Pricing Realism Checker
Get an indicative ICS benchmark for your building, or review whether a cleaning bid or pricing model appears realistic and well-supported.
Free to use•Takes around 5 minutes•No sign-up required
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Realism assessment
Whether your price appears to reflect realistic delivery costs
Main cost drivers
Labour, on-costs, management, equipment and margin
Scope risk flags
Where key inclusions are unclear or missing from a bid
Quick benchmark option
An instant indicative price range if you just want a sense check
What this tool helps with
An unusually low bid may look attractive but can be operationally unrealistic, leading to under-staffing, high turnover and service failure.
How it works
- 1Enter the tender price or hourly rate and contract hours.
- 2Adjust assumptions for wage costs, on-costs, management, equipment, consumables and margin.
- 3Review the indicative realism assessment and main cost drivers.
- 4Use the result to probe the bid during evaluation — not as a standalone award decision.
How to interpret the result
A price that appears low against indicative costs is a reason to probe, not a determination that the bid is unsustainable. A low bid may still be deliverable through genuine efficiencies, so it requires detailed commercial evaluation. The indicative costs are based on typical regional school cleaning economics, not your specific contract.
Limitations
- Not a binding quotation or contractual commitment.
- Not formal procurement or financial advice.
- Not a determination that a bid is unsustainable or fraudulent.
- Indicative costs are typical regional economics, not your specific contract.
Regional expertise across Yorkshire & Lincolnshire
ICS Cleaning is not a national call-centre contractor — we operate directly across Yorkshire & Lincolnshire, with over 30 years' experience pricing and delivering cleaning contracts in this specific region. That local footprint means our benchmarks reflect real regional labour markets, travel time between sites and typical building stock, rather than a generic national average.
Understanding your cleaning price
A cleaning contract price is the end of a chain, not a starting point. What a site needs to look like (the required outcome) drives the specification, which drives how often areas are cleaned, which drives the hours and staffing needed to deliver it — and only then does that resource get costed into a contract price. Understanding this chain makes it much easier to compare two quotes fairly.
Required outcome
Required work
Frequency
Cleaning resource
Service cost
What affects the cost of a cleaning contract?
A cleaning price is built up from several components, not just a single hourly rate. Depending on the contract, these may include:
- Actual contractual wage rates paid to cleaning staff
- Employer/employment costs — for example National Insurance and pension contributions
- Supervision on site
- Management and contract administration
- Relief and absence cover, so the service continues when staff are off
- Induction and ongoing training
- Equipment provision and maintenance
- Consumables such as washroom supplies
- Periodic and deep-cleaning work
- Service, quality and reporting requirements
- TUPE-protected employment terms, where applicable
For education contracts, NJC-related pay arrangements or LGPS pension obligations may also be relevant where applicable. Not every factor applies to every contract — which ones are genuinely relevant depends on the site, sector and existing employment arrangements.
Why isn't a cleaner's hourly wage the same as contract cost?
The wage paid to a cleaner is only one part of what it costs to deliver a reliable service. On top of wages, a contract price generally also needs to cover employment costs, supervision, cover for holidays and sickness, training, equipment and consumables, and the management and reporting needed to run the contract. A statutory wage rate — such as the National Living Wage — is a starting reference point for labour cost, not a measure of total service delivery cost.
Why can two cleaning quotes be very different?
Two providers can quote very differently for the same site because they are assuming different things — different cleaning hours, different staffing levels, different levels of supervision, or different assumptions about who covers absence, provides equipment, or carries out periodic work. A lower price can reflect genuine efficiency, or it can reflect a scope gap that only becomes visible once the contract is running. Comparing the assumptions behind a quote, not just the total figure, is the safest way to evaluate it — the School Cleaning Tender Assistant can help structure that comparison.
How do cleaning hours and the specification affect price?
Cleaning hours are the resource needed to deliver a specification — the areas, tasks and frequencies a site actually requires. A price that looks low relative to the hours it should cover is a reason to ask questions, not necessarily a sign of a bad deal. If you haven't already, it's worth checking your indicative cleaning hours and, where a specification doesn't yet exist or needs building from scratch, using the Cleaning Specification Builder — or, if a specification already exists, running it through the Specification Health Check to confirm it is clear and measurable before you compare prices against it.
What does an indicative ICS benchmark mean?
The benchmark this tool produces is an indicative planning reference, not a quotation. It gives you a general sense of whether a price is broadly in a realistic range for the hours and staffing involved — it does not reveal or represent ICS's own internal charge rates, margins or costing methodology, and it should not be treated as a substitute for a formal quotation or site survey.
About ICS Cleaning
ICS Cleaning Services has delivered commercial and education cleaning across Yorkshire and Lincolnshire for over 30 years, with ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 accreditation and directly employed operational teams — the operational basis for the cost drivers described above.
Related guidance
Background reading on cleaning costs, procurement and workforce stability.
Continue your pricing review
These tools help you check the work and resource behind a price, or evaluate competing bids.
Define the areas, tasks and frequencies a price should actually be covering.
Sense-check the hours a price should reflect before you compare bids.
Confirm a specification is clear and measurable before pricing against it.
Structure a fair, defensible comparison between competing bids.
Frequently asked questions
Want ICS to review your cleaning price?
Use this tool as a starting point, or ask ICS to review your specification, hours and current pricing directly.