Cleaning RFP: how to run a janitorial tender as the buyer

01

How a cleaning tender works in Canada, and the rules that apply

A cleaning tender is a structured competition. The buyer describes the janitorial or cleaning services it needs, invites cleaning companies to submit a bid or proposal, evaluates the responses against criteria it published in advance, and awards the contract to the best one. In Canada the document is usually called a request for proposal (RFP), and the companies responding are bidders or proponents; a request for quotation (RFQ) is common where price is the only thing being compared, and an invitation to qualify or a request for supplier qualification can come first to shortlist capable contractors. Done well, every bidder gets the same information and time, and the buyer gets a decision it can explain.

Which rules apply depends on who is buying:

• Federal departments and agencies publish their opportunities on CanadaBuys tender opportunities, the Government of Canada's tendering service, which also carries notices from provincial, municipal and other public buyers.
• Public buyers covered by the Canadian Free Trade Agreement (CFTA), the agreement on internal trade, must follow its Chapter Five on government procurement above set thresholds. Chapter Five requires a tender notice on a tendering website designated by the government concerned, free of charge to suppliers; tender documentation with all the information suppliers need to prepare responsive tenders, including the evaluation criteria and the methods of weighting and evaluation unless price is the sole criterion; a reasonable time to prepare bids; and award to the supplier that submitted the most advantageous tender, or the lowest price where price is the only criterion.
• Provincial directives sit on top of the CFTA. In Ontario, for example, the Buy Ontario Procurement Directive, in effect from 13 April 2026, applies to ministries, provincial agencies and designated broader public sector organizations, and works alongside the existing BPS Procurement Directive, prevailing where the two conflict. It sets preferences for Ontario and Canadian businesses by contract value and, with narrow exceptions, requires those buyers to exclude U.S. businesses; one exception for services is a U.S. business that commits to having at least 90 per cent of the staff delivering the contract located in Canada. Municipalities have their own Municipal Buy Ontario Procurement Directive and their own purchasing bylaws. Other provinces have their own rules.
• Private buyers, such as property management companies, condominium corporations, landlords and businesses, can run any fair process they choose. The public sector disciplines are still good practice.

The CFTA thresholds are adjusted for inflation every two years. From 1 January 2026 to 31 December 2027, according to the CFTA covered procurement thresholds effective January 1, 2026, services are covered at $139,000 or more for departments, ministries and agencies, and for municipalities, school boards and publicly funded academic, health and social service entities (the MASH sector), and at $694,700 or more for Crown corporations and government enterprises. Public buyers should read the rules that bind them, or take procurement advice, before starting. The rest of this guide covers what makes a cleaning RFP work, whichever rules apply.

02

What the RFP documents should contain

Bidders can only estimate and price the cleaning services they are told about, so prepare the bid package before the notice goes out. A complete package for a janitorial contract usually includes:

• The scope of work: every building, floor and area, the tasks and cleaning frequencies, periodic and project work such as floor refinishing, carpet extraction and window cleaning, the standard expected, and working hours and access. Our guide to the janitorial scope of work covers this in detail.
• Site information: floor areas by type, floor finishes, washroom and kitchen counts, occupancy and opening hours, secure or restricted areas, and the storage available for equipment and chemicals.
• Winter work: who clears entrances and vestibules, who handles salt and slush on the floors, and whether snow and ice control outside is in the contract or someone else's.
• Information about the current workforce, where successor rules apply (see the next section).
• The contract terms: length, renewal options, termination, price adjustment, insurance, indemnity and invoicing.
• Performance management: the service levels, cleaning KPIs, inspection method, rectification times and any deductions, ideally as a draft janitorial service level agreement.
• Supplies and equipment: who supplies paper, soap, liners and chemicals, any products required, and any colour coding.
• Health and safety requirements: WHMIS training and safety data sheets for the products used, site orientation, working alone arrangements, and your own site rules. The CCOHS page on sanitation and infection control for cleaning staff covers safe use of cleaning chemicals, safety data sheets and blood and body fluids.
• Workers' compensation: proof that the contractor is registered and in good standing with the provincial board, such as a clearance from WSIB in Ontario.
• Records the law requires: in Ontario, for example, employers must post the date and time of the two most recent cleanings of each washroom facility in or near it, or make them available electronically, as the page on maintaining clean washroom facilities for workers explains. Say who will keep that record.
• The evaluation criteria and weightings, the questions, the pricing form, and the timetable, including the site visit and the deadline for questions.

A good test: could two experienced janitorial contractors read the package and arrive at similar staffing hours for the building? If not, the difference between their prices will reflect guesswork, not value.

03

Site visits, questions, and the workforce already there

Site visits let bidders see the building before they price it. Offer every bidder the same walk-through, with the same route and the same person answering questions, and publish the answers to all of them. Show the difficult areas: the busiest washrooms, the lunchrooms and the vestibules in February. If attendance is mandatory, say so in the notice.

Questions should go through one contact, with a published deadline and answers shared with every bidder without naming who asked. Under the CFTA a covered buyer must share clarifications with all suppliers in an open, fair and timely manner, and where it changes the requirements or the evaluation criteria before the closing date it must publish the change and extend the deadline if bidders need more time. Questions often reveal gaps in the scope of work; issue an addendum and correct the package when they do.

The workforce already in the building is often the biggest cost question in a cleaning contract, and Canada has no single national rule. Two provincial examples:

• In Ontario, the building services provider provisions of the Employment Standards Act, 2000 cover cleaning, security and food services. The Ontario guide to the building services provider rules explains that a new provider can decline to hire the previous provider's employees, but must then, in most cases, comply with the termination and severance parts of the Act as if it had terminated them, subject to exceptions such as employees who did not work primarily at the premises. A prospective provider can ask the building's owner or manager for information about the employees at the premises, including job classification, wage rates, benefits and their cost, regular hours and hire dates, and the owner or manager can obtain it from the current provider. Anyone receiving it may use it only for those provisions and must not disclose it further.
• In British Columbia, section 35 of the Labour Relations Code provides that where a contract for building cleaning, security, food and certain other services is retendered and substantially similar services continue under another contractor, the new contractor is bound by all proceedings under the Code before its contract, as if no change had occurred, and by any collective agreement in force, as if it had signed it.

Bidders cannot price the contract properly without knowing the position, so find out which rules apply in your province, and whether the current cleaners are unionized, before the RFP goes out. Build the information you can lawfully share into the package, and write an information clause into every new janitorial contract so the next tender is easier. Take employment and labour advice where the position is unclear.

04

Evaluating proposals: quality, price and evidence

Janitorial work is labour-intensive, so most of the price is wages and benefits. An RFP weighted heavily on price tends to reward the bid with the fewest hours, which is rarely the contract the buyer wanted. Set weightings that reflect the risk of the service, publish them, and test each price against the hours proposed before you name a preferred proponent.

Rated questions should ask proponents how they will deliver this contract, not describe their company. Useful questions cover:

1. Staffing and hours: the hours proposed for each area and how they were calculated, cover for absence and vacations, and supervision on site, including evenings and weekends.
2. Recruitment, training and retention: orientation, WHMIS and task training, and how turnover is kept down.
3. Quality control: how inspections are carried out, how often, by whom, and how deficiencies are corrected and closed. Our guide to janitorial quality control covers what good looks like.
4. Evidence of delivery: how the contractor will show that scheduled cleaning and checks were done, not only that the building looked good on inspection day.
5. Reporting: what the buyer will receive, how often, and what it will show.
6. Transition: the plan from award to the end of the first month, including the workforce, keys and access cards, and supplies.
7. Health and safety and environmental practice, proportionate to the contract, including the products proposed.

Score against the published criteria with a panel, each member scoring independently before a consensus meeting, and record the reasons. Check the pricing form against the hours proposed: a price that cannot pay those hours at the provincial minimum wage or better, plus statutory costs and supervision, is a warning. The CFTA lets a covered buyer that receives an abnormally low price verify with the supplier that it meets the conditions for participation and can fulfil the contract. Take references from current clients with similar buildings, and visit one if you can. Check that the contractor's workers' compensation account is in good standing; in Ontario a WSIB clearance shows that a business is registered and up to date, and is valid for up to 90 days, so ask for a current one again while the contract runs.

05

Award, debriefing and the first months

Tell every bidder the result. A buyer covered by the CFTA must promptly inform participating suppliers of its award decision, in writing if asked, and must explain to an unsuccessful supplier, on request, why its tender was not selected. It must also publish an award notice within 72 days of the award, and each government must provide a review procedure through which a supplier can challenge a breach. Private buyers should still offer unsuccessful bidders a short debriefing; it improves the next competition.

Then the tender becomes a contract. Transition is where the promises in the proposal meet the building: the workforce, site orientation for the new crew, safety data sheets for the new products, keys, access cards and alarm codes, equipment and supplies, and a start date. Agree a transition plan with named owners, walk the site with the new contractor before day one, confirm who keeps any record the law requires, and hold a review after the first month against the KPIs in the RFP.

Keep the tender file: the scope of work, the winning proposal and the evaluation notes are the baseline for managing the contract and for the next RFP.

06

Where RFP promises fail, and where SiteClara fits

Every proposal promises supervision, inspections and reporting. The gap usually appears after transition, when the buyer realizes that the only regular evidence of delivery is a monthly inspection score and the absence of complaints. A washroom checked hourly in the proposal becomes a sheet on the back of the door, initialled in advance or all at once at the end of the shift, and a missed evening clean surfaces as an email the next morning.

One way to close the gap is to ask for daily evidence of delivery in the RFP itself, and SiteClara is one tool for it. A printed QR poster at each location, with an optional NFC tag behind it, lets cleaning staff confirm each scheduled check with a scan or a tap on their own phone, with no app to install. Staff see what is due and mark it done, or say what stopped them, and can report a problem with a photo, which goes onto the team's list of jobs until someone closes it. The contractor's supervisor reviews the day, adds a reason where a check was missed, and approves a report that reaches the client's nominated contacts the next morning, showing what was reported, completed and still open, and how the scheduled checks went. Where the building owner and the contractor share a site, each company keeps its own staff, forms and approval.

07

Questions people ask

Where are government cleaning tenders published in Canada?

Federal cleaning contracts are published on CanadaBuys tender opportunities, where suppliers can browse the list and sign up for notifications; a business registers there to view and bid on tenders published by Public Services and Procurement Canada. Chapter Five of the Canadian Free Trade Agreement requires a covered public buyer to post its tender notice on a tendering website designated by its own government, free of charge to suppliers, so provincial, municipal and broader public sector cleaning tenders may be posted on a provincial portal, such as BC Bid in British Columbia.

How do you get cleaning contracts in BC?

Many public sector cleaning contracts in British Columbia are posted on BC Bid. The Province's BC Bid resources page describes it as an online marketplace where buyers post solicitation opportunities and suppliers bid on them, used by ministries and by broader public sector buyers including municipal governments, school districts, health authorities, Crown corporations and B.C. First Nations. Suppliers register there and can browse the opportunities. For federal work, Procurement Assistance Canada offers free seminars, resources and personalized assistance, including on how to register for a procurement business number.

08

Further reading, and a list to take away

For public buyers, the Canadian Free Trade Agreement sets the national floor, your province's directives and your organization's own purchasing policy or bylaw set the detail, and opportunities appear on CanadaBuys and on provincial portals such as the Ontario Tenders Portal. Contractors new to federal work can get free help from Procurement Assistance Canada. For the workforce question, start with your province's employment standards and labour relations rules. The Ontario guide to the Occupational Health and Safety Act, Part III: duties of employers and other persons, sets out the duties of employers and owners, and CCOHS covers the hazards cleaning staff face.

Before you issue a cleaning RFP, check that:

• you know which procurement rules apply, including trade agreement thresholds and provincial directives, and have advice if you are a public body;
• the scope of work lists every area, task, frequency and standard, including winter entrances;
• site information and floor areas are accurate;
• you know the successor rules in your province and what workforce information can go in the package;
• evaluation criteria and weightings are published, and quality is not drowned by price;
• questions ask how delivery will be evidenced, not only how quality is inspected;
• every bidder gets the same site visit and the same answers;
• the contract names who keeps any record the law requires, such as Ontario's washroom cleaning record;
• workers' compensation standing is checked at award and while the contract runs;
• the transition plan and a first-month review are part of the contract.