Biggest Job Ever

[miltthemower]

First let me start by saying I have been doing lawn care and landscaping for Three years. It started out when I did not have a job and grew into a small company. Since then, I have accumulated 30 Residential clients. I am now being offered an opportunity to do maintenance for my subdivision, which is very large. It has 1,223 houses to give you an idea. I am in the process of purchasing new equipment. Now how do I bid on a property of this magnitude. The only information I have is that the last LCO was being paid 100K a year. I am not sure what they did. I do know they were responsible for the green space, mulch, I believe irrigation, planting and overall presentation. Does anyone have a format or a guide I can use to follow.

[Steve]

Lawn care business tips

Hi miltthemower, What size staff will you have to do this? Also can you make a satellite image of the area and highlight which section you are bidding on?

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Originally Posted by [b

Quote[/b] (miltthemower @ Nov. 20 2007,11:23)]First let me start by saying I have been doing lawn care and landscaping for Three years. It started out when I did not have a job and grew into a small company. Since then, I have accumulated 30 Residential clients.

I am now being offered an opportunity to do maintenance for my subdivision, which is very large. It has 1,223 houses to give you an idea.

I am in the process of purchasing new equipment. Now how do I bid on a property of this magnitude. The only information I have is that the last LCO was being paid 100K a year. I am not sure what they did. I do know they were responsible for the green space, mulch, I believe irrigation, planting and overall presentation.

Does anyone have a format or a guide I can use to follow.

give me the address so i can look at it in google earth. Also i have some questions. What type grass,what do they want you do ?( weekly bi weekly cutting?) dont buy any equipment till you get the job,unless you just need new equipment. how offten do they want you to mow. is there alot hedges,flowerbed cleaning/trim triming/any palm trees to prune? how much edgeing is going to be required/ how much man power do you have? do you have commercial insurance ?

[StartALawnCareBusiness]

This sounds like a great contract.

Would it be possible for you to get a copy of the proposed contract (or at least the bidding documents) and post here? Let us dig into it and give you some direction.

1,223 houses at $100,000 per year is 81.77 per house per year. That may or may not be a viable number depending on the time (and expense for supplies) needed for each house.

Keith

[miltthemower]

Originally Posted by [b

Quote[/b] (Team Gopher @ Nov. 20 2007,11:25)]Hi miltthemower,

What size staff will you have to do this?

Also can you make a satellite image of the area and highlight which section you are bidding on?

I will have a staff of 5 guys. One guy on stand up mower, the other on ZTR ridin mower, one for edging another for weed eating and triming, and another for blowing debri.

I looked at my subdivision on Google but it's an image of my subdivision before it was built.

[miltthemower]

Originally Posted by [b

Quote[/b] (pnplawn @ Nov. 20 2007,11:55)]

give me the address so i can look at it in google earth. Also i have some questions. What type grass,what do they want you do ?( weekly bi weekly cutting?) dont buy any equipment till you get the job,unless you just need new equipment. how offten do they want you to mow. is there alot hedges,flowerbed cleaning/trim triming/any palm trees to prune? how much edgeing is going to be required/ how much man power do you have? do you have commercial insurance ?

I searched the image on google. It only shows the entire area prior to being built.

Grass type is Bermuda. I noticed that the LCO cut the grass once a week.

There are shrubs at both entrances, Also within my subdivision there are several subdivisions. I hope this is not confusing.

[miltthemower]

Originally Posted by [b

Quote[/b] (StartALawnCareBusiness @ Nov. 20 2007,2:15)]This sounds like a great contract.

Would it be possible for you to get a copy of the proposed contract (or at least the bidding documents) and post here? *Let us dig into it and give you some direction.

1,223 houses at $100,000 per year is 81.77 per house per year. *That may or may not be a viable number depending on the time (and expense for supplies) needed for each house.

Keith

I'm working on getting a copy of the bidding documents. Once I have them I will post it.

Actually I will not service the house owner just the subdivision and green space.

Originally Posted by [b

Quote[/b] (miltthemower @ Nov. 21 2007,5:42)]Actually I will not service the house owner just the subdivision and green space.

Does that mean you won't actually be servicing the houses themselves, just the common areas for the subdivision? (ie- pool area, parks, picnic areas, empty lots, etc)