By Maryll Betzold, Director, Government Services, CCS Facility Services
The public sector supplier community has unique perspectives on success in procurement and contracting. That success delivers Best Value, and it results from compliance + putting those suppliers in a good position to submit quality offers.
Government agencies carry a unique responsibility to steward public funds while operating within procurement rules designed to ensure fairness, transparency, and accountability. Sometimes those rules can feel as if they limit the ability to pursue the strongest possible vendor or best overall value, making it frustrating for agencies to find the right vendor.
Even within strict municipal and city procurement frameworks, there are practical, defensible ways to elevate expectations and strengthen vendor qualifications. The key isn’t working around procurement requirements; it’s working strategically within them to raise the bar while maintaining full compliance.
Raising the Technical Standards for Cost-Sensitive Programs
Defining Operational Qualifications
This starts with treating training and operational knowledge as core evaluation criteria, not secondary considerations. Gaps in training directly amplify risk, potentially making vendors who appear cost-effective upfront, expensive liabilities in the long run if their teams lack the preparation to safely and consistently meet expectations.
Ensure Vendors Can Support the Program
Ensuring a vendor can successfully perform the work at the price they bid requires evaluating more than just cost. Size, scope, and complexity are equally critical. Agencies should assess whether bidders have sufficient staffing depth and training, proven experience managing comparable contracts and established operational systems capable of supporting consistent service delivery.
Develop Financial Safeguards
Financial safeguards such as bid, performance, and payment bonds are equally important. These bonds not only protect public dollars if a contractor fails to fulfill their obligations, but they also reassure agencies of a vendor’s operational and financial reliability. Furthermore, realistic insurance requirements should be fully transparent in any procurement.
Stabilize and Standardize the Program
This practice is especially helpful if there is a “Low Bid” or 100% price evaluator, agencies can standardize the program and add enough infrastructure to ensure all bidders are pricing the same program. Often, when programs are out for bid without this infrastructure requirement and have a 100% price variable, management is one of the first components of the program to go.
Standardization can take many forms, but in janitorial services, a couple of ideas for program standardization include:
- Set uniform hours (“10 hours per night at Facility A, and 1 full time day porter at 40 hours per week”), etc.
- Specify wages
- Specify required equipment
- Specify management (A common example we see is “There needs to be one program lead on shift while any other janitorial staff is also on shift”)
- Specify that employees must be 1099 employees
- Consider pricing periodics, floor care, and consumables separately from standard hourly or weekly care. A great practice for periodics and floor care is to use price per square foot, and bill actual for consumables, giving the agency more variability as needed.
Establish Safety & Security Requirements
Safety certifications for janitorial companies—such as ISSA CIMS (Cleaning Industry Management Standard) with documented safety programs and compliance with Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) standards—verify that a contractor maintains formal injury-prevention programs, hazard communication protocols, equipment training, and incident reporting procedures. For local governments, these credentials reduce operational and liability risk by demonstrating regulatory compliance, documented training, and a proactive safety culture, providing objective evidence that the contractor can safely manage staff, chemicals, and equipment within public facilities. Requiring that a company disclose OSHA violations is one way to manage this.
Require a Green Cleaning Certified Company
Green cleaning certifications for janitorial companies—such as Green Seal (GS-42 for Cleaning Services) and ISSA CIMS-GB—verify that a contractor uses environmentally preferable chemicals, follows documented sustainable procedures, and trains staff on health-focused cleaning protocols. For local governments, these third-party certifications reduce procurement risk by demonstrating compliance, indoor air quality protection, and alignment with sustainability mandates, serving as objective proof that a company has the operational controls and environmental stewardship required for public-sector facilities.
Evaluation Procedure Examples for High Quality Programs
Agencies that want to preserve quality while still evaluating price competitively have more options than they often realize. Procurement rules typically dictate how decisions must be made, not how evaluations are structured. By designing the review process strategically, agencies can remain fully compliant while ensuring that price comparisons occur only among vendors who have already demonstrated the ability to perform the work effectively.
Strategy 1: Rank Stack Technical Proposals First
One approach is to evaluate technical proposals first and rank them in order of preference before reviewing any pricing. Once rankings are finalized, cost proposals can be reviewed and assessed, with awards going to the highest-ranked vendor whose price falls within budget. This method preserves fiscal discipline while ensuring that the selected contractor is the most qualified option.
Strategy 2: Pass/Fail Model
Another model is a pass-fail technical screening conducted in the first phase of evaluation. Under this structure, agencies establish clear minimum standards for capability, experience, staffing, and operational readiness. Only vendors who meet those standards advance to the pricing stage. This ensures that every bid considered on cost has already been vetted for competence. Additionally, using a pass-fail model for reference checks is helpful – especially if the agency sets requirements for references like “Similar in size, scope, complexity”, etc.
Strategy 3: Use a Request for Qualifications before a Request for Bid
A similar strategy involves a qualifications phase before soliciting pricing. This process allows agencies to review and rank technical submissions first, then invite only the most qualified vendors (often the top three) to submit cost proposals. By limiting price competition to pre-approved providers, agencies only focus their evaluation efforts on realistic contenders.
Strategy 4: Utilize a “Risk Factor” Evaluator
Finally, agencies can incorporate a structured risk adjustment into price analysis. Using market research to establish realistic cost benchmarks, evaluators can apply a predefined scoring factor to bids that fall significantly below expected market value. For instance, if reliable data shows a service should cost approximately $20,000 per month, a bid far beneath that threshold may indicate under-staffing or scope gaps. Applying a modest scoring penalty to such bids allows agencies to account for execution risk objectively, supporting award decisions that balance cost efficiency with operational reliability.
Strategy 5: Score Pricing as Pass/Fail
This strategy is very helpful if the evaluation criteria is not exclusively price driven, here’s how it works. When evaluating pricing scores, any bid that comes in at or below the annual budget achieves a “pass” score, while any that do not “fail.” This is especially helpful if bidders know that this is the procedure, as it will force them to use the entire budget and keeps bidders from the dreaded “Race to the bottom”. Additionally, making public the annual budget for your program during the bidding process also encourages bidders who cannot meet that number to not participate, and it also forces companies to find creative ways to hit that number, allowing you, the evaluation team, to decide which creative metric you prefer here.
Ultimately, agencies don’t have to choose between compliance and quality. By structuring evaluations to prioritize demonstrated capability, training, and operational readiness alongside price, they can protect public funds while ensuring vendors are equipped to deliver. Raising the bar is not about changing procurement rules but using them strategically. When agencies signal that qualifications and reliability matter, they strengthen competition, improve outcomes, and build lasting public trust.
About CCS Facility Services
CCS Facility Services exists to give you peace of mind. For nearly 40 years, we have grown by design, from a small team set on raising the standard for commercial cleaning to one of the largest privately held building services contractors in the United States, with more than 8,000 teammates in 16 states. We treat every place, and the people in it, as our own. Our managers know the work from the floor up and supervise day and night, so the same trusted faces are there when you need them.
Commercial cleaning, facility engineering, and specialty services come together as one partnership, backed by intelligent systems that verify every task and flag trends early. The results hold up: 95% customer retention, partnerships averaging more than 16 years, and 9 out of 10 customers rating our service an “A.”
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