Staff hours calculator for cleaning, security, grounds, waste and catering contracts
How many hours does a 2,500 m² office clean take? How many guards for a 24/7 post? Enter the site and get weekly hours, FTE, headcount and a labour cost in seconds. Sector benchmarks behind every number.
Pick the sector
Each sector uses its own productivity rates.
Cleaning inputs
ISSA-style productivity rates: m² cleaned per labour hour, by building type.
Loaded labour rate
Hourly cost including wages, NI, pension, holiday cover, training. At the 2026 National Living Wage of £12.71, a fully loaded hour costs at least £16.
Live estimate
Weekly hours
44.6 hrs
1.28 full-time equivalents · 2,321 hrs/year · about 2 part-timers at 25 hrs
Weekly labour cost
£737
Annual labour cost
£38,304
| Productivity rate | 280 m²/hour (Offices) |
| Hours per visit | 8.9 hrs |
| Visits per week | 5 |
Next step
Now find the cleaning contracts these hours will win.
Every live UK soft FM tender in one feed, a fit check on each, and bid drafts that use your staffing plan. Start your free 14-day trial, no card.
Start free trialInheriting staff? Estimate the TUPE cost nextWhat the calculator uses
Sector benchmarks, not gut feel.
Each sector counts labour its own way. Pick the sector and the calculator swaps in the right method.
m² per hour
Cleaning
Productivity by building type. Offices 280 m²/hr at the top, clinical areas 100 at the bottom. Frequency multiplier on top.
Posts × hours
Security
Manned guarding totals all post hours per week. Mobile patrol totals visit hours. A 24/7 single post is 168 hours a week.
Hours per hectare
Grounds
Light (mowing only) at 0.5 hrs/ha up to full (mow, edges, litter, hedges) at 2.5 hrs/ha. Visits per year drive the weekly average.
Minutes per bin
Waste
240L wheelies at 0.5 min, 1100L bulks at 1.5 min, compactors at 6 min. Multiplied by collections per week.
Meals per cook-hour
Catering
Single-menu sites at 40 meals per cook-hour, mixed menus at 30, allergen-strict at 22. Plus 1.5x for prep, wash-up and admin.
£16 to £19 / hr
Loaded rate
Wages plus NI, pension, holiday, sick cover and training. Adjustable in the calculator. Default is £16.50.
Worked examples
Two sites, run through the calculator.
Same loaded rate, very different answers. The guard post costs almost four times the office clean because nobody gets to go home.
Office clean
2,500 m² office, 5 visits a week, £16.50 loaded rate
Hours
44.6 hrs/week
Staff
1.28 FTE (2 part-timers)
Labour
£38,304 a year
8.9 hours per visit. Two evening cleaners on 22 to 23 hours each, plus holiday relief.
24/7 guard post
1 post, 24 hours a day, 7 days, £16.50 loaded rate
Hours
168 hrs/week
Staff
4.80 FTE (5 to 6 guards)
Labour
£144,144 a year
Before relief. Add holiday cover and the real rota needs six names on it.
If those staff transfer from the incumbent, run the same headcount through the TUPE cost estimator to see the Year 1 bill with employer NI and pension on top.
Your hours are ready. Now find the contracts worth them.
AI Tender Writer lists every live UK soft FM tender, flags the ones you qualify for, and helps you write the staffing answer. Free for 14 days, no card.
Why bid teams under-cost hours
Three numbers that move the bid by 20%.
The calculator gives you a defensible starting figure. Then three multipliers decide whether the contract makes money.
- Holiday relief. A 50-hour site needs about 56 hours budgeted to cover 5.6 weeks of statutory holiday. Forget it and you lose the margin on those weeks for every worker.
- Sickness. Budget 5 to 8 days per worker per year, or 2% on weekly hours.
- Specification creep. Sites grow. Buyers add tasks mid-contract through "reasonable adjustment" clauses. Build a 5 to 10% buffer into the hours, or challenge the clause during clarifications.
Turning hours into a winning staffing answer.
Evaluators don't mark your hours. They mark whether your hours match the specification. On cleaning tenders, show the m² rate you used and tie it to the cleaning method statement. On security guarding tenders, show the rota, the relief and how you cover a no-show at 3am.
Grounds maintenance tenders live and die on the seasonal calendar, so link your visit count to a grounds method statement. Waste management tenders want rounds, lift times and missed-bin recovery. Catering tenders want cook hours tied to meal numbers and allergen controls.
Once the hours stack up, decide whether the contract deserves your time with the bid / no-bid tool. Then write the answer. The bid writing examples guide has scored staffing answers side by side, and the bid answer grader marks your draft against the question before you submit. Or skip ahead and browse live soft FM contracts to test your numbers on a real specification.
Staff hours questions, answered.
How many cleaning hours per square metre?
Divide the floor area by a productivity rate in square metres per hour, then multiply by visits per week. Offices clean at roughly 280 m² an hour, schools 220, retail 250, general healthcare 180 and clinical areas about 100. So a 2,500 m² office cleaned five times a week needs (2,500 ÷ 280) × 5, which is about 45 hours a week or 1.28 full-time equivalents. Those rates assume a normal daily clean with light footfall. Heavy washrooms, lots of stairs or a tight access window all push hours up, so treat the calculator as your floor and let the site survey add to it.
How many guards do I need for 24/7 cover?
One 24/7 post is 168 hours a week. At a 35-hour week that is 4.8 full-time guards before anyone takes a day off. Add statutory holiday (5.6 weeks) and a sick reserve and you need five to six guards on the rota for a single post. At a loaded rate of £16.50 an hour the post costs £2,772 a week or about £144,000 a year. Most SMEs price the 168 hours and forget the relief, which is where security bids lose their margin in month three.
How do you calculate FTE from weekly hours?
Divide annual hours by the hours one full-timer works in a year. The calculator uses 35 hours × 52 weeks, which is 1,820 hours. A site needing 50 hours a week (2,600 a year) is 1.43 FTE. In soft FM you rarely hire FTEs, you hire part-timers, so the calculator also shows how many 25-hour staff the hours translate to. Use that figure for your staffing answer. Buyers read headcount, not FTE, when they judge whether you can cover the site.
What is a loaded hourly rate for cleaning staff in 2026?
Expect £16 to £19 an hour. The National Living Wage is £12.71 from April 2026 for workers aged 21 and over. On top you pay employer National Insurance (15% on earnings above £5,000 a year), at least 3% employer pension, holiday cover, sick cover, training and uniforms. That takes a £12.71 wage past £16 before supervision or profit. Paying the Real Living Wage or covering night shifts pushes it past £19. The calculator defaults to £16.50. Change it to your own figure.
Should I use calculator hours in my actual bid?
Use them as your sense check, not your final number. The calculator gets you to a defensible starting point in 30 seconds, which is perfect for bid / no-bid. Every specification then has its own quirks: split shifts, access windows, periodic deep cleans, winter gritting, event days. Walk the site, check the specification's frequencies line by line, and adjust. If your survey number comes out 30% below the benchmark, find out why before you submit, because the evaluator will ask.
Why is clinical cleaning so much slower than office cleaning?
Infection control. Clinical areas need colour-coded equipment, disinfectant dwell times, a two-bucket method and audits against the National Standards of Healthcare Cleanliness. That drops productivity to roughly 100 m² an hour against 280 for an office. Bid teams that price a hospital at office rates win the contract and lose money on every shift. If you are new to healthcare work, price it slower than the benchmark, not faster.
Price the hours against real UK tenders.
Cleaning, security, grounds, waste and catering. Every live contract, one feed.
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