Commercial Landscape Maintenance Low Bid will cost more in the long run.
You’re a property manager or an HOA board member and it’s your responsibility to choose the best commercial landscape maintenance company you can find. You select 4 north county landscape maintenance contractors and all the bids are within a 2% range of each other. You pick the person you felt was the most responsive to your needs and voila, you did your job. The property is in good hands and is going to look great!
That’s not a realistic scenario. In most cases, the prices submitted will vary, from low to high, by a range of up to 30%.
I recently submitted a commercial landscape maintenance quote for an HOA in Escondido. When the quote came in , they ranged from $900.00 to $1,400.00, a 36% difference! The board decided to go with the low bidder, and a few months later, the board was out to bid again. Why? Because the low bidder couldn’t afford to spend the required amount of time on the property it needed to keep it looking good.
While it is understandable you want to receive a great service for a reasonable monthly fee but, low bidders, in most cases, can’t provide GREAT service. What usually happens is the first few months they go like gangbusters and you’re impressed. Then, as their monthly labor reports come in, they realize they’re not making enough to cover their costs. So, they begin spending less time on your property…they start cutting corners. The results are in! Your landscaping starts to decline, plants aren’t getting pruned, weeds are popping up, they don’t respond to you as quickly as they use to. The landscape maintenance company stops answering your calls. Now you have to start the bidding process all over again, spend more money to get the place cleaned up and spend more of your time working on something you thought you already handled.
How to Compare Apples To Apples
So how do you, as a board member or property manager, know if you’re getting the best bang-for-your-buck? Here are a few things to consider.
- Determine how many hours the landscape maintenance company should be spending on your property.
The easiest way to determine the number of hours the landscape maintenance company should spend working on your property is to ask them. Another way is to look at the contract and see how much they charge for extra work. It should be in the contract. If not, ask them to include it. If it’s $25.00 per hour, you can figure the maintenance hourly rate to be about 5% to 10% lower then the extra work hourly wage. So, lets use $23.00 per hour for this example as the maintenance hourly rate. If the contract is for $900.00 per month, that means the landscape maintenance company will want to keep the man hours around 9 man hours per week. (The math is $900/4.33 weeks per month = $207.85 per week. Then, divide $207.85 by the hourly wage, $23.00 and it’s 9 hours). Are 9 hours enough time for your property? If the landscape maintenance company spends more time working on your property then they anticipated, they start losing money. Some contractors pay some of their laborers under-the-table (and may not have ADEQUATE insurance) to avoid paying the extra insurance and worker compensation costs. Watch out for that! - What’s included and what’s extra?
Look at the contract to see if fertilizers, chemicals and pesticides are included. Is lawn aeration and winter over-seeding included? How about blowing the driveways and carports? Insecticides? Snail bait? What are the tree trimming height limits? What about emergency after-hour calls, how much are they? Make a spread sheet and compare the extra and included services. If there some extra services and material included in the monthly fee, it will be higher than if they are not included. So look at the contract closely. - Have your own landscape maintenance contract written up for you.
Hire a professional landscape maintenance consultant (not a landscape architect) to write up specifications for your property. Use these specifications for all future bids, adjustments to services can be made as needed.
These are a few pointers that will help you narrow the field when choosing your landscape maintenance provider. Obviously, you’ll have to call references, look at some of their work, and find out what supervisor or person will be in charge of your property. Make sure you meet them before you make your decision. In most cases, you will only be talking to a sales person during the bidding process. A Supervisor will be assigned to handle all the walks and day to day business. So, dig into the contracts, sort through them, and find out exactly what you’re paying for.
You can also contact me at info@westernlandscapemaintenance.com, or call me at 760-451-9753. I will provide you with landscape maintenance specifications which are especially tailored to your property. This will ensure that all the bidders are bidding on the exact same thing–you’re comparing apples to apples!
If you want more information on how to improve your landscaping, please contact Western Landscape Maintenance, Inc. at 888-829-8333 or email us at info@westernlandscapemaintenance.com.
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