How to win landscaping and grounds maintenance contracts in BC

Grounds maintenance is natural public work for a landscaping crew. Cities, schools, care homes, social housing and federal sites all have lawns, beds, boulevards and trees to look after, and many contract it out for several seasons at a time. Tenders tend to come out before the growing season, so the time to get ready is winter.

Who buys grounds maintenance in BC?

• Municipalities and regional districts: parks, boulevards, medians, civic buildings, cemeteries and sports fields.
• School districts: school grounds and fields, often with work concentrated in summer when students are away.
• Health authorities and care facilities.
• BC Housing and non-profit housing providers.
• Federal buyers: RCMP detachments, federal buildings and other sites.

What does a grounds maintenance tender ask for?

• Sites and maps, with areas of turf, shrub beds, hard surfaces and sometimes inventories of trees.
• Frequencies: mowing cycles, edging, bed maintenance, leaf collection, litter pick-up, seasonal clean-ups.
• Standards: mowing heights, weed tolerance, plant health. Some specifications reference the Canadian Landscape Standard published by the landscape architects' and nursery and landscape associations.
• Irrigation: start-up, shut-down, repairs and monitoring.
• Equipment and how you'll get it between sites.
• Pesticide use: often restricted or banned on public land, with integrated pest management (IPM) required.
• WorkSafeBC, insurance and a safety program. Traffic control may be needed on boulevard work.

Do I need pesticide certification?

If you apply pesticides as part of the work, generally yes. BC requires certification under its pest management rules to apply pesticides in landscaped areas commercially. The Landscape pesticide applicator certificate is earned by writing a three-hour exam through Service BC: a mark of 75 percent or more gives a five-year certificate, and 60 to 74 percent gives a one-year certificate. Businesses may also need a pest control service licence, so check with the Province.

Many municipalities restrict cosmetic pesticide use on their land anyway. Read the tender's IPM section: it may require mechanical weed control, which takes more labour and changes your price.

How do I price a grounds contract?

1. Measure the work: turf area per mowing cycle, linear metres of edging, number of beds, hours per site visit.
2. Use realistic production rates for your equipment and the site conditions (slopes, obstacles, travel between small sites).
3. Count the cycles across the season, including the shoulder seasons when growth is slow but clean-ups are heavy.
4. Add travel, which on multi-site contracts can be a big share of hours.
5. Add equipment, fuel, disposal of green waste, irrigation parts, supervision and overhead.
6. Price each year of a multi-year term for rising wages and fuel. See how to price a multi-year contract.

How do I make my proposal stand out?

• A seasonal work plan showing what happens when, by site.
• Crew and equipment: how many crews, what each one carries, where they start their day.
• Response to the unexpected: storm clean-up, vandalism, irrigation breaks.
• Records: how you'll log visits, with photos, so the buyer can see the work was done.
• Local presence: closer crews mean faster response and less travel cost.

Turning a summer contract into year-round work

Many grounds contractors pair summer maintenance with winter snow and ice contracts for the same kinds of buyers, keeping crews and equipment busy all year. See how to win snow removal contracts and stacking seasonal contracts into year-round work.

Where to start

Set up free CrewBid alerts for landscaping in your area, check the renewal calendar for contracts likely to come back out, and get on your local municipality's and school district's supplier lists before spring.