Government cleaning contracts: where to find them and how to bid

Are government cleaning contracts right for you yet?

Public buyers clean a lot of buildings: offices, schools, libraries, depots, clinics, social housing common areas. Their contracts are advertised openly, scored on published criteria, and paid on terms set out in advance. In exchange, they ask for paperwork, they often score price heavily, and decisions take weeks or months.

Before you register anywhere, check three things: you hold the insurance a public buyer will ask for, you have two or three references from comparable sites, and someone in your company has the hours to read and answer tender documents properly. If one is missing, win private clients first; the 8 steps to get commercial cleaning contracts cover that, and subcontracting under a larger contractor is a middle path to public sector references.

United States: SAM.gov, NAICS 561720 and set-asides

Federal contract opportunities are posted on SAM.gov, and you must register your business there to bid on and receive federal awards.

1. Register your entity on SAM.gov. Registration assigns your Unique Entity ID (UEI), a 12-character identifier. A UEI on its own does not let you bid; you need the full registration, and it must be renewed every 365 days. The government does not charge for registration or renewal, and GSA warns against emails asking you to pay to register or “fix” a registration.
2. Choose your NAICS codes. The census code for cleaning is 561720 Janitorial Services (cleaning building interiors, interiors of transportation equipment and windows). Related codes include 561740 Carpet and Upholstery Cleaning Services and 561790 Other Services to Buildings and Dwellings. Agencies tag each solicitation with a NAICS code, and that code sets the size standard used for small business set-asides.
3. Check your small business status. The SBA assigns a size standard to each NAICS code; check yours with the SBA’s size standards tool rather than relying on a figure quoted elsewhere.
4. Look at set-asides. Agencies reserve some contracts for small businesses, and others for businesses certified in the SBA’s 8(a), HUBZone, women-owned (WOSB) and service-disabled veteran-owned programs. Certification applications go through SBA Certifications.
5. Search and save. On SAM.gov, filter contract opportunities by NAICS 561720, your state or place of performance, and set-aside type, and save the search so new notices reach you.

Federal contracts are only part of public cleaning work in the US. States, counties, cities, school districts, public universities and housing authorities run their own procurement portals and vendor registrations, and they may buy smaller sites with simpler paperwork. Register with your state’s and your city’s vendor portals as well as SAM.gov. Local APEX Accelerator offices, listed by the SBA, help small businesses with government contracting, including finding opportunities.

United Kingdom: Find a Tender and Contracts Finder

Since 24 February 2025, public procurement in England, Wales and Northern Ireland follows the Procurement Act 2023. Under the Act, Find a Tender is the central digital platform: notices for procurements under the new rules are published there, and suppliers register once, store their core details (name, address, company and VAT numbers, connected persons and more) and reuse them across bids, sharing them with the buyers they choose. Searching and registering are open to any supplier.

• Find a Tender: notices under the Procurement Act 2023, and higher-value notices from before it. Register here when you want to bid, and you get a unique identifier that buyers ask for.
• Contracts Finder: lower-value government opportunities and procurements started under the previous rules. Save searches for “cleaning” and your region to get email alerts.
• Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland: bodies also publish on Public Contracts Scotland, Sell2Wales, and eTendersNI or eSourcing NI.
• Councils, NHS trusts, schools and housing associations often run their own e-tendering portals as well; register on those of the bodies in your area.

Two UK specifics matter for cleaners. The Act sets 30-day payment terms on a broad range of public contracts, and implies them into public sub-contracts too. And when a cleaning contract moves from one contractor to another, TUPE can apply, so the existing cleaners may transfer to you with their terms: read the TUPE information in the tender pack before you price.

Canada: CanadaBuys and provincial portals

CanadaBuys is the official source for Government of Canada tender notices and contract awards. To bid on opportunities managed there, you need an account and company profile on the SAP Business Network and a valid Canada Revenue Agency business number; the older Supplier Registration Information system has been decommissioned. Procurement Assistance Canada helps smaller businesses learn the federal process, and some lower-value federal purchases are made directly rather than through open tenders.

Provinces, municipalities, school boards and hospitals publish their own opportunities on provincial and municipal portals, separate from CanadaBuys. For a small cleaning company, these local buyers are usually the more realistic first target.

How to read a cleaning tender

A tender pack usually contains instructions to bidders, a specification or statement of work, pricing schedules, the contract terms, and forms or questions to answer. Read all of it before you decide to bid, and keep a list of questions for the clarification window.

• Deadline and format: the exact time, the portal, file types and page limits. Late or wrong-format bids are usually rejected without being read.
• Mandatory requirements: registrations, insurance limits, certifications or minimum experience. Missing one can exclude you regardless of price.
• Specification: sites, floor areas, frequencies, hours, special areas (labs, washrooms, kitchens), and any performance standards or audits.
• Evaluation criteria and weights: how much price counts against quality, and what the quality questions are scored on.
• Site visit: often offered once, sometimes mandatory. Go, measure and time what you can.
• Staff transfer and wage rules: TUPE in the UK; on US federal service contracts, the Service Contract Act and the Department of Labor wage determination attached to the contract set minimum wages and fringe benefits for cleaners, so price from it.
• Contract terms: length, extension options, price review, penalties for failed audits, payment terms.

Compliance documents to have ready

Assemble these once and keep them current; they come up in nearly every bid:

• Registrations: SAM.gov and state vendor numbers (US), your Find a Tender identifier (UK), SAP Business Network profile and business number (Canada).
• Insurance certificates: general or public liability, workers’ compensation or employers’ liability, and any bonding the buyer asks for.
• Health and safety policy, method statements for the main tasks, chemical safety information for your products, and training records.
• Staff vetting and right-to-work procedures, plus background checks where sites require them.
• References and a short description of comparable contracts: site type, size, frequency, how long.
• Quality control: your inspection checklist, how often, how issues are logged and fixed.
• A capability statement: one page with your services, NAICS codes or service categories, area covered, team size and contacts.

Pricing a public cleaning bid

Price from the specification, not from what you think the buyer paid before. Turn each area and frequency into hours using your own production rates, multiply by your loaded labor cost (including any required wage rates), add supplies, equipment, supervision, travel and overhead, then your margin. Fill the buyer’s pricing schedule exactly as designed, even if you would present it differently to a private client.

• Price the whole contract period, including any price review mechanism and expected wage changes.
• Do not drop below your cost floor to win. A loss-making public contract still has to be delivered for its full term.
• Answer quality questions with specifics from the tender (their sites, their hours, their audit method), not generic text. The structure of a strong private proposal still applies; see the commercial cleaning proposal template.
• If you lose, ask for feedback or the evaluation summary. It tells you whether price or quality cost you the contract.

Start with small local bodies

A town hall, a library branch, a parish or community council, a small school or a housing authority common area is a realistic first public contract: smaller sites, simpler packs, and a buyer close to your routes. Win one, deliver well, and use it as the reference for the next, larger bid.

Keep private prospecting going in parallel, since public bids are slow and uncertain. To list the offices, clinics and property managers around your public sites, find commercial cleaning clients near you with LeadsIt, and see the cleaning companies page for the full toolkit. Ideas to raise your profile locally are in cleaning business advertising.

Frequently asked questions

Sources

• SAM.gov — Entity registration
• GSA — Don’t take the bait: misleading marketing, imposters and phishing (SAM.gov registration costs)
• U.S. Census Bureau — NAICS 561720 Janitorial Services
• SBA — Basic requirements (UEI, NAICS, size standards)
• SBA — Certifications: 8(a), WOSB, HUBZone, veteran-owned
• SBA — Governing rules and responsibilities (limitations on subcontracting)
• GOV.UK — The Procurement Act 2023: a short guide for suppliers
• GOV.UK — Central Digital Platform and publication of information
• GOV.UK — Contracts Finder
• legislation.gov.uk — Procurement Act 2023, section 73
• GOV.UK — Business transfers, takeovers and TUPE
• U.S. Department of Labor — Service Contract Act (McNamara-O’Hara)
• SBA — Prime and subcontracting (incl. APEX Accelerators)
• CanadaBuys — Changes to the supplier registration process
• Canada.ca — How the government buys what you sell