Asking Camden cleaning bidders to state their travel and attendance assumptions

No contractor will roster a very short visit at distance, because the travel cannot be justified against the productive time. That produces a floor under the price which has nothing to do with your building's size. A small Camden suite needing forty minutes of work may still be quoted for a longer minimum attendance, and understanding that early prevents a fruitless search for a cheaper version of the same thing.

The useful response is to use the minimum rather than fight it. If the attendance has to be ninety minutes, decide what else is worth doing in the remaining time: internal glass on a rotation, detailed kitchen work, storeroom tidying or periodic tasks brought forward. That converts an awkward pricing floor into genuine value, and it gives the schedule content that would otherwise be squeezed out entirely.

Most providers serve outer areas by grouping sites into a run. That is efficient and entirely reasonable, but it has consequences you should know about. Your attendance time is fixed by your position in the run, so a request to move an hour earlier may be impossible without disturbing several other clients. Ask where you sit in the sequence and how much flexibility exists, because the answer determines what happens when your building changes its hours.

It also affects recovery when something goes wrong. A single missed site on a run is easier to reschedule than a single dedicated visit at distance, but only if the provider has capacity nearby. Ask directly what happens when a cleaner is unavailable: whether the visit is covered, moved or missed. A provider who has thought about it will answer specifically, and that answer is worth more than a small price difference.

Your scope should state the service window as a range rather than a fixed time, because a narrow window at distance either raises the price or produces a promise that will not hold. Something like attendance between six and eight in the evening is achievable and honest. A demand for arrival at exactly six-thirty invites a commitment that the roster cannot support once traffic or an earlier site runs long.

Include the notice period you expect for a change, in both directions. If you need an extra visit before an audit or an event, how much notice does the provider need? If they need to shift your attendance for a week, how much notice do you get? Writing both down converts a series of awkward phone calls into a known arrangement, which matters more at distance than it does close to a depot.