When the National Research Council of Canada put its Ottawa janitorial services out to tender this fall (solicitation 26-58017), the basis of selection was printed in plain sight: highest combined score, weighted 70% technical merit and 30% price.
Read that again. On one of the larger cleaning contracts in the country, your cleaning counted for more than twice your price — and the part that counted most is the part most owners spend the least time on.
Technical merit is not a mystery score. Evaluators grade what the bid document shows: your cleaning methodology, your staffing and supervision plan, how you handle quality inspections and complaints, your safety program, your references from comparable sites, and how you would transition into the building without dropping a shift. The NRC tender even made attendance at a mandatory site visit part of getting in the door.
Here is what that means in practice. A thin technical section caps your score no matter how sharp your price is. A competitor can underbid you and still lose, because 30% cannot rescue a weak 70. And the reverse is also true: a strong, specific, evidence-backed technical bid gives you room on price that a bare-bones submission never will.
Evaluators cannot score the cleaning you will do. They can only score the bid you wrote. The owners who treat the technical section as the main event — staffing charts, inspection routines, named supervisors, real references — are the ones the scoring grid rewards.
That is the work KSPACE TECHNOLOGIES does with cleaning and facility-services partners: readiness, submission support, and technical sections built to be scored, not skimmed.
If you run a cleaning or facility-services company and want this handled with you, apply to partner with KSPACE on your next bid. Tell us about your company. We will tell you plainly where you stand — and what it takes to bid stronger.