Guide
Industrial cleaning cost: the factors that actually set your price
Updated
Every buyer wants a rate per square metre and every honest contractor refuses to give one. This page explains why, and then gives you the thing that is actually useful: the list they price against and the questions that make quotes comparable.
Why there is no published rate
A square metre of factory floor is not a unit of work. The same area can take one pass with a scrubber dryer or three days of manual work depending on what has been dropped on it, how long it has been there, whether the plant above it can be stopped, and whether the wash water can go anywhere. Any site quoting you a national average rate is either selling something else or has not asked those questions. What can be published honestly is the list of variables, which is what our cost-driver table does.
The order contractors think in
- Access first. Can we reach it, and with what? This decides crew composition and equipment hire before anything else is considered.
- Then the window. How many hours exist, and are they daytime hours? A fixed shutdown means resourcing to finish inside it.
- Then the method. Manual, mechanical, chemical, high pressure or dry ice, driven by the residue and the surface underneath it.
- Then the arisings. Where do the water, the residue and the waste go, and what documentation comes back with them?
- Area last. Once the first four are settled, area sets the hours. Buyers usually start here, which is why first estimates move so much after a survey.
Making two quotes comparable
- One written scope, sent to everyone. The single highest-value thing you can do, and it costs nothing.
- Ask for crew size and hours, not just a total. It is the only way to see whether a low price is efficiency or a shorter job.
- Ask what is excluded. Dismantling, isolation, disposal above a stated volume, access equipment hire and reinstatement are the usual exclusions.
- Ask what happens if the window slips. Shutdowns overrun. The rate for the extra shift should be agreed before it is needed, not during it.
- Ask for a periodic price too. The first clean after years of build-up is the dearest one you will ever buy; knowing the maintained price tells you what you are really committing to.
Where the money usually leaks
- Access discovered late. A quote priced from a photograph and delivered against a 12 metre reach is the classic variation.
- Unclassified waste. Nobody asks where the residue goes until it is in a skip, and then it is priced under pressure.
- Standing time. A crew waiting for isolation, a permit or an engineer is charged time. Have the permits ready before the vehicles arrive.
- Scope creep during a shutdown. Additions requested on site are priced on site. Keep a written variation process, even an informal one.
If you want a number rather than a method, the fastest honest route is a site visit from two or three contractors working to the same written scope. The form starts that in about two minutes.