Maintenance contracts

[treedave]

Has anyone got experience / good ideas around these types of long running contracts? Have been asked to tender for one, will involve an initial block of work and emergency work (as and when), then a set number of days per month. Any pit falls, areas to nail down, general advice welcome as it's my first of this type.

[Buzz]

Don't cut your prices thin to win the contract, if anything double them !

Main pitfall with commercial stuff is the invoice periods. Can you stomach doing three weeks work and not getting paid for 3 months as is often the case. You dictate the invoice terms not them.

[Arborist]

Some times you are dealing with the accounts so they can tend to go with what fits there budget rather than how cheep, expensive you are so dont go in to cheep.

 

Hope that makes sense.

[Mike Hill]

I'm pretty new to the maintanence contract area myself.We landed one recently,pretty much an established subdivison with communal parks and common areas.To help prevent endless requests for work that residents hadn't asked the board for,we posted each house a flyer to remind them that tree work was occuring on the dates stated,I think it helped the board resolve more Tree issues and gave us some cheap advertising.

[treejumper]

Dont go too cheap - it'll end up costing you, and you will begin to resent ever getting it

[treedave]

Thanks for the tips guys - won't go cheap, even though a long term run of work is very tempting of a small outfit such as myself. The contract is for a charity that owns 140 acres of wooded site with roadside and chalets through it, but they are changing hands so it might be more money / development - thanks again for the tips.