Middle person is going to be cut out

[spudnick]

i have a place i have been cleaning for about a year now, it is 4,500 sq ft, we are the subcontractors they have decided to cut out the middle person that hired us, and now they want us to give them a price for cleaning, how would i go about doing this to where i wont loose the bid, i guess what i am asking is how much of a mark up was the middle guy getting before paying us?

[logan5127]

How would any of us know how much of a mark up they had? I hope that you have the permission of the company that you subbed to, to bid on this job. If not than to me it is ethically wrong of you to even consider it. The company you are subbing to , trusted you. They gave you the work on good faith that you would do the job and not take it away from them. What goes around will come around. A husband and wife did this to me. They took about $30,000 a year of my contracts and did them all for what I was paying them. A year later they had a ugly divorce, lost everything they had and live miserably now. I dont know if it was the stress of owning their own business or the stress of knowing how they got it.

If they have gave you permission then hope it goes well. The only reason I can see that they give it to you is if they didnt make any profit off of it. In that case it will be hard for you to do it cheaper and profit any for the job other than a small hourly wage.

[spudnick]

not trying to do anyone wrong, and i may be asking the wrong way, but the place we are cleaning for called us and ask us to give them a price cause they are cutting out the other people that hired us when their contract expires. the company is trying to cut back some and i guess this is their way of doing, the one that hired us handles all their accounts.

[logan5127]

I know what your saying. If you do bid on this job like the client wants , then you are putting a nail in the coffin of the contractor you work for. If I were in your shoes , I would tell them to talk to the contractor because I would in no way bid against them.IF it caused me to loose the contract then so be it. I would then go out on my own and find contracts on my own. I will never help a company out that is putting me in a bad place between me and my boss/contractor. If they have no more respect and or loyalty then that , then I dont want to do business with them. Chances are they would do me dirty down the road.
Again, sorry for being so direct. I have had to deal with this type stuff several times over the years. It has costed me some big contracts and lots of money. I once had a school that a man cleaned for me. They asked him to come to work for them. Less pay but with benefits that added up about the same for him. He told them he would. The director of the school told me they could never find anyone good and that I had found one for them. He went futher to say that if he had turned it down or if he had not been a good worker that we still would have had the job.
I lost a K-Mart store because an employee who was making $9 an hour took the contract for $10 an hour and actually thought he would be making more money. Guess he didnt figure in that he had to not only furnish the buffers and propane but had to also pay business taxes, workers comp and so on. He stayed in business about 6 months and then had to give it up because it was costing him money to do the job. I never even tried to get the contract back.

I will stop at that. Its just a tender nerve with me on this subject.
Still not sure what you wanted to know. I am sure that the client you are talking about knows what they are going to pay you no matter what you have to say about it. Thats just the way those type people are. And most of the time they get their way. Cheap help that they could care less about and could even care less if they can even afford to put food on their table.