A complete method for comparing commercial cleaners in Parramatta

The brief is one page: areas, approximate sizes, hours available, frequency you have in mind, anything unusual about access, and what you are unsure about. Then gather six to eight candidates from search, referral and neighbouring occupiers, and filter on things you can check without a meeting: business identity, insurance, a service area that plainly covers you, and whether they respond sensibly to a first call.

Host the walkthroughs on identical terms, ideally within the same week. Same route, same information, same access to whoever knows the operating pattern. If one provider asks a question that changes the picture, send the answer to all of them. Watch what each one looks at and records, because that is your first real evidence of how carefully they will price the work and how much of the building they were willing to look at.

Ask everybody the same operational questions: who attends, who supervises and how often, what is excluded, what happens when a task is missed, what would change the price, and what they would decline to do. Ask them in the same order and take notes during rather than afterwards. The differences between providers show up in specificity rather than in enthusiasm and in the willingness to name something they would not take on.

Then build one sheet with a row for each thing that matters and a column for each bidder. Areas, frequency, hours, periodic intervals, consumables, exclusions, supervision, insurance and price. Leave cells blank where a proposal is silent, and send one email covering every blank. The blanks are usually more informative than the entries that were completed and they cost one email each to resolve before you decide anything.

Score against criteria you set before opening the prices, using a coarse scale and a written reason for each mark. Read across rows rather than down columns, since that shows where the proposals genuinely differ. Then check whether the outcome matches your judgement, and if it does not, work out why before overriding it rather than afterwards and while the reasoning is still fresh enough to write down accurately.

Record the decision in a page: who was invited, what was assessed, how each scored and why the successful bidder was preferred. Keep it with the proposals and the insurance certificate. That file answers almost every question that arises later, including the one asked by whoever inherits the arrangement when you move on to something else and has to understand why the current provider was chosen.