With further job losses being announced this week through the collapse of Carillion taking the number of redundancies to in excess of 1300, the British Cleaning Council highlights that cut-throat contracting affects the cleaning industry too and is costing everyone, clients, suppliers and staff.
The impact of the collapse of Carillion, having provided so many services either directly or through sub-contracting across the cleaning sector will certainly be felt widely throughout our industry.
Too many contracts are awarded based on price alone equating to insufficient value contracts and high risk contracts at no profit and workers do not deserve to be caught in the crossfire of poor management decisions.
Performance measurements and reputation need to be taken into consideration too when choosing a supplier and as a commercial cleaning supplier we have been pleased to see a recent shift in companies moving away from large outsourced service providers and fixed 3 year contracts to smaller, local businesses for 12 months at a time.
There will always be a need for client’s to ensure best value but this should not translate into the cheapest tender. This then runs the risk that some suppliers are cutting their costs to the bone or making commitments to deliver services for a price which simply doesn’t add up in the real world.
Here at Unique Support Services, we ensure that when tendering for any new business our pricing proposals are transparent and clear to understand with a breakdown of costs for our clients and we adopt the principals of EFCI’s best value guide which is a 45 page handbook packed with common sense and practical advice on understanding what best value really is and adopting a sustainable approach to both bidding or buying cleaning services.
A copy of the guide can be downloaded here http://www.cleaningbestvalue.eu/english.html
