Exterior of a mall

[westark]

I have been approached to bid on the exterior cleaning of a mall, verticle surface only. I am going to get a better measurement this weekend, but based off of the blue prints, I am figuring about 153,000 square feet. Some of the bigger stores are left out. I am mainly a hood cleaner, but have been doing some surface work to keep my crew busy during the day. My question is: When bidding on something of this size, do you do the standard price per square foot, or what? Is anyone else cleaning similar size buildings? And what are your thoughts on a job like this?

Yes, I do have the equipment to handle this type of job. For those who might ask.

Thanks in advance for the help.

Scott

[Paul Kassander]

Your best bet is to figure a time and materials rate that you can still make money with them add about 25% for unforeseen time/expense. That usually works out best vs sq footage bids.

[MMI Enterprises]

Time=distance/speed

With all due respect he can't know his time (or a time rate) until he knows what his sq. footage speed is. Barring any acceleration or deceleration changes he'll be able to come to just as reliable figures based on sq. footage pricing or time+materials pricing.
Without actual facts and figures we can all look at a surface and say yup that looks like an hour or ten hours..or just as easy look at it and say it looks like 2 cents or 30 cents...

Scott, my feeling is you have to know your speed first off before attempting such bid.

[One Tough Pressure]

Scott,
Vertical cleaning makes flatwork dirty, so even though they may not want the other stuff done, you will be cleaning it to make your job look right unless you have a prior agreement that they need to clean it up themselves which is usually not the case.
Make sure that is in the bid too.

[westark]

Thanks for all the replies. I was able to do a walk around with a wheel measure lastnight after a hood job. I am actually looking at roughly 195,000 square feet. I have a scissor lift and a x jet for the places that I can't get lifted. My biggest obstacle will be trying to determine how much soap I will need, since that will be a decent part of the the bid. Once I put everything together, I will share and see what everyone thinks.

thanks