The Challenge

A specialist window cleaning contractor identified an opportunity to bid for LiveWest's Window and Communal Cleaning contract across the South West.

The opportunity has an estimated total value of £4.25 million, with an initial two-year contract period and the potential for three further 12-month extensions.

For a specialist SME, the scale of the opportunity presented an immediate commercial challenge. The contractor had the capability and experience to deliver the window cleaning element but did not intend to directly employ the workforce required to undertake every service within the specification.

A viable delivery model therefore needed to combine:

The challenge was not simply identifying subcontractors. The lead contractor needed to understand the complete LiveWest requirement, establish the labour requirement for each workstream, incorporate subcontractor costs, add its own management and commercial costs, and ultimately arrive at a defensible contract price.

The MobiliseHQ Approach

MobiliseHQ converted the LiveWest procurement information into one structured contract workspace. Rather than treating the tender as one enormous cleaning specification, the platform separated the requirement into distinct operational workstreams:

This allows each organisation involved in delivering the contract to contribute to the part of the pricing model it understands, without requiring one person to estimate every element of the contract.

Turning the Property Schedule into Workload

The LiveWest pricing information contained hundreds of individual property/service relationships. MobiliseHQ imported, reconciled and validated the schedules and created:

Across those properties, the platform identified active property/service relationships and the imported schedules generate:

Calculating the Lead Contractor's Window Cleaning Cost

The lead window cleaning contractor does not need to price hundreds of properties individually. MobiliseHQ asks for two core operational assumptions:

The calculation is then:

Visit Duration × Number of Operatives = Person-Hours per Visit

For example, if the contractor determines that a typical visit requires 2 operatives × 1.5 hours = 3 person-hours, MobiliseHQ can apply that assumption across the 1,512 scheduled annual Window Cleaning visits.

The £20 hourly cost in this example is illustrative rather than an actual LiveWest tender assumption. The contractor can then override individual properties where access, building configuration or other known circumstances mean that the standard visit assumption is inappropriate. This provides a baseline without requiring the contractor to manually price all 252 Window Cleaning property relationships.

Calculating the Communal Cleaning Subcontract

Communal Cleaning can be modelled independently. Rather than asking the window cleaning contractor to estimate work outside its specialist area, the communal cleaning subcontractor provides its own operational assumptions.

Typical visit duration × Cleaning operatives × Scheduled visits

If, purely for illustration, the average communal visit required 1 operative × 1.25 hours = 1.25 person-hours, applied to the 13,676 scheduled annual Communal Cleaning visits:

The subcontractor can refine the model where particular properties require different labour assumptions. The important distinction is that the specialist cleaning contractor contributes the operational knowledge required to calculate the Communal Cleaning workload, while the lead contractor retains control of the overall commercial model.

Adding the Subcontractor Commercial Price

Labour cost is not necessarily the price charged by the subcontractor. The communal cleaning company may need to include supervision and management; equipment and materials; travel; holiday and absence cover; insurance and compliance costs; overhead recovery; and profit.

MobiliseHQ can therefore distinguish between the underlying operational cost and the commercial amount that needs to be incorporated into the lead contractor's tender price.

Bio and Specialist Cleaning

Bio Cleaning presents a different pricing problem. It is reactive and cannot necessarily be forecast using a fixed annual visit schedule. Rather than forcing it into the same labour model, MobiliseHQ allows the workstream to be priced using appropriate units such as:

This means different types of service can sit within the same contract model without being forced into the same pricing methodology.

Building the Lead Contractor's Commercial Model

Once each workstream has been calculated, MobiliseHQ can bring the costs together.

The lead contractor then needs to consider the costs associated with managing the overall LiveWest contract. For illustration:

The lead contractor can then determine the commercial margin required. For example, applying a 10% margin to cost would produce:

Again, these figures are illustrative. MobiliseHQ's purpose is not to decide what a contractor should charge; it provides the structure through which the contractor can test its own assumptions.

Testing the Price Before Submission

One of the most important benefits of the model is the ability to see what happens when an assumption changes.

• If window-cleaning visits take longer than expected, MobiliseHQ can show the effect on annual labour.
• If the communal-cleaning subcontractor revises its price, the impact can be incorporated into the overall model.
• If wage rates increase, labour costs can be reassessed.
• If the lead contractor changes its target margin, the tender price can be recalculated.

Protecting the Lead Contractor's Commercial Position

A subcontractor's contribution does not mean that every organisation involved needs access to the complete commercial picture. The model can separate:

This is particularly important where an SME is assembling a delivery partnership to compete for a contract larger than it could comfortably deliver alone. The window cleaning contractor can retain ownership of the LiveWest bid and commercial strategy while drawing on specialist partners for the services they are best equipped to deliver.

From Tender Documents to Contract Price

For LiveWest, MobiliseHQ creates a clear commercial chain: