How to Bid Post-Construction Cleaning Jobs

This guide is for a cleaning company bidding the cleanup at the end of a new build or a remodel, whether the customer is a builder or a homeowner running their own renovation. Recurring janitorial work in the finished building is a different bid, covered in how to bid commercial cleaning contracts. A move-out clean of an empty home is covered in how to price a move-out cleaning.

What a post-construction cleaning bid contains

A builder who asks for "a final clean" usually means one visit. The job is rarely one visit. Dust keeps settling for days after the last sanding, and the punch-list trades come back after the cleaners leave. A bid that survives that has these lines on it:

• Each phase as its own priced line, so the builder can order one without repricing the others.
• The date of the site walk and what was counted: windows, cabinet boxes, bathrooms, floor types.
• Exclusions, written out.
• A rate for re-cleaning any area after it has been signed off.
• Payment terms by phase.

The rest of this guide takes those lines one at a time, then runs one house through two versions of the bid.

The phases, and why each gets its own price

Names vary by builder and region. The split below is the common one. Some builders skip the rough clean, and some call the touch-up a "puff" or "sparkle" clean. Use the builder's names on your bid.

Phase	When	What it covers	What drives the time
Rough clean	After drywall, before or between the finish trades	Debris to the builder's dumpster, HEPA vacuuming of drywall dust from floors and sills, scraping mud and paint drips off subfloors, a first wipe of dusty surfaces	Square footage and how much dust is down
Final clean	After the finish trades are done	Detail work: inside cabinets and drawers, windows and tracks, fixtures, sticker and label removal, light fixtures, vents and returns, floors	Counts: windows, cabinet boxes, bathrooms, fixtures
Touch-up	Right before the owner's walkthrough or move-in	Re-dusting where dust resettled, floors, glass and fixtures, anything the punch list disturbed	Days since the final clean and how many trades came back

They get separate prices because they are different work at different speeds. The rough clean is fast coverage of a lot of floor. The final clean is slow, counted work, and it is where most of the hours go. The touch-up is short, but it is its own trip, and its size depends on things the cleaner does not control.

Price each phase from hours, not one square-foot rate

Post-construction cleaning is usually discussed per square foot, and a per-square-foot figure is a fine way to show a builder the price. It is a poor way to build it. One rate blends three speeds of work into a single number, so it runs high when the builder orders only a rough clean and low when they order the full sequence on a house with forty windows.

Build each phase from hours instead:

1. Estimate cleaner-hours for the phase from what you counted on the site walk, using your own times from past jobs. With no history, time your first few jobs closely and treat those bids as the cost of learning the number.
2. Multiply by your billable rate per cleaner-hour.
3. Add the consumables and equipment wear for that phase. HEPA vacuum bags and filters belong here.
4. Divide by the square footage only at the end, if the builder wants to see a per-square-foot figure.

The billable rate has to cover much more than wages. For scale, the Bureau of Labor Statistics put the median wage for janitors and building cleaners at $17.71 an hour in May 2025.¹ A billable rate carries that wage plus payroll taxes, insurance, the truck, equipment and the hours between jobs before there is any profit in it.

What to count on the site walk

Walk the site before you bid, ideally at the stage when the cleaning will happen, and count instead of estimating. These are the counts that move the hours:

• Windows, by size, and whether the tracks are packed with drywall dust or mud. Note any glass with stickers or paint on it.
• Cabinet boxes and drawers. On a final clean, every one gets wiped inside.
• Bathrooms, full and half. Each one has new fixtures and glass to detail, and often a grout haze on the tile.
• Floor types. New hardwood, vinyl plank, tile and carpet each take different methods, and a new floor finish can have a cure period before it tolerates wet cleaning. Ask the flooring installer, or read the product's care instructions.
• Light fixtures, ceiling fans, vent covers and returns.
• Access and utilities. Are the water and power on? How far is the carry to the dumpster?

Write the counts on the bid. "Final clean priced for 22 windows, 34 cabinet boxes, 2.5 bathrooms" turns a later change in the plans into a priced change instead of a favor. If the count changes after the bid is signed, a change order records the new price before the extra work is done.

Exclusions that keep the bid from growing

Post-construction scope only grows in one direction. Write down what the price does not include:

• Debris hauling. The rough clean moves debris to the builder's dumpster on site. Hauling it off site is a separate price, or the builder's job.
• Removing paint, grout, adhesive or caulk beyond light spot cleaning. Heavy residue is the responsible trade's cleanup, and taking it off new finishes carries a damage risk the cleaning price does not cover.
• Scraping glass with a blade. New glass can scratch. Check the window manufacturer's cleaning instructions, and if the builder still wants blade work, get the request in writing and price it as its own line.
• Exterior work. Washing the driveway and siding is a different service. If the builder wants it, price it per surface the way the pressure washing price calculator does, as a separate line.
• Re-cleaning after sign-off. Priced as a touch-up at the rate on the bid. The sign-off section below covers why this line matters most.

Dust, HEPA vacuums and the silica rule

Construction dust is why a post-construction clean takes longer than a deep clean of the same house. Fine drywall dust spreads when it is swept, and dust from cutting or grinding concrete and tile can contain crystalline silica.

If your crew cleans on a construction site where silica dust is present, OSHA's construction silica standard has a housekeeping paragraph that applies to the cleanup. It bars dry sweeping or dry brushing where that could add to employee exposure to respirable crystalline silica, unless wet sweeping, HEPA-filtered vacuuming or other methods that minimize exposure are not feasible. It also restricts using compressed air to clean surfaces or clothing under the same conditions.² Whether the standard reaches a particular job depends on the work and the exposure, and the paragraph is short enough to read in full.

For pricing, the practical result is the same either way. The rough clean is done with HEPA vacuums and damp methods, not a push broom and a blower. That is slower and needs equipment, so it belongs in the rough-clean hours and the consumables line, where the builder can see it, rather than buried in a blended rate.

Worked example: one new house, bid two ways

Example, with illustrative numbers. A builder asks for a post-construction clean on a new 2,400 square foot house: 3 bedrooms, 2.5 baths, 22 windows, 34 cabinet boxes, mostly hard floors. The cleaning company bills $45 per cleaner-hour, a round number chosen for the example, and sends a crew of two.

The site walk and the company's own past job times produce these hours, counted in cleaner-hours (one cleaner working one hour). The final clean is 10 cleaner-hours of base detail work, plus 4.4 hours for the windows at 12 minutes each, plus about 2.3 hours for the cabinet boxes at 4 minutes each.

Phase	Cleaner-hours	Labor at $45	Consumables	Phase price	Per sq ft
Rough clean	8	$360	$40	$400	$0.17
Final clean	16.7	$750	$35	$785	$0.33
Touch-up	4	$180	$15	$195	$0.08
Total	28.7	$1,290	$90	$1,380	$0.58

Look at the last column. The phases work out to anywhere from 8 cents to 33 cents a square foot. Any single per-square-foot rate would have been wrong for at least two of them.

Now bid the same house the way the builder asked: "a final clean," one price. The company quotes its final-clean number, $785. Then the job runs the way these jobs tend to run. The builder calls the crew in early because the floors are covered in drywall dust, which is the rough clean: 8 cleaner-hours. After the final clean, the painter and the electrician come back for touch-ups, and the builder wants the house cleaned again before the owner's walkthrough: 4 more cleaner-hours.

Bid	Billed	Cleaner-hours worked	Earned per cleaner-hour, after consumables
Phased bid	$1,380	28.7	$45.00
One "final clean" price	$785	28.7	$24.24

Same house and the same hours. The one-price bid paid the crew's time at $24.24 an hour, about $6.50 above the median janitor wage cited earlier, before payroll taxes or insurance. The phased bid did not charge the builder more for the same work. It charged for the visits the builder ordered.

Get the final clean signed off before the trades come back

The touch-up phase exists because other trades keep working in the house after the final clean. Painters touch up walls and electricians set the last covers and fixtures. Each visit leaves dust and footprints on surfaces that were clean. Without a record that the final clean was finished and accepted, the cleaner's return visit reads as finishing the job instead of as new work.

So close the final clean with a signature. Walk the house with the superintendent or the builder at the end of the final clean, photographing each room as you go, and get the job completion sign-off signed on site. The sheet records the scope completed, the photos, anything found outside the scope, and the customer's signature that the work was done as agreed. From that moment, new dust on a signed-off surface is a touch-up.

Put the rule on the bid before the job starts, so the signature is not a surprise. Example wording, using the example's $45 rate for a crew of two:

"The final clean is complete when signed off by the builder's representative. Re-cleaning of signed-off areas after other trades have worked there is billed as a touch-up at $90 per crew-hour, one-hour minimum."

The builder now has a choice they did not have before: finish the punch list before the final clean, or pay for the touch-up. Either one works for the cleaning company. On a homeowner remodel, the same sheet gives you a dated record of what was finished, which is the page you point to if the invoice is ever questioned.

Bill each phase when it is done

A phased bid makes phased billing natural. Invoice each phase as it finishes, with the final-clean invoice going out the day it is signed off. A builder paying on net-30 terms then owes you for work done weeks ago, instead of for the whole job a month after the owner moved in. The payment terms guide covers how to word those terms on the invoice.

For a homeowner running their own remodel, take a deposit when the job is booked. The phases are often weeks apart, and the deposit holds the dates. The deposit guide covers the wording.

Commercial post-construction work can also be an audition. A company that did the final clean on a new office already knows the building when the owner starts looking for a recurring janitorial service. When that conversation comes, the commercial cleaning bid calculator prices the recurring contract from the square footage and restroom count you already have.

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Sources and further reading

1. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Outlook Handbook, Janitors and Building Cleaners (median wage $17.71 per hour, May 2025). Used as a wage baseline, not as a billed rate.
2. Occupational Safety and Health Administration, 29 CFR 1926.1153, Respirable crystalline silica, paragraph (f), Housekeeping (limits on dry sweeping, dry brushing and compressed air where they could contribute to exposure).

This article is general information, not legal or safety advice. Whether OSHA's construction silica standard applies to a given cleanup depends on the site and the exposure; confirm with OSHA or a safety professional. Hours and prices in the worked example are illustrative, not market rates for your area.