Per Square Foot or Per Visit: Which Contract Fits

Two contractors can quote the same work, at the same total, on entirely different structures. One prices per square foot cleaned. One prices per visit. A third prices the whole year as a programme.

The total may be similar. What differs is what each structure quietly encourages, and that is worth understanding before signing one.

Per square foot

The most common structure. A rate per square foot for each service type, multiplied by the area treated.

What it is good at. Transparency and comparability. The arithmetic is checkable, areas can be added or removed without renegotiating, and two proposals in this form can be compared honestly — provided both list the same areas with the same services.

What it encourages. Covering ground. The measured output is area treated, so there is a quiet pull toward doing more square feet rather than doing the right square feet more carefully.

Where it suits. Large, fairly uniform floor plates — offices, convention space, retail. Anywhere area genuinely is the main variable.

Per visit

A fixed price per attendance, covering an agreed scope.

What it is good at. Budget certainty and simplicity, and it fits buildings where the work is defined by the window rather than the area — a nightly or weekly attendance covering whatever the agreed scope is.

What it encourages. Turning up, and finishing. The measured output is the visit, so the incentive runs toward completing within the window — which is helpful when the window is the real constraint and unhelpful if scope is vague.

Where it suits. Buildings with tight, regular windows and mixed work: hotels, residential towers, venues.

What it needs. A written scope. Per-visit pricing without a defined scope is the structure most likely to end in disagreement, because both parties are relying on a shared understanding that was never written down.

The annual programme

Neither, really — an agreed schedule for the year, resolving to an annual cost and an equal monthly payment.

What it is good at. Sequencing. It is the only structure that lets restorative and interim work be planned against each other, gets windows booked before the September-to-November peak fills them, and turns a lumpy seasonal cost into a fixed monthly line.

What it encourages. Outcome over activity. When the price is fixed for the year, the incentive shifts to keeping the floor in condition with the least intervention — which is the alignment you actually want.

Where it suits. Buildings where the carpet matters and the budget can commit for twelve months.

What to specify regardless of structure

The unit matters far less than what is written against it. Five things belong in any of the three:

• Areas listed separately, each with square footage and a usage rating of extreme, high, medium or low
• Method named per area — restorative extraction and interim low-moisture work are different services with different costs and different dry times, and "clean the carpet" covers both
• The steps included — pre-vacuum, spot pre-treatment, neutralising rinse, grooming, forced drying. These are what get dropped to make a price competitive, and each has a visible consequence.
• Response terms for spots, or an explicit statement that spot response is the building's own job — which it usually should be, because a contractor cannot arrive in ten minutes
• Restoration quoted separately from ongoing maintenance, so one neglected floor does not inflate what looks like the running cost

The comparison that actually works

Given two proposals on different structures, convert both to the same thing: total annual cost, and the list of what is done to each area how many times.

If one is cheaper with an identical list, it is cheaper. If the lists differ, the cheaper one is doing less — and the usual place it is doing less is the steps, not the square feet.

We will set out which structure fits your building after walking it — arrange a site assessment.