Bidding on City Jobs

Commercial
1

Just some FYI on a job I bid with the CIty of Columbia, SC. I only had 4 hours to get my bid put together and couldn’t do a proper job of estimating so I bid high ($0.15/ft2) to make sure I was covered.

I can’t upload the .pdf files for you to see how it all comes together but here’s the short version…

  1. 7 parking garages; 1,505,000 total ft2 to be cleaned (includes floors, walls, and ceilings)
  2. 90 days to complete
    Q&A
    Q&A671×912 99.7 KB

    My cost sheet
    My cost sheet1338×862 114 KB

…and here are all the bids submitted.

Bid tabulations
Bid tabulations1194×901 230 KB

As you can see from the other bids, it is highly unlikely that I will win this project but I hope this helps someone in the future.

7 Likes
2

I’m just shocked that someone can do 7 parking garages within 30 days for 65K. Are they a parking garage specialist in your area?

3

Its 90 days but they’re basically a franchise and probably pull equipment/personnel from other locations.

4

Hi Guys, got interested in this as I just finished a quote this evening over here in Cyprus for our local Municipality (local council) to clean a huge tourist walkway along the seafront. its 33,000m2 of basically sidewalk =355,000ft2. I quoted 0.35cents m2 = 11,550 for the job (euros) multiple up to same space as the garages = x4.23 so I would be just short of 50k. using 2 machines with surface cleaners I will get this done in 6 nights my main cost will be under 3000, staff ( 2 trained guys and 2 labor) fuel, chems, transport. just wondering how different cost are in the US than here that I can make 8.5k profit, if I extrapolated that and the same multiple on costs up to the same as the garages it would be 36k profit on just 50k revenue and I could get it done in a month … just ! is there a need to be at 225k ? are costs so high ?

2 Likes
5

That’s a serious wide range of bids.

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6

Whats the plan for arsenal hill location, 80,000 square feet with no water access? Floors, ceilings, walls will chew up some water. Hydrant options?

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7

The bids are all over the map lol

Does the city usually go with the lowest bidder? Or do they go with the middle guy?

1 Like
8

Yep…hydrant permit.

1 Like
9

Not really. I didn’t have time to crunch actual numbers. After the bid deadline I went back and recalculated with a much sharper pencil and came up with $120k

10

I have tried searching for this, but how did you find out about the RFP in the first place?

11

Google search…City of Columbia SC proposals. Then I had to register to gain access.

12

I have no idea what the criteria/selection process is. This is my first bid for work with them. I’ll find out on July 22.

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Just wondering, in the US with City / local government dont you need to become pre qualified, in Europe most multinationals like gas companies or even MacDonald’s (to clean thier patios) or local government will go through a prequal process. The Quality Management System I wrote is 50 pages ! (with loads of additional supporting docs like recruitment and training , safety procedures ect ) it has to conform to ISO Standards.

15

QA Manual

Maybe this is why there is almost no other PW company here :rofl:

3 Likes
16

Yes. I didn’t load those images but it was only 5 or 6 pages for the registration/prequal.

17

Quarter million dollar bif and you only spent 4 hours on an estimate?

1 Like
18

That’s all the time I had from when I found out about it until it was due…and I was at work. If I had more time it would have been about a $120k bid.
" I only had 4 hours to get my bid put together"

1 Like
19

I’m still amazed at the price difference of $686,530 Between the highest and the lowest. It’s almost laughable.

2 Likes
20

I actually looked at that after you said you google searched. I had been making it way to difficult and had been trying to search state websites. I have since just started searching for each city around and looking that way. Thanks.

1 Like