How to Analyze Employee Workloads
Determining your cleaning company's production rates is just the first step in estimating time in a job. Workloading will help you to determine how many employess you'll need in a particular location. Perhaps the best way to illustrate this is by example:
XYZ Office Building is a one-story 20,000 sq ft building. It has 4 restrooms with 6 fixtures in each. There is 12,000 sq ft of carpet, 5,000 sq ft of ceramic tile, and 3,000 sq ft of VCT tile. The building is to be cleaned 5 days per week.
From this information we can estimate the following production rates:
Trash Removal (5 days per week): .12 minutes each - 500 trash cans @ .12 minutes each = 60 minutes per day - Note: Another way to estimate trash removal is 3 minutes per 1,000 sq ft., so 20,000 sq ft x .003 = 60 minutes.
Dusting (once per week): 5 minutes per 1,000 sq ft - .005 x 20,000 sq ft = 100 minutes (1 hr 40 min) per service
High Dusting (once per month): 3 minutes per 1,000 sq ft - .003 x 20,000 sq ft = 60 minutes per service
Low Dusting (once per month): 5 minutes per 1,000 sq ft - .005 x 20,000 sq ft = 100 minutes (1 hr 40 min) per service
Restroom Cleaning (5 days per week): 2.5 minutes per fixture - 24 fixtures x 2.5 minutes = 60 minutes per day
Breakroom Cleaning (5 days per week): - Time estimate = 15 minutes
Sweep/Dust Mop Floors (5 days per week): 24" dust mop - 7 minutes per 1,000 sq ft - .007 x 8,000 = 60 minutes per day
Mop Floors (5 days per week): 24 oz mop with bucket - 12 minutes per 1,000 sq ft - .012 x 8,000 = 96 minutes (1 hr 36 minutes)
Vacuum Floors (5 days per week): 16" Upright vacuum - 14 minutes per 1,000 sq ft - .014 x 12,000 = 168 minutes (2hrs 48 minutes)
-or-
14" Backback vacuum - 8 munutes per 1,000 sq ft - .008 x 12,000 = 96 minutes (1 hr, 26 minutes)
Detail Vacuuming (once per month): 5 minutes per 1,000 sq ft - .005 x 12,000 = 60 minutes per service
Clean 4 Entryways: 30 minutes
Totaling up the hours:
Daily Services:
Trashing - 1 hr
Restroom Cleaning - 1 hr
Breakroom - 15 minutes (.25 hr)
Sweep/Dust Mop Floors - 1 hr
Mop Floors - 1 hr 36 minutes (1.6 hrs)
Vacuum Floors with Upright - 1 hr 26 minutes (1.9 hrs)
Vacuum Floors with Backpack - 1 hr
Clean Entryways: 30 minutes (.5 hr)
Total Daily Services: 7.25 hrs per day or 6.35 hrs per day
Weekly Services:
Dusting - 1 hr 40 minutes (1.67 hrs)
Total Weekly Services: 1.67 hrs
Daily Average: .334 hr (1.67 divided by 5 days/wk)
Monthly Services:
High Dusting - 1 hr
Low Dusting - 1 hr 40 minutes (1.67 hrs)
Detail Vacuuming - 1 hr
Total Monthly Services - 3.67 hrs
Daily Average: .169 hrs (3.67 x 12 months = 44.04 hrs/yr) (44.04 divided by 260 work days/yr)
Average Daily Hours:
7.25 + .334 + .167 = 7.75 hrs/day (using upright vacuum)
-or-
6.35 + .334 + .167 = 6.85 hrs/day (using backpack vacuum)
At this point you've figured out that this building will take approximately 6.85 - 7.75 hrs per day on average to clean depending on the type of vacuum you'll use. However, there are other factors that need to be considered, so before you go with these numbers, give some thought to the following factors and adjust your numbers accordingly.
- Number of building occupants. You'll need to adjust your time estimates if the building has 100 employees vs 25 employees. A building with more occupants will require more time for cleaning. You might also consider the type of worker in the building. If there are people who are at their desks 8 hrs a day versus sales people who are out of the office most of the day, then you'll need more time for cleaning.
- Layout of the building. Is the building tightly filled with cubicles? Or are there lots of wide open spaces? This will also affect how much time it will take to clean.
- Non-productive time. What about the time your employees spend gathering supplies, moving around the building, taking trash to the dumpster, break times, cleaning up afterwards, and putting supplies away? Be sure to include time for these activities.
- Supervisor hours. If a supervisor is needed to supervise the staff, fill in for absent employees, or perform one of the shifts on a regular basis, then you'll also want to look at the wages being paid and factor this into your final estimate.
After considering the above factors, let's say you've decided that you'll use a backpack vacuum in the facility and you've padded the average time estimate by an extra 1/2 hr per day. So your total time estimate is 7.35 hrs per day. Now you know that it will take either one full-time person or two part-time people, each with about a 3.7 hrs per day shift, 5 days per week. From here you can go to the Bidding Calculator and start estimating your bid price.
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