what does a contract like that involve??..
city side walks? buildings? etc?.. is the work defined prior to the bid? ...gives me anxiety just thinking about something so big.
Usually it is specified what is going to be cleaned. I have one contract that is bid by the square foot. Reason being that they wanted a hard price. In some ways it is hard. I mean you might get called to clean picnic ramada's and have to do ten of them that are 50 or 60 yard apart, and they are only 100-150 sq. ft. Other times you might get called to clean 6 miles of 5 foot wide sidewalks, and also 7 or 8 parking garages. Then you might get a call to clean a stadium. And they are all a sq. ft. price, and the same price. It is VERY possible to make money doing this, even if you have to submit a cut throat bid, because first, you only bid once. You are not making a constant sales job. Second, they know what they want done and are willing to tell you exactly how to do it. Third, if you do your job, don't pound your chest, and they don't have to worry about you performing, they find additional work, because they figure out that you are not going to add to their work load. That is a HUGE one with local government. But, first, you have to get your foot in the door.
I remember my first government contract, one of the first jobs they gave me was a parking garage. The previous contractor was using a scrubber on it, and leaving it. The gum pile at the base of the garage was disgusting and huge. The city was so worried about what I was doing that they were doing a daily inspection attended by the contract admin, the area supervisor, his director, and the asst. city manager. If I had known that at the start, I would have been nervous. At the end, they were thrilled. I ended up netting well over $100 a man hour at rates that make some people call me a low baller, because they don't understand the game.
The secret to contracts like this, so you don't get mind blown is to break the contract down into manageable sizes and just look at it as a series of smaller jobs. The only difference between a 100,000 ft job and a 1000 foot job is that you have to do the 1000 foot job a hundred times.
