notes offices are usually cleaned while vacant, so many cleaners work evenings, and 24-hour facilities run shifts including nights, weekends, and holidays. Access terms are a cost driver, not a formality.

4. Submission requirements. What every bidder must attach to be considered.

5. Evaluation criteria and weighting. How you'll score, published before anyone bids.

6. Pricing format. Monthly recurring price, hourly rate for requested extras, unit prices for periodic work — strip and wax per square foot, carpet extraction per square foot, windows per side.

7. Timeline and contacts. Issue date, walkthrough, question deadline, answer distribution, proposal deadline, award target, service start.

Build a Scope of Work That Forces Comparable Bids

This is where RFPs succeed or fail. The prices, the scoring, the service you get in month six — all of it runs downstream of how specifically you write this one section.

Tasks with frequencies, not adjectives

"Keep restrooms clean and presentable" can't be priced. This can: restrooms — trash removed, fixtures cleaned and disinfected, mirrors, floors damp-mopped, 5x/week; partitions, dispensers, and vents detailed, 1x/week; floors machine-scrubbed, 1x/month. That's a number. The first version is an invitation to guess low and renegotiate later.

Use the standard duty set as your spine. BLS describes the occupation's typical tasks as emptying trash, sweeping and mopping and vacuuming floors, cleaning and restocking restrooms, washing glass and walls, disinfecting frequently touched surfaces, ordering supplies, and securing the building. Walk your facility area by area and set a frequency against each line — lobby, open office, conference rooms, break room, restrooms, stairwells, corridors, dock. It's a tedious afternoon that saves a year of arguments. For the longer version, see what a cleaning contract's scope of work should spell out.

Separate recurring from periodic

Nightly and weekly tasks belong in the monthly price. Quarterly floor care, semiannual carpet extraction, and annual high-dusting belong in a unit-price table. Bundle them together and you lose the ability to see what each one costs — or to push one a quarter when budget gets tight.

Say who supplies what, and name the exclusions

Consumables are a real line item. State whether the contractor supplies and stocks toilet paper, towels, liners, and soap, stocks what you purchase, or neither — and do the same for equipment and floor machines. Then list what's out of scope: exterior work, snow removal, upper-floor window exteriors, biohazard response, carpet repair. Otherwise somebody prices it in silently, or assumes you'll handle it.

Set a Realistic Budget Range First

Know roughly what the answer looks like before the bids arrive, or the lowest number becomes your anchor by default. Median pay for janitors and building cleaners was $17.71 an hour, or $36,840 a year, in 2025 — a wage floor you can build on. Add payroll taxes, workers' compensation, supervision, equipment, consumables, and margin, and you can work backward from any monthly price to the labor hours it implies. A bid funding fewer hours than your frequency matrix requires is a scope that will quietly shrink after month two.

Turnover belongs in the math too. BLS projects about 2% employment growth for the occupation from 2025 to 2035 — slower than average — against roughly 321,800 openings a year. That gap is churn. It's why the staffing questions matter as much as the rate: who supervises the account, how often they inspect, what happens the night someone calls out. For the per-square-foot anchor, see what commercial cleaning costs per square foot.

Submission Requirements (Where Most RFPs Go Soft)

Make these mandatory attachments rather than questions on a form. A question gets answered yes; an attachment gets verified.

• Certificate of general liability insurance with stated limits, naming your entity as additional insured
• Workers' compensation coverage certificate
• Janitorial or surety bond, if you want coverage against employee dishonesty
• W-9 and business registration
• Three references at comparable facility type and size, with permission to contact
• Named account supervisor and staffing plan — headcount, shift, supervision frequency
• Transition plan and earliest available start date

Then verify instead of filing. Call the insurance agent and confirm the policy is in force and the limits match the certificate. Call the references and ask what changed in year two — that's the question that separates vendors. Our list of questions worth asking any cleaning company works as an interview script for finalists.

Specify Products and Safety Documentation

Don't ask bidders whether they use green products. Everyone says yes. The EPA explicitly cautions buyers about vague claims like "environmentally friendly," "eco safe," or "green", and it maintains two labels you can check independently: Safer Choice for cleaning products, Design for the Environment for disinfectants and sanitizers. So ask for a product list with safety data sheets and named certifications, then look them up in EPA's databases yourself.

Require the safety paperwork too. OSHA's Hazard Communication Standard, 29 CFR 1910.1200, requires employers whose workers handle hazardous chemicals to maintain a written program, labeled containers, safety data sheets, and employee training — ask for all four. And if bodily-fluid cleanup is foreseeable in your building (a medical suite, senior living, a school, a gym), OSHA's bloodborne pathogens standard requires employers to train exposed employees at no cost during working hours, at initial assignment and at least annually; ask for confirmation of an exposure control plan and current training records. Reciprocate by disclosing the hazards your facility presents to the crew.

Score the Bids on More Than Price

EPA's guidance for solicitations separates "mandatory" characteristics rated pass or fail from "desirable" characteristics scored above that baseline, and the structure transfers cleanly to a cleaning RFP. Pass/fail: insurance, workers' comp, bond, references supplied, complete scope response, attended the walkthrough. Scored: staffing and supervision plan, facility-type experience, quality-control process, transition plan, escalation path, products and safety documentation, and price.

Put the weights in the document. A workable split for a single building: price 30-35%, staffing and supervision 20%, relevant experience 15%, quality control 15%, transition and communication 10%, products and safety 5-10%. Low price wins only when every other column is genuinely equal, and it rarely is. Once proposals are in hand, our guide to comparing commercial cleaning bids side by side covers normalizing them.

A Timeline That Gives Everyone Room

Order the seven sections into the document, then publish dates alongside them: issue day 0, walkthrough day 5-6, written questions due day 9, answers distributed day 11, proposals due day 18-21, interviews with the top two or three day 25, award day 28, service start day 45. That last gap matters more than it looks — a new contractor needs three to four weeks to hire or reassign staff, order equipment, and transition properly.

One procedural rule is worth stating in the document itself: every question and every answer goes to every bidder. If one company asks about the dock schedule and only they learn the answer, you've stopped comparing equivalent bids.

Mistakes That Produce Useless Bids

• No square footage, or square footage that includes space nobody cleans
• Frequencies left to the bidder's discretion
• No walkthrough, or an optional one half the field skips
• Consumables responsibility left unstated
• Periodic floor and carpet work buried in the monthly price, where you can't see or schedule it
• Price-only scoring, then surprise when service degrades in month three
• Asking for a "deep clean" without defining what it includes

Frequently Asked Questions

How long should a commercial cleaning RFP be?

Four to ten pages for a single building, and the length comes almost entirely from the task-and-frequency matrix rather than prose. Past fifteen pages, you're writing contract terms that belong in the agreement you sign later.

How much time should I give bidders to respond?

Two to three weeks from walkthrough to deadline for a single facility; four for a multi-site portfolio. Bidders need time to walk the building, verify square footage, price labor against your frequencies, and assemble certificates.

Do I have to hold a mandatory walkthrough?

No, but bids priced without one are far less reliable — nobody can see your floor types, fixture counts, or dock conditions from a document. Making it mandatory also thins the field of companies planning to submit a generic per-square-foot number.

Should I put my budget in the RFP?

A hard number invites every bid to arrive just underneath it. A range, or a stated price weighting, works better: it signals you aren't simply buying the lowest hour while letting bidders self-select out if your facility is outside what they can staff.

What if every bid comes back higher than expected?

Usually a frequency problem, not a market problem. Daily service on areas that could run three times a week moves the number more than the hourly rate does. Ask your top two to re-price the same scope at a reduced frequency tier.

The Bottom Line — Your RFP in One Page

An RFP isn't paperwork. It's the instrument that converts four incomparable guesses into four comparable prices for one defined job — and then becomes the standard you measure the winner against every month after award. Write the scope of work first, and write it in detail. Everything else follows from it.

Neat & Clean Co bids commercial and janitorial work across the Minneapolis North Metro, and we'd rather respond to a specific scope than a vague one — the price comes back more accurate for both sides. See our commercial cleaning service areas, or request an estimate and we'll walk your facility.

This article is for general informational purposes only. Cleaning scope, frequency, and pricing vary by facility size, type, and condition. Service availability depends on your location within Neat & Clean Co's service area. Contact us for a quote specific to your facility.