Guessing at a price is the fastest way to lose money on a cleaning job. Quote too low to win the work and you pay to do it; quote a round number pulled from the air and you cannot explain it when the client pushes back. A one-off project – a post-event clean, a move-out, a single deep clean of an office – is where this hurts most, because there is no monthly rhythm to absorb a bad estimate. The fix is not a bigger gut feeling. It is a short, repeatable method that builds the price up from what the job actually involves, so the number you write down is one you can defend and still profit from.
This matters more in Zambia than it might seem, because the industry keeps insisting it is ready for serious work. When the National Pension Scheme Authority awarded a cleaning contract worth around K4 million to a foreign firm, the Cleaning Association of Zambia objected, and its president, Lawrence Makumbi, has long argued that cleaning is a preserve of local companies under Statutory Instrument No. 22 of 2019 and that Zambian firms have the capacity to deliver large contracts. Capacity, though, is not the same as being able to cost a job credibly. A local firm that wins the right to bid but cannot price a project on paper will lose it at the quotation stage to someone who can. The four steps below are how you close that gap on any single project, large or small.
1. Describe the project in writing
Before any figure, write down what the job is: what is being cleaned, why, and what “done” looks like to the client. A move-out clean, a builder’s handover and a routine office deep-clean are three different projects even if the floor area is identical. Note the client’s actual standard – are they satisfied when it looks clean, or must it pass an inspection or a landlord’s checkout? This description is not paperwork for its own sake; it is the thing you will point to if the client later says the job was bigger than agreed. Get them to confirm it before you quote.
2. Measure the size and the condition
Size and condition are two separate variables, and pricing on size alone is the classic error. A 200-square-metre office cleaned weekly is a light job; the same office after a year of neglect, or after building works, can take three times as long. Walk the site. Record the floor area, the number of rooms and toilets, the surface types, and – honestly – the condition: light, moderate or heavy soiling, grease, construction dust, stains that may not lift. It is the condition that turns a predictable job into an expensive one, and it is the field clients most often understate on the phone.
3. Count the crew and the time
Now convert the job into hours. Estimate how long the described work will take at the recorded condition, then decide how many cleaners you need to finish inside the client’s window – a Saturday shutdown, an overnight turnaround. Multiply people by hours to get labour hours, and cost those hours at what you actually pay, including transport to site. Be realistic about pace: a heavily soiled kitchen does not clean at the speed of a tidy reception. This step is where an underestimate quietly becomes unpaid overtime, so pad it for the condition you found in step two rather than the condition you hope for.
4. Add supplies, equipment and a margin
Finally, list what the job consumes and what it wears out. Chemicals, refuse bags and consumables are direct costs; a machine hired for one job – a scrubber, a pressure washer – is a line item; your own equipment carries a share of wear. Total these in Zambian kwacha, add them to your labour cost from step three, and then apply a margin that keeps the business alive, not just breaking even. Only now do you have a defensible price. Resist quoting a market rate you heard from someone else, because their scope, condition and crew were not yours.
Two of these steps – the written scope and the crew – are also where an introduction platform can steady a small firm taking on project work it cannot fully staff from its own payroll. On Kleana, which operates in Zambia alongside South Africa, Zimbabwe and Botswana, cleaners are listed by skill, area and rate under a verification tier, and a “Kleana Verified” listing means someone has checked the cleaner’s identity document and telephoned a former employer. For a one-off project that needs three extra pairs of hands for a weekend, that lets you match your written scope to checked people for a single introduction fee, rather than pulling in whoever is available and hoping they work at the pace your quote assumed. The cleaner pays nothing, and no cut is taken from her wage.
The change for your business is that quoting stops being a nervous round-number gamble and becomes an argument you can win. When a client questions the price, you walk them back through the scope they confirmed, the condition you recorded, the hours the job needs and the supplies it consumes. That is a conversation a serious buyer respects, and it is the difference between a firm that has capacity and a firm that can actually be paid fairly for using it.
The decisive move is to build the four steps into a single quotation sheet and never send a price without it – description, size and condition, crew and time, supplies and margin. Price the next project from the scope in front of you, in your own numbers, and let the sheet do the arguing.
Source: Kleana Africa – kleana.africa
